Those Amazon books. And Sarah came (two)

A return to Darlington, with the pictorial evidence, is imminent, and the police stabbings will force me to take a look before long (as urged by Bill and Keith) at the terrible decline of Ealing. First, because time is short, some welcome news plus some more plugs ...

Click on any Amazon link down the sidebar columns or here if you wish to use Salut! to buy vouchers, Kindles, books mentioned here or any product they sell. There's another link at the end of this posting but clicking on the images themselves won't take you anywhere ...

Another update on books you can order via Salut! for Christmas, and this time an occasion for a minor, almost family celebration.

Back when I was a humble Telegraph blogger, Sarah Hague was one of my earliest and most regular electronic correspondents.

When the humbling turned to tumbling, as in the fall of the axe on the Telegraph Paris blogger's head, Sarah joined the droves of readers flocking in Salut!'s direction and has remained an intermittent visitor ever since.

Many of us knew her to be not only a French blogger in her own right, but on the verge of publishing real books.

I thought the time had come to congratulate her on her debut as an author, but it turns out to be a follow-up.

Let Sarah take up her own story:

"Actually I have two books out and a story builder with another on the way, all part of the educational resources I've been writing with Bongo LLP.

The story builder helps children write their own version of Slim the Ogre as a downloadable software which can then be sent to a professional printer and turned into a real book. There's a home version for individual stories and a school version where the whole class gets to write a story each and each one is published in a class book. That is available at Bongo LLP.

I've also set up Facebook pages for Slim and Floppy. Just type in the search box Slim the Ogre or Floppy the Monster and they'll come up.

Slim the Ogre (aimed at ages 9-12) is about an ogre who is a vegetarian in a world of human-meat eaters. He gets sick eating vegetables but doesn't like the taste of human meat. His doctor suggests he help organise a food festival 'Human Food or Humans for Food' where human chefs and ogre chefs compete against each other in a fierce competition to find the best food.

It's full of disgusting snot and bad behaviour, with some fantastic drawings by Russell Young, one of the UK's most promising up and coming young artists (currently studying at the RCA).

Floppy the Monster is for younger children (2-6) and tells the story of Emily and her soft toy. Floppy gets dropped in the supermarket in the first story and is found by the mean and horrid Momo Morris who doesn't want to give him back. Floppy discovers he has some magic powers which help save the day but not without coming off the worse for wear in a tugging struggle.

The illustrations by Sybil Harris capture perfectly the humour and charm of the story and ensure that both boys and girls will enjoy it."

Happy to give you the career-break Salut! plug, Sarah. I expect no less when my turn comes.

And here's a reminder of what else can be had from these parts. All dirt cheap, and no need to fear the Amazon commission is likely to make Monsieur Salut rich:

One late addition to my list: Victoria Hislop's The Return has an intriguing if implausible contemporary story wrapped around a gripping account of what the Spanish Civil War was like for ordinary people. See more here.

When this posting first appeared, I threatened to bring it to the top every so often in the hope of concentrating minds and getting at least some Salut! readers to buy their Amazon-marketed products here.

In the months that followed, I have done no such thing. But while hoping to restore normal service soon, I will settle for now for giving the item a fresh top-of-the-pile outing to cover me until my hand has recovered from a recent op.

To recap, Salut! costs more in incidental expenses to run than it has ever earned. If its author's time has any value, the profit and loss account begins to look sad indeed.

You can help Salut! try to make ends meet, at the same time as helping yourselves, by buying Amazon products via this site.

I am not the world's fastest of book-readers (and am even slower when it comes to writing them), but have a few titles from this year that I am happy to recommend:

* Philip Delves Broughton

Bel Ombra, a flawed but beautifully written and captivating account of the war years as experienced by inhabitants and occupying Nazi forces on Porquerolles, one of the lovely islands lying in the Med just off Toulon