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Five of David Walliams’s bestselling children’s books, all illustrated by Quentin Blake or Tony Ross, make up this ‘best boxset ever’: the stories of Chloe and Mr Stink, the local tramp; Joe Spud, the Billionaire Boy in need of a friend; Dennis, the Boy in the Dress; Ratburger, in which the dastardly Burt the burger van man has designs on Zoe’s pet rat; and the tale of Ben’s thieving grandmother, Gangster Granny. Slip-cased.

The extent of Gaiman’s creativity is revealed in this comprehensive volume, which features examples of final artwork as well as previously unpublished manuscript excerpts, drawings and photographs from his personal archive. For each of his major projects, including American Gods, The Sandman and Good Omens, it brings together interview comments gathered over the course of his career and biographical details to offer insight into his sources of inspiration and working methods. Off-mint and felt-tip mark on lower or upper trimmed edge.

Using children’s own words about why they love bedtime, this gentle text is illustrated with Daniel Howarth’s colourful images and animal characters. Age 3+

The Twirlywoos are playing with a sketchpad but get stuck inside its pages when the hooter sounds. This colourful book encourages small children to perform a series of actions to help them find their way out. Age 3+

The Twirlywoos introduce simple colours by painting pictures that use each one in turn, before ending this board book with an image that uses all their colours together. Age 2+

Designed to encourage pre-schoolers to develop hand-eye coordination, the activities in this book include a dot-to-dot, a maze and pictures that can be wiped clean and completed time and again. Age 3+

With colouring pages, 150 stickers to complete the seasonal images and an egg-shaped jigsaw, Happy Easter, Twirlywoos! encourages pre-schoolers to develop hand-eye coordination. Age 3+

With simple line drawings featuring the Twirlywoos and their friends, this activity book enables small children to practise fine motor skills and enjoy the world of the popular TV characters. Age 3+

In a future where society is organized by aptitude into factions – Abnegation, Candor, Dauntless, Amity and Erudite – 16-year-old Beatrice does not fit: she must choose one faction and conform, or none and forsake her family to live outside of community. The Divergent series follows her difficult path as a ‘factionless’ to her meeting with Tobias (‘Four’), another born-Abnegation who chose a different way. Four books, slip-cased. Young adult.

In this conclusion to the Last Kingdom series, Vikings and Saxons are battling for control of England. Warrior lord Uhtred is forced from his Northumbrian fortress to London, where he will be central to the struggle for the empty throne.

The period from the 1950s to the 1970s was a golden age for British spy fiction. Based on conversations with many of the 150 writers covered, this book sets the phenomenon against the backdrop of imperial decline, the Cold War and a burgeoning paperback market. It identifies two distinct genres: the glamorous fantasy of James Bond, and the sombre realism of Le Carré and Deighton. With a foreword by Lee Child.

Graphic artist Martin Vargic presents cultural and factual information about the world in the form of 70 colourful maps. His Map of Stereotypes, which parodies a narrow Western view of other nations with labels such as ‘Dracula’ for Romania and ‘Kangaroo’ for Australia, is followed by examples depicting topics such as national foods, internet use, and the prevalence of heavy metal bands. With four foldout maps and two posters. Slightly off-mint and felt-tip mark on lower trimmed edge.

After their first year as district nurses in East London, Alice and Edith struggle to cope, and this second novel in the series follows them as rationing takes hold and the Blitz escalates. Now they have to deal with the aftermath while facing up to their own emotional problems.

High-flying lawyer Francine Day needs just one headline-grabbing case to become Queen’s Counsel. Martin Jay’s divorce fits the bill – and soon he and Francine are lovers. Then Martin’s wife Donna goes missing and he is the prime suspect.

Slightly off-mint

Slightly off-mint

The scandal over his marriage to his teenage cousin stopped Jerry Lee Lewis’s career in its tracks in 1958 but he made a comeback in the 1970s as a country artist. Extensive recent interviews with the singer provide the basis of this biography, telling his story of rags to riches success, multiple wives and divorces, drug and alcohol abuse and eventual rehabilitation as a respected elder statesman of rock. Slightly off-mint and felt-tip mark on lower trimmed edge.

Following a letter in The Times in 1937 about the difficulty of sourcing Stilton, Sir John Squire asked ten writers to raise awareness of local cheeses by recording the provenance and mythology relating to their favourite. Their entertaining and often humorous anecdotes, reprinted here with illustrations by EH Shepard, reveal an artisanal world as much under threat from mass production then as it is today.

As a pastor, Hamilton is often asked thoughtful and difficult questions about aspects of the Bible that people find confusing or disturbing. Here he responds by investigating the debates about the nature of scripture, and wrestling with some of the Bible’s most challenging passages. Slightly off-mint and felt-tip mark on lower trimmed edge.

In the first of the series of classic stories by PL Travers, the East Wind blows Mary Poppins into the home of the Banks children, changing the family forever. Age 9+

Bibliophile Posy has just six months to turn around the fortunes of her inherited bookshop ¬– a task made harder by the unwelcome attentions of Sebastian, the previous owner’s belligerent grandson.

After FBI officer Jean Transom is found dead on a frozen slope in Colorado, Special Agent Ren Bryce is called to investigate, but Ren has secrets that could jeopardize the operation, and ruin her career.

Having fled to Virginia following the outbreak of the Civil War, John Tradescant the Younger, once gardener to Charles I, learns much from the native people. Then the arrival of the colonial settlers changes everything.

Glasgow, 1969: three women have been murdered and the police investigation is going nowhere. The Flying Squad’s DI McCormack is sent to review the case and, despite the hostility of local detectives, he joins the hunt for the arrogant, Bible-quoting strangler dubbed the ‘Quaker’.

Returning to Ireland after 50 years, Gordon Lewis began to investigate the secrets of his childhood, only to be told not to go ‘digging up that old stuff’. Brought up in the 1950s in a secretive Catholic hostel for unmarried women, he had little idea of the hardships his mother had suffered, or her determination to keep her child, in defiance of an intolerant society.

In this cookbook, TV chef Lorraine Pascal adjusts the cooking methods and ingredients of well-known dishes to make them healthier and more nutritious, creating a range of tasty, satisfying and simple-to-prepare meals. The recipes include meat-free versions of classics such as Mushroom and Chestnut Lancashire Hotpot, as well as ideas for breakfasts, snacks, puddings and Sunday roasts. Slightly off-mint.

Presented as a dossier of evidence for the existence of hostile aliens (gleaned from the evidence provided by the adventures of Doctor Who) this well-illustrated volume explains the origins and nature of 14 extra-terrestrial threats to humankind. Chapters include case files of the Doctor's adventures with each monster, from the Daleks to the Slitheen, and behind-the-scenes insights into how the creatures were created and filmed. Felt-tip mark on lower trimmed edge.

Inspired by his mugging-up on Winnie the Pooh for Celebrity Mastermind, Stuart MacBride describes his book as ‘the story of what happens to Detective Chief Inspector Roberta Steel after she was caught being Very, Very Naughty in In the Cold Dark Ground’. Now, the man she was accused of fitting up is freed and back on the streets of Aberdeen – but Roberta knows he is guilty.

Designed specifically for anyone starting to learn Italian, this dictionary has several invaluable features for the novice. As well as clearly laid out headwords, translations and examples of usage in the Italian–English, English–Italian listings, there are sections on pronunciation, Italian verbs and ‘Italian in Action’, which includes lists of common words and phrases and information on topics such as writing letters, email and texts.

A teenager returns home to find the house covered in blood and her mother gone. For DS Maeve Kerrigan it is an investigation of what seems to be a gory murder, but without a victim and in a London street where no one wants to talk.

One of the Taste of Britain series, described by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall in his preface as 'an exciting journey to find Britain's edible treasure', this volume goes north of the border into the land of oatcakes and haggis, Irn-Bru, Aberdeen Angus Cattle and mealie puddings. The authors explain the culinary history and traditions of each raw ingredient or product, how it is prepared (unless it is a trade secret), and where to find it.

This volume is from The Taste of Britain series that describes British foods – both raw ingredients and products – that belong to their region in the same way as French foods are linked to their terroir (soil). Surveying the foodstuffs of South West England, the Channel Islands and Wales, the authors delve into the history and culinary traditions of local fare such as Dittisham plums, Plymouth Gin, Caerphilly Cheese and the mighty Jersey Royal Potato.

A murder mystery that enmeshes DI Archer of Scotland Yard in a high-level espionage drama, Len Deighton’s novel is set in Britain in 1941, nine months after British Command surrendered to the Nazis. Written in 1978, this compelling ‘alternative reality’ portrayal of Britain under Nazi rule became a BBC drama series in 2017. Reissued with a new introduction by Deighton.

Joey Harker has discovered that there are one trillion alternative earths, and they are all at war. In the third title in the series, Joey finds himself tasked with saving InterWorld and protecting the Multiverse. Age 11+

After Uncle Parker wins a Caribbean cruise, the bitterly jealous Bagthorpes are gripped by competition mania, while Grandma starts a riot, Zero becomes the most famous dog in the country and TV crews record the glorious chaos. Age 9+

Wylie’s adventures start with a text message: her best friend Cassie needs help, but finding her isn’t easy as Cassie’s messages become ever more cryptic. Something is dangerously wrong – but for an Outlier who can read minds, there is always danger. Young adult.

Wideacre Hall is Beatrice Lacey's ancestral home, but as a woman in the 18th century she has no right of inheritance. Corrupted by an unjust world and wilful, Beatrice sets out to corrupt others and, by a series of crimes, to finally possess her beloved Wideacre.

Born in 1917, Dame Vera Lynn was 92 when she realized that her great age gave a better perspective (she wrote her first autobiography in her fifties) and she had to 'get everything down on paper in a final account'. Here then is the life of 'an ordinary girl from an ordinary family with a voice that you could recognize' – but also an embodiment of British spirit during the Second World War.

From the co-author of The Dangerous Book for Boys, this wide-ranging collection celebrates the men and women who prove how much you can achieve when powered by courage and self-belief – from the explorer Richard Burton to Douglas Bader, and from Florence Nightingale to Lisa Potts, the nursery nurse who protected children from a machete attack in 1996.

The mystery surrounding Jack the Ripper's crimes has led to more than a century of obsessive theorizing about his identity. Now, indignant at Ripperologists' tendency to believe the 19th century's 'greatest liars', Bruce Robinson offers 'a repudiation of virtually everything' published on the subject; his lengthy but lively analysis of the evidence exposes a web of corruption and cover-up that helped the killer to escape. Felt-tip mark on lower trimmed edge.

In the early 1950s, after growing up in Battersea, dancing with the Italia Conti school on the West End stages of wartime London and performing through summer seasons in Blackpool and winter seasons in pantomime, Irene Holland won a coveted place in the Tiller Girls troupe at the London Palladium. Her very engaging memoir describes her passion for dancing and the thrill of achieving her ambition.

Robert Goodwin chronicles the adventures of the African slave Esteban Dorantes (1500-1539), the first pioneer from the Old World to explore the entirety of the American south and the first African-born man to die in North America about whom anything is known. Goodwin's groundbreaking research in Spanish archives has led to a radical new interpretation of American history - one in which an African slave emerges as the nation's first great explorer and adventurer. Slightly off-mint.

Specially trained sniffer dogs play a vital role in bomb detection in the British Army; this book tells the story of two such animals, killed in action alongside their handlers, Lance Corporals Kenneth Rowe and Liam Tasker, in Afghanistan in 2008 and 2011. Told through the words of family, friends and colleagues, and letters home from the soldiers, the book describes the bond between dog and handler and the courageous work they undertook together.