When Admiral Skink, an alien-lizard warlord from the planet Swerdlix, is attacked by The Hideous and Unimaginably Vast Comet Creature of Poppledock he faces a certain death… but luckily his underlings have installed the BrainTwizzler 360 Mind Migration SystemTM. This nifty invention safely transfers Skink's mind on to a memory wafer and jettisons it through space to find a suitable temporary "home" until he can be rescued by his fellow Swerdlixians. Unluckily for eleven-year-old Lance Spratley it just so happens that the temporary home for Admiral Skink's mind is his body! And while Skink deals with being trapped in Lance's useless body - it can't even breathe fire! - Lance is transferred to a virtual waiting room surrounded by the lizard race who seem intent on destroying Earth when they have successfully retrieved Skink.Will Lance ever get his body back? And even if he does will he be able to thwart Admiral Skink and the Swerdlixians plans to invade Earth…

Asteroid Peach is heading straight for Earth, and the planet will be destroyed in a matter of days. In desperation the world turns to the evil space lizard Admiral Skink, currently imprisoned in Cottelton police station in the body of Pickles the iguana. In return for his freedom, Admiral Skink promises to destroy the asteroid and save Earth, but instead he builds a wormhole bridge to his home planet, Swerdlix, and escapes! And just as Skink is making his getaway, a giant thrall-beast emerges from the wormhole, promptly eating Sally Spratley, Lance's little sister. It's up to Lance and his best friend, Tori, to travel to Swerdlix, capture Admiral Skink, stop the asteroid from destroying humanity, and find some flooblescoop powder to make the thrall-beast sneeze out Sally ... which shouldn't be that hard, should it?

"A work of enormous breadth, likely to pleasantly surprise both general readers and experts."—New York Times Book Review This revolutionary book provides fresh answers to long-standing questions of human origins and consciousness. Drawing on his breakthrough research in comparative neuroscience, Terrence Deacon offers a wealth of insights into the significance of symbolic thinking: from the co-evolutionary exchange between language and brains over two million years of hominid evolution to the ethical repercussions that followed man's newfound access to other people's thoughts and emotions. Informing these insights is a new understanding of how Darwinian processes underlie the brain's development and function as well as its evolution. In contrast to much contemporary neuroscience that treats the brain as no more or less than a computer, Deacon provides a new clarity of vision into the mechanism of mind. It injects a renewed sense of adventure into the experience of being human.

*Includes a brand-new story feauturing the Tenth Doctor (David Tennant) and Donna Noble (Catherine Tate)!* We all change, when you think about it. We're all different people all through our lives . . . Amy Pond looks for her Raggedy Man, Jo Grant remembers her childhood, the Master hunts the past . . . a young girl discovers a love for explosives. Eleven incredible stories from the world of Doctor Who - the early lives of friends and foes that have never been told before. The characters and their writers include: Ace by Sophie Aldred Sarah-Jane Smith by Mark Griffiths The Master, Kate Lethbridge-Stewart and Madame Vastra by Dave Rudden Ryan Sinclair and Yaz Khan by Emma Norry Clara Oswald by Jasbinder Bilan Amy Pond by Nikita Gill Davros by Temi Oh Martha Jones by Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé Jo Grant by Katy Manning © 2022 Doctor Who (P)2022 Penguin Audio

Somewhere in the small, dull town of Blue Hills, the impossible is happening. Inanimate objects are coming to life. Time travellers from the future are mingling unnoticed with the shoppers in the high street. School children are developing uncanny powers. Strange creatures are lurking within the grounds of a forgotten stately home. And with each of these mysteries comes a terrible threat that just might endanger the entire world... Fortunately, help with these extraordinary phenomena is at hand in the form of Gabby Grayling and Barney Watkins aka Geek Inc.! Gabby and Barney are set to investigate all the odd happenings in their town and find out the truth… In the first book in the series, Barney and Gabby meet and form a friendship when they investigate a top secret Government technology that brings inanimate objects to life. They also have to contend with the evil machinations of Gloria Pickles, the terrifying eleven year old editor of the school newspaper and would-be dictator.

Ghazghkull Thraka, the Beast of Armageddon, is one of the greatest threats to the Imperium. For the first time, read his full story… as told to the Inquisition by his faithful banner bearer Makari. Of the billions of greenskins who swarm the galaxy, only the name of one strikes fear into the hearts of human and xenos alike: Ghazghkull Mag Uruk Thraka. The Warlord of Warlords. The Beast of Armageddon. The Prophet of the Waaagh! With his tusks and fists and power claw, he does the holy work of Gork and Mork, and soon all worlds will burn in his boot prints. Mystery shrouds how such a beast came to exist, and rumours abound that the mighty warlord was once just like any other ork. But if that is the case, how did his ascendance come to be? Many have lost their minds trying to unravel the mystery. Lord Inquisitor Tytonida Falx has headed into the murky depths of heresy to find the answer, only this time, something is different. She possesses something the others did not. Custody of the one creature in the universe who claims to know the truth of it all. Ghazghkull’s banner bearer: Makari the Grot.

"DREAMS OF AMPUTATION reads like the nightmares Derek Raymond might have experienced if he'd written cyberpunk. An exceptionally strange work, but a smart and thoughtful one as well. Disturbing, haunting, and inimitably weird, this is a book like no other." - Brian Evenson