New Releases by Frances Thomas

A new poetry collection by the author of ''The Memory Gate'' and Girls of Troy quartet.

A new poetry collection covering memories, loss, family life, history and nature from author Frances Thomas. For more information and to find out about Frances'' other publications, visit her website at www.francesthomas.org

Imagine the isolation of a place where, within several miles of home, there were no people other than immediate family-no modern conveniences, telephones, television, internet, newspaper or mail delivery, supermarkets or shopping malls. Imagine a terrain sometimes more hospitable to mesquite trees, rattlesnakes, and jackrabbits than to human inhabitants. Imagine hot, dry weather that could change abruptly as a blue norther rolled in across the plains, dropping temperatures thirty or forty degrees before nightfall. Could you thrive in such an environment? The author did, and she reflects on these vicissitudes with both nostalgia and humor.

Electra is eagerly looking forward to her father Agamemnon''s triumphant return to Mycenae after the long war in Troy. But his wife Clytemnestra and her lover Aegisthus have other plans - Clytemnestra cannot forgive her husband for the sacrifice of her eldest daughter Iphigenia at the start of the war, and Aegisthus covets the kingship. Instead of celebrating his return, they murder him horribly; and suddenly Mycenae isn''t a safe place for Electra or her brother Orestes. Orestes goes into exile, and Electra has to submit to a humiliating fate. When Orestes eventually returns, there is only one word on his mind - revenge! What part will Electra play in this?

Polly is ready to run away from home, since her best friend Kelly doesn''t want to be friends, her pet hamster, Horace, has disappeared, and her mother is pregnant, so the whole family is paying more attention to the coming baby than to her.

Will this really be Polly''s worst birthday ever?

Townsville-based artist Tate Adams is renowned for his wood engravings, a form of printmaking he first practised while illustrating limited edition books for Ireland''s famous Dolmen Press. In Australia, he initiated something of a revolution in the art of printmaking through his teaching at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology from 1960-1982, and his establishment of the Crossley Gallery with early exhibitions of prints by artists such as Fred Williams, John Brack, George Baldessin and many others. He also established, with George Baldessin, the Lyre Bird Press for the publication of limited edition artists'' books. During the past decade he has moved from the miniature art of wood engraving, in which he is an internationally acknowledged master, to the painting of large scale gestural works executed in gouache on paper. The vitality of these recent works is astonishing. This Mini-Book, No 15 in Macmillan Art Publishing''s series, provides an overview of Tate Adams''s art in both wood engraving and the recent abstract painting.

Athens, Georgia, seems the quintessential southern university town. With a geography chiseled over geologic time by its lifeblood, the slow-flowing Oconee River, Athens has developed a unique culture as the two-century-long home of the state''s bustling center of learning and research, the University of Georgia. A multitude of influences have powered the emergence of Athens from its eighteenth-century rustic solitude to its current incarnation as a community striving to preserve the old while embracing the new. A Portrait of Historic Athens and Clarke County gives equal attention to Athens''s natural and built environments and their coevolution into one of the modern South''s most dynamic small cities. Starting with the town''s beginnings, Frances Taliaferro Thomas emphasizes settlement patterns, key events, institutions, architecture, landscape, economics, and the highly distinctive personalities that have molded Athens into what it is today. This edition includes two new sections of color photographs as well as a comprehensive new chapter tracing the milestones that led town and gown into the twenty-first century. Topics include the emerging cultural importance of the Classic Center; restoration and revitalization of many historic sites; vast building projects under two presidents of the University of Georgia; the progression of the greenway along the North Oconee River; and initiatives to address rising poverty rates within the county. Blending scholarly research with archival materials, official data, newspaper accounts, interviews, and personal letters and diaries, A Portrait of Historic Athens and Clarke County is the definitive account of a place that makes history each and every day.

As eyewitnesses to history, American women newspaper photographers occupy ringside seats as they cover local, national or international events. Their names are credited under countless images printed in daily and weekly papers, yet viewers seldom consider how the private lives of individual women intersect with their profession. Regrettably their narratives are absent from most photographic and journalism histories. Female news photographers constitute less than 25% of this male-dominated profession. To comprehend how newsroom culture informed both professional and personal experience, extensive life histories were collected from thirty women who consented to participate in this study. As a means of painting a more complete picture of issues encountered during their careers, the group was chosen to reflect geographical location, age, ethnicities, and sexual preference. Participants were asked how they balanced career aspirations, personal relationships, and self-worth in context of the changing roles of women. What choices have they made? What compromises? Did their experiences change over decades or do some issues remain essentially the same? What kind of discrimination, if any, did they experience in their job and how did they respond? Did ethnic cultures or social mores clash with their career choice? Also explored were statements regarding education, parental professions, marital status, family dynamics, life changes, and stressors. On assignment and in the newsroom their presence has helped change social assumptions but because their profession straddles both journalism and photography, researchers have ignored much of their work. Naomi Rosenblum, author of A History of Women Photographers, cites only a few newspaper photographers and describes pictures produced by women photographers in the 1940s and 1950s as "pedestrian" in quality. Current photographic history is not false, but rather one-sided. Stories shared by the women of this study, whose collective experience spans over fifty years, offer insights to young women who will be working as news photographers in the future and refute benighted scholarly assumptions that women newspaper photographers have no history worth remembering.

An action-packed adventure of corruption, danger and mistrust set in a fictional Britain which has remained under Roman Rule. Tir na n-Og Award winner 2008.

Little Monster is learning to count by watching the world around him - noticing apples in the tree, planes in the sky, balloon floating by, to name but a few! Join the fun in this wonderful little board book, perfect for babies learning all about their world.

Little Monster is discovering opposites - from hot and cold to young and old, from good and bad to happy and sad. Join him as he explores his surroundings! A perfect board book for babies learning all about their world.

In her illustrated diary, Polly writes about her family, her plans to run away, her school friends and ex-friends, and her boring hamster Horace.

Little Monster is concerned about leaving his parents behind when he grows up to be an explorer in outer space.

Meet the Vaughn family: Mamma, Dadda, Davy, his five sisters, and baby brother Owen. They live in a small house in a Glamorgan valley and have some hilarious and heart-warming adventures. This new paperback edition includes specially commissioned illustrations (a bloater is a smoked herring).