I didn't know what song, but I didn't ask.

A minute later, we passed by one of those stores that sell cheap souvenirs to the tourists. Electronics and postcards and little plastic Statues of Liberty. And in the window I saw they had fans. The old-fashioned, low-tech kind. The kind that fold up into a little stick, but unfolded they look like an accordion and have Chinese or Japanese art on them.

"Wait here," I said.

She looked like she could use a minute to rest, anyway. I ran inside to buy one for Delilah. Yes, ran inside. Risked the horrors of people I'd never even met. Walked right through the heart pounding. All for my friend.

It only cost me $1.99, about ten percent of my weekly allowance, but from the look in her eyes you'd have thought I bought her a new car or a mink coat. She unfolded it and hid the bottom half of her face behind it, pretend coy like a Japanese geisha girl. Then she lowered it and laughed so loud I bet they could hear her inside the store.

"Child, if you aren't just the sweetest thing," she said, when she was all through laughing. And she put her hand on the top of my head and brought it down to her level and kissed me right on the forehead.

Then we walked on, and she fanned herself with her left hand and seemed to feel better.

"Congratulations," she said.

"For what?"

"For being alive. Hope something like last night happens to you again real soon."

Buy CHASING WINDMILLS online.

at www.rbooks.co.uk.

Love in the Present Tense.

Catherine Ryan Hyde.

*So much of how it started was when that cop got out and came up to me. But I didn't know all this when it first happened. I didn't know there would ever be a Leonard, or that this man would be his father, or that anyone would have to die . . .'

Leonard is an eerily wise five-year-old boy with asthma, terrible eyesight, and the ability to captivate everyone he meets.

Pearl is Leonard's devoted teenage mother, desperately trying to hide a violent secret from her past.

Mitch is Leonard's twenty-five-year-old next-door neighbour, busy running his own company and entertaining the Mayor's wife.

Then one day Pearl drops Leonard off with Mitch, and never returns.

How do you go on loving someone who isn't there? As truth and fiction, memory and dreams collide, Mitch finds himself learning from a surprising source the true, magical definition of love.

*A sweet and honest look at the pains and pleasures of.

love, and who could not fall in love with leonard a what a beautifully drawn character'

JANE GREEN..

*A work of art . . . Enchanting'

SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE.

*Haunting'

WASHINGTON POST.

*A remarkable story of the magic of love'

DAILY EXPRESS.

*A work of art'

SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE.

9780552773645..

Pay It Forward.

Catherine Ryan Hyde.

It all started with the social studies teacher's extra-credit project:.

Think of an idea for world change, and put it into action.

WHILST THIS PROVED a little ambitious for most of his classmates, twelve-year-old Trevor thought he would start by doing something good for three people. But instead of paying him back, he would ask them to *pay it forward' by doing a favour for three more people. If it all went to plan, Trevor thought, it would be the start of a long chain of human kindness . . .

Sound unlikely? Well a lot of other people had their doubts too a Trevor's teacher, his classmates, his mother, in fact everyone in his small California town. It could never really work . . . could it?

*Hyde's book delivers a profound vision: the simple magic of the human heart'

SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE.

HAVE YOU HEARD?.

Also by Catherine Ryan Hyde.

LOVE IN THE PRESENT TENSE.

PAY IT FORWARD.

CHASING WINDMILLS.

and published by Black Swan.