Adrian Mole From Minor To Major

All the Mole diaries in one volume, including material from the mature Adrian.

Adrian Mole's first love, Pandora, has left him; a neighbor, Mr. Lucas, appears to be seducing his mother (and what does that mean for his father?); the BBC refuses to publish his poetry; and his dog swallowed the tree off the Christmas cake. "Why" indeed.

The troubled life of Adrian Mole continues in this sequel to The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13 3/4. Adrian continues to struffle valiantly against the slings and arrows of growing up and his own family's attempts to scar him for life.

Adrian Mole has entered early middle age and is now ‘the same age as Jesus was when he died' (33). Father to the grammatically challenged Glenn, and William, who takes a ‘Big Boy Arouser’ condom to nursery school as his innocent contribution to a hot air balloon project, Adrian is a single parent who has an on/off relationship with his housing officer, Pamela Pigg. Will she help him to move from the notorious Gaitskell estate before William joins the Mad Frankie Fraser fan club? In the meantime, Adrian continues to be scandalised by his irresponsible parents who are conducting a matrimonial square-dance with the Braithwaites – the parents of the beautiful but unobtainable Pandora, who is ruthlessly pursuing her ambition to be New Labour’s first woman P.M. – and to confide in his diary. His current worries include: indestructible head-lice; his raging jealousy when his accomplished half-brother Brett arrives on his doorstep; moral decline in The Archers; his desperate attachment to two therapists; his mild addiction to Starburst (formerly Opal Fruits); a small earthquake in Leicester; and, perhaps most significantly, the dawn of a new millennium.

The city states of the Lowlands have lived in peace for decades, bastions of civilization, prosperity and sophistication, protected by treaties, trade and a belief in the reasonable nature of their neighbors. But meanwhile, in far-off corners, the Wasp Empire has been devouring city after city with its highly trained armies, its machines, it killing Art . . . And now its hunger for conquest and war has become insatiable. Only the aging Stenwold Maker, spymaster, artificer and statesman, can see that the long days of peace are over. It falls upon his shoulders to open the eyes of his people, before a black-and-gold tide sweeps down over the Lowlands and burns away everything in its path. But first he must stop himself from becoming the Empire's latest victim.

Candice Phee isn't a typical twelve-year-old girl. She has more than her fair share of quirks, but she also has the very best of intentions and an unwavering determination to make sure everyone around her is happy—which is no easy feat when dealing with a pet fish with an identity crisis, a friend who believes he came from another dimension, an age-old family feud, and a sick mom. But she is on a mission. Her methods might be unique, but Candice will do whatever it takes to restore order to her world and make sure everyone is absolutely, categorically happy again.

“Magisterial and uplifting . . . A brilliant, grandscale sampling of sixty-five million years of human evolution . . . It shows the sweep and grandeur of life in its unrelenting course.” —The Denver Post Stretching from the distant past into the remote future, from primordial Earth to the stars, Evolution is a soaring symphony of struggle, extinction, and survival; a dazzling epic that combines a dozen scientific disciplines and a cast of unforgettable characters to convey the grand drama of evolution in all its awesome majesty and rigorous beauty. Sixty-five million years ago, when dinosaurs ruled the Earth, there lived a small mammal, a proto-primate of the species Purgatorius. From this humble beginning, Baxter traces the human lineage forward through time. The adventure that unfolds is a gripping odyssey governed by chance and competition, a perilous journey to an uncertain destination along a route beset by sudden and catastrophic upheavals. It is a route that ends, for most species, in stagnation or extinction. Why should humanity escape this fate? Praise for Evolution “Spectacular.”—The New York Times Book Review “Strong imagination, a capacity for awe, and the ability to think rigorously about vast and final things abound in the work of Stephen Baxter. . . . [Evolution] leaves the reader with a haunting portrayal of the distant future.”—Times Literary Supplement “A breath of fresh air . . . The miracle of Evolution is that it makes the triumph of life, which is its story, sound like the real story.”—The Washington Post Book World

'The funniest person in the world' Caitlin Moran 'My comfort read. The best diaries ever written - with apologies to Samuel Pepys, Bridget Jones and me' ADAM KAY Celebrate Adrian Mole's 50th Birthday with this new edition of the FIFTH BOOK in his diaries, where Adrian faces divorce, fatherhood and (short-lived) television stardom . . . __________ Adrian Mole is thirty, single and a father. His cooking at a top London restaurant has been equally mocked ('the sausage on my plate could have been a turd') and celebrated (will he be the nation's first celebrity offal chef?). And the love of his life, Pandora Braithwaite, is too busy as the newly elected MP for Ashby-de-la-Zouch to notice him. Frustrated, disappointed and undersexed, Adrian despairs until a letter from his past changes everything . . . 'With the Mole books, Townsend has an unrivalled claim to be this country's foremost practising comic novelist' Mail on Sunday 'Adrian Mole really is a brilliant comic creation. Every sentence is witty and well thought out, and the whole has reverberations beyond itself' The Times 'One of the greatest comic creations. I can't remember a more relentlessly funny book' Daily Mirror 'Three cheers for Mole's chaotic, non-achieving, dysfunctional family. We need him' Evening Standard