Carl Sagan: A Life by Keay Davidson

Absolutely fascinating biography of one of the most influential planetary scientists of recent decades.

Beautifully written. Highly recommended!

Published by John Wiley & Sons. Amazon Price £13.25. ISBN:0471395366.

Night Without End by Alistair Maclean.

I've been reading Alistair Maclean on and off since I was a child. No one handles tension the way he does!

I've got a copy on the desk in the summerhouse and on these long summer evenings it is a quiet joy to go up the garden and lose yourself in a cracking thriller like this for an hour or so. What you haven't read Maclean? What, YOU THOUGHT Dan Brown invented the thriller... Try the link below...

Starman Jones By Robert A. Heinlein

There's a story to this one. You know how just occasionally you can be beavering away at the computer or whatever, worrying about the mortgage or that writing assignment that had to be in yesetrday and all or a sudden you are brought up short by the memory of a book you haven't thought of in ages? Well that's how it was with this one. I read it at school in the 1970's and loved it. The story of a young lad who hooks up with a drifter and they manage to get aboard a spaceship as junior hands. In the end the young lad saves the day of course.

I managed to find the self same edition that I had read all those years ago on Abebooks and I enjoyed it again just as I had all those years ago. So, at heart I'm still a child. My family would agree!

Published by Pocket Books. Amazon Price £from 1.25. ISBN 1416505504

Space Race by Deborah Cadbury

Fascinating story of Sergei Korolev and Werner von Braun, the two rocket engineers behind the cold war space race.

Fourth Estate, Amazon Price £ 13.20 ISBN 0007209959.