Friday stuff and items to be thankful for

People in other parts of the world have been celebrating Thanksgiving.

Here we come, late to the party, but willing to stay late and drink the champagne.

Thank you to all our hardworking designers and typesetters and printers. Without you - the ugly and the unreadable.

Thank you to all the booksellers, especially in a tough market. Without you - the unsold and the unhappy.

Thank you to the teachers and librarians. Without you - the lonely books without their one true reader, the lonely readers without their one true book.*

Thank you to all of the Onions, the ones in the House, in the Mothership, in the UK, in NZ, and on the road. Without you - no cake, no expertise, no support, no shop-talk, no one to complain to, no one to laugh with... no us.

And the hugest of all thanks to our wonderful authors and illustrators. Without you - nothing. Nothing at all. Blank pages. Empty minds. Echoing hearts.

Thank you all!

And while we're in the mood for the thanking.

Thanks to MP at Hardie Grant for drawing our attention to  Marcel the Shell with Shoes on.

Thanks to whoever compiled the Christmas Dogs of Flickr. 

And thanks to PD James for being the magic combination of brilliant crime writer and passionate Jane Austen scholar. 

The Darcys and their guests are preparing to retire for the night when a chaise appears, rocking down the path from Pemberley's wild woodland, and as it pulls up, Lydia Wickham, an uninvited guest, tumbles out, screaming that her husband has been murdered.

Who could resist  Death Comes To Pemberley after that?

*NB We are in no way suggesting that it's cheating to have many One True Books, even *ahem* at the same time. Racy.