Words are essential to our everyday lives; we spend our day enveloped in conversations, e-mails, phone calls, text messages, directions, headlines, and more. But how often do we stop to think about the origins of the words we use? Have you ever thought about which words in English have been borrowed from Arabic, Dutch, or Portuguese? Henry Hitchings delves into the insatiable, ever-changing English language and reveals how and why it has absorbed words from more than 350 other languages?many originating from the most unlikely of places, such as shampoo from Hindi and kiosk from Turkish.

She may be a bestselling author, but ex-librarian Jacqueline Kirby’s views on the publishing biz aren’t fit to print. In fact, she’s thinking of trading celebrity for serenity and a house far away from fiendish editors and demented fans when her agent whispers the only words that could ever make her stay: Naked in the Ice. Seven years ago, this fantasy blockbuster skyrocketed Katleen Darcy to instant fame before she disappeared under suspicious circumstances.

Now, the author’s heirs are looking for a writer to pen the sequel to Kathleen’s famous book. It’s an opportunity no novelist in her right mind would pass up, and there’s no doubting Jacqueline’s sanity. Until she starts digging through the missing woman’s papers – and her past. Until she gets mixed up with Kathleen’s enigmatic former lover. Until a series of nasty accidents convince her much too late that someone wants to bring Jacqueline’s story -and her life – to a premature end.

Hmmm…a regular pig seems just too big to distribute in a handy consumer grade can. But wait, clever food scientists have found a way to combine a guinea pig, a hamster, and a regular ‘ol porker to create a cute and tasty critter just right for canned distribution. Behold the Haminal.

“He’s smaller, tastier / boneless and pink… / and fits in a can so much better, we think.”

Jan Darzek, former private detective from Earth and now First Councilor of the Galaxy, has encountered his most baffling case. The planet Nifron D has been inexplicably turned into a sun. A quarter of a galaxy away, a native on the planet Skarnaf has been found horribly disfigured by an impossibly massive dose of radiation. While Darzek searches for a connection between the two events, the populous and prosperous world of Vezpro receives a blackmail letter that threatens it with the fate of Nifron D. In a crimeless society, has a master scientist turned master criminal? Darzek must decide quickly whether the letter is a monstrous hoax. If it is not, how can the impossible demands be met — or five billion inhabitants evacuated in time?

A panda walks into a cafe. It orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and fires a shot into the air. “Why?”, the waiter asks. The panda gives him a wildlife manual and the waiter reads, “Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves.” So, punctuation really does matter, even if it is only a mater of life and death.

Through sloppy usage and low standards on the Internet, in e-mail, and now “txt msgs,” we have made proper punctuation an endangered species. It is time to look at our commas and semicolons and see them as the wonderful and necessary things they are.

If there are only pedants left who care, then so be it. This is a book for people who love punctuation and get upset when it is mishandled. From George Orwell shunning the semicolon, to New Yorker editor Harold Ross’s epic arguments with James Thurber over commas, this history makes a case for the preservation of a system of printing conventions that is much too subtle to be mucked about with.

Sticklers, unite!

The sleepy village of Middlehope is suddenly jerked into life by nouveau rich antiques magnate Arthur Rainbow. In a whirlwind of activity he extravagantly refurbishes the Manor House, joins the Golf Club, Angling Society and Arts Council – and, in a ruthless coup, dislodges the old church organist to take over the position himself.

But for all his reforming zeal, the Middlehope community rejects him. And when Rainbow’s crushed body is found in the graveyard of St Eata’s church, there is very little surprise or sorrow – but much speculations to who the murderer could be. After all, there are so many candidates – from his young, beautiful, flirtations wife to the usurped organist and his mutinous choir. It falls upon Superintendent George Felse, newly promoted head of the Midshire CID, to solve this most perplexing murder.