Flying Carpets is a story collection in the grand tradition of Arab storytelling. In it, Habra masterfully waves her writing wand and takes us on a journey as we read about people and places far away and encounter temples and mountain villages, gliding boats and fragrant kitchens, flaming fish and rich tapestries.
Winnie's sisters have given her a flying carpet but Winnie is struggling to find something nice to say about it in her thank-you letter as the carpet has been more than a little wayward. Winnie decides to give the carpet one last chance but then disaster strikes. The carpet swoops off with poor Wilbur as its unwilling passenger. Winnie tries to catch it but the carpet is too fast for her and it heads straight for a funfair where it subjects Wilbur to a string of crazy rides. Winnie has to resort to magic to stop the carpet in its tracks and rescue her beloved moggy. Then she takes Wilbur home and, ever the resourceful witch, she has an idea for a wonderful way to enjoy the carpet in the safety of her own garden.
Welcome, Waldo Watchers! Pack a pencil and sharpen your wits as you follow him through the pages of his two newest activity books, from jungles to traffic jams and all the zany places in between.
Elina Faramar finally leaves her family's flying carpet shop when her father reluctantly agrees she can take magic lessons in nearby Kamikan. Urban life promises adventure, and new friend Kara shows her the sights. However, Elina soon sees a darker side of life: a foreigner arrested at the circus, forbidden schoolhouse rooms with odd comings and goings, and unsociable pupil Simeon's shady deals at the docks. Everything seems connected to the volatile neighbouring country of Pallexon, but no one will tell her why. When Elina and Simeon develop a magical mind link, he seems close to confiding in her. But an unexpected voyage takes Elina and Kara away from answers and towards unknown danger in Pallexon. Alone in a strange country, with no identity papers, the situation rapidly turns into a nightmare when Kara is mistaken for a spy. With her own freedom at stake, Elina must rely on her wits and magic to save her friend and unravel the secrets of Pallexon.
From the pen of one of Hong Kong's leading writers, Xi Xi (1938 - ), Flying Carpet mirrors the past and present of Fertillia, an island city situated on the south-eastern coast of the huge country of Dragonland. Fertillia is of course Hong Kong, and the novel is part history and part imagination, a rich tapestry of the local material culture and a vivid portrayal of sensitive Chinese minds, a saga of the Fa family who has lived through Fertillia's development from a small village to a cosmopolitan metropolis. On top of the personal drama involving three generations of people, the author casts her narrative net over many walks of life in the city and suggests the uniqueness of Fertillia's existence within a cosmic order of rare elegance and harmony.
Five British children discover in their new carpet an egg, which hatches into a phoenix that takes them on a series of fantastic adventures around the world.
"Flying Carpet" is the catalog for the exhibition of the same name presented at Villa Medici, the French Academy in Rome, and conceived by Philippe-Alain Michaud in 2012. "Flying carpets" offers a journey through centuries, countries and techniques. Between past and present, Oriental and Western worlds, ornament and abstraction, carpets travel through times, cultures and trends--they can be found in Renaissance paintings, contemporary installations or even films, until they turn exhibition spaces themselves into travelling and transformation places.
From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Night Watch: the reputation-making debut short story collection that paved the way for a new generation of writers. • “Brilliant … Phillips is a virtuoso.” —The Chicago Tribune Jayne Anne Phillips's reputation-making debut collection paved the way for a new generation of writers. Raved about by reviewers and embraced by the likes of Raymond Carver, Frank Conroy, Annie Dillard, and Nadine Gordimer, Black Tickets now stands as a classic. With an uncanny ability to depict the lives of men and women who rarely register in our literature, Phillips writes stories that lay bare their suffering and joy. Here are the abused and the abandoned, the violent and the passive, the impoverished and the disenfranchised who populate the small towns and rural byways of the country. A patron of the arts reserves his fondest feeling for the one man who wants it least. A stripper, the daughter of a witch, escapes from poverty into another kind of violence. A young girl during the Depression is caught between the love of her crazy father and the no less powerful love of her sorrowful mother. These are great American stories that have earned a privileged place in our literature.
'Agatha Christie for kids' - a brand new mystery in the detective agency series brimming with mystery and magic by million-copy-selling author, Sally Gardner. The detectives at Wings and Co are in a bit of bother. There is a lost leprechaun on the loose and carpets are flying all over the village of Podgy Bottom, as if by magic. Oh, and worst of all, Fidget the cat has vanished on VERY URGENT business. It looks like a tricky case for our fairy detectives . . .