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The Second Penguin Book of English Short Stories (The Penguin Book of English Short Stories)
by Christopher DolleyThe short story is enjoying a revival all the more encouraging when viewed against the gloom surrounding the future of the literary novel . . .'Fifteen further short stories from the golden age of the short story offer more gems from some of the masters of the genre. Whether it is the lyrical prose of Thomas Hardy or the irreverent wit of Kingsley Amis, the monologues of Virgina Woolf or Muriel Spark, the authors here demonstrate that the vitality of the form remains as compelling today as when these stories were originally published.
The Aftermath: Soon to Be a Major Film Starring Keira Knightley
by Rhidian BrookSOON TO BE A MAJOR FILM STARRING KEIRA KNIGHTLEYSet in post-war Germany, the international bestseller The Aftermath by Rhidian Brook is a stunning emotional thriller about our fiercest loyalties and our deepest desires.In the bitter winter of 1946, Rachael Morgan arrives with her only remaining son Edmund in the ruins of Hamburg. Here she is reunited with her husband Lewis, a British colonel charged with rebuilding the shattered city. But as they set off for their new home, Rachael is stunned to discover that Lewis has made an extraordinary decision: they will be sharing the grand house with its previous owners, a German widower and his troubled daughter. In this charged atmosphere, enmity and grief give way to passion and betrayal.'Profoundly moving, beautifully written. Ponders issues of decency, guilt and forgiveness' Independent'Terrific. Suspicion, resentment and misunderstanding haunt this city. Richly atmospheric' Sunday Telegraph'An extraordinary read' Daily Mail
Crusade (The Making of England Quartet #2)
by Stewart Binns1072 - England is firmly under the heel of its new Norman rulers. The few survivors of the English resistance look to Edgar the Atheling, the rightful heir to the English throne, to overthrow William the Conqueror. Years of intrigue and vicious civil war follow: brother against brother, family against family, friend against friend.In the face of chaos and death, Edgar and his allies form a secret brotherhood, pledging to fight for justice and freedom wherever they are denied. But soon they are called to fight for an even greater cause: the plight of the Holy Land. Embarking on the epic First Crusade to recapture Jerusalem, together they will participate in some of the cruellest battles the world has ever known, the savage Siege of Antioch and the brutal Fall of Jerusalem, and together they will fight to the death.
Virtual History: Alternatives and Counterfactuals
by Niall FergusonWhat if Britain had stayed out of the First World War? What if Germany had won the Second? How would England look if there had been no Cromwell? What would the world be like if Communism had never collapsed? And what if John F. Kennedy had lived?In this acclaimed book, leading historians from Andrew Roberts to Michael Burleigh explore what might have been if nine of the most decisive moments in modern history had never happened.
The Lower River
by Paul TherouxAward-winning writer Paul Theroux draws upon personal experience of living in Malawi in his eye-opening novel, about one man's return to an Africa he no longer recognises, The Lower River. Decades ago Massachusetts salesman Ellis Hock spent four years in Africa - and the continent has never left him. So when his wife walks out and his business goes belly up, Ellis turns back to the one place in which he briefly found happiness.Yet returning to the village of Malabo shocks him. The school he built is a ruin. The people he remembers are poor, apathetic, hostile. The country labours as if under a great, invisible burden. However, Ellis is determined. This is his escape, a paradise regained.But escape can be a snare, a trap for the unwary . . .The Lower River is a hypnotic, compelling and brilliant return to a terrain no one has ever written better about than Paul Theroux: the tragic stage of modern Africa, AIDS-ravaged and despairing in the face of creeping consumerism, greed and dependence.'Remarkable, admirable, riveting, heartbreaking. A masterly, moving portrait of how Africa ensnares and enchants' Guardian'Terrific writing. Theroux's senses are always on full alert' Evening Standard'Powerful, vivid, shocking' The Times'Theroux invests this very 21st-century journey into the heart of ennui with a caustic bite, like the snakes that pop up throughout' Metro'The sense of menace is masterful. Theroux has never written a better novel' Sunday TelegraphAmerican travel writer Paul Theroux is known for the rich descriptions of people and places that is often streaked with his distinctive sense of irony; his novels and collected short stories, My Other Life, The Collected Stories, My Secret History, The Stranger at the Palazzo d'Oro, A Dead Hand, Millroy the Magician, The Elephanta Suite, Saint Jack, The Consul's File, The Family Arsenal, The Mosquito Coast, and his works of non-fiction, including the iconic The Great Railway Bazaar are available from Penguin.
Ghost Detectives: The Lost Bride (Ghost Detectives)
by Emily MasonSome ghosts are haunted by their past. When the local museum needs volunteers to help it reopen, Abi, Hannah, Sarah and Grace sign up. The girls discover that the museum has a link to the spirit world when they find an ancient diary and meet a ghost bride from another century. She can't rest in peace until she finds out why her true love left her at the altar. The Ghost Detectives have a romantic first mystery to solve!
Ghost Detectives: The Missing Dancer (Ghost Detectives)
by Emily MasonGhost Detective: The Lost Dancer is brilliant for younger fans of the spy series The Gallagher Girls and also paranormal fiction. Girls of 9+ will love the gentle romance, school friendships and thrilling detective case to be solved. The perfect series for aspiring tweens.Some ghosts are haunted by their past . . .When Abi, Sarah , Hannah and Grace are visited by the ghost of a littl lost girl trying to dance one last time so that her spirit can rest, they jump at the chance to help. But this Ghost Detective case seems to be shrouded in secrets and everywhere they look, people get upset. With clues runing out, can the Ghost Detectives solve the mystery of the missing dancer?Emily Mason is an exciting new Irish author. Her previous book Ghost Detective: The Lost Bride was her debut novel for Puffin. Emily has been a bookworm since she was little. She is now an editor and author but has yet to see any ghosts herself...
I'm Not Here to Give a Speech
by Gabriel Garcia MarquezFor the first time, the speeches of prize-winning author Gabriel Garcia Marquez are translated into English and published together in a collected edition. These writings span Marquez's entire life: from his earliest days, speaking as a teenager graduating high school, to his acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize. Taken as a whole, this collection offers a unique and fascinating insight into Marquez's long career, highlighting his concerns and beliefs both as a writer and as a man.Marquez was beloved throughout his life and celebrated posthumously as a true literary genius. This collection of previously unseen material, written in his distinctively rich and expressive style, will appeal to any Marquez fan.
You Came Back: A Novel
by Christopher CoakeAn astonishing first novel about love and belief, and the difficulty of letting goThirty-something Midwesterner Mark Fife believes he has moved on from the accidental death of his young son and the subsequent break-up of his marriage. He's successful, he's in love again and he believes he's mastered his own memories. But then he's contacted by a strange woman who tells him she's living in his old house, the house where Brendan died, and she's convinced it's haunted by Brendan's ghost.Mark doesn't believe in ghosts, but his distressed ex-wife does, and Mark so much wants to help her. So much so that he begins to doubt his own beliefs and motives. And as he flirts with the idea of trying to contact his son, he begins to endanger the relationships that matter now in his life, with his fiancee Allison and his tough and sceptical father. You Came Back is a wonderfully affecting read about the nature of belief and bereavement, about old loves and new loves, and the hardships involved in letting go.
The Professor of Truth
by James RobertsonThe Professor of Truth is the newest novel by Saltire prizewinner James Robertson. Twenty-one years after his wife and daughter were murdered in the bombing of a plane over Scotland, Alan Tealing, a university lecturer, still does not know the truth of what really happened on that terrible night. Obsessed by the details of what he has come to call The Case, he is sure that the man convicted of the atrocity was not responsible, and that he himself has thus been deprived not only of justice but also of any chance of escape from his enduring grief.When an American intelligence officer, apparently terminally ill and determined to settle his own accounts before death, arrives on his doorstep with information about a key witness in the trial, a fateful sequence of events is set in motion. Alan decides that he must travel to Australia to confront this witness, whose evidence he has always disbelieved, in the hope that this might at last be the breakthrough for which he has waited so long.Praise for The Testament of Gideon Mack: 'The story of a Presbyterian minister who comes back from a near-death experience claiming that he has met the devil, this is both a hugely gripping tale and a fascinating examination of the difference between faith and belief' FT Magazine'A masterly piece of storytelling (and Scottish soul-reaching)' James Naughtie, HeraldPraise for And the Land Lay Still: 'A wonderful novel . . . panoramic, illuminating and compassionate . . . the book represents nothing less than a landmark for the novel in Scotland, and underlines the author's position as one of Britain's best contemporary novelists' Irvine Welsh, Guardian'Bold, discursive and deep, Robertson's sweeping history of life and politics in twentieth-century Scotland should not be ignored' ObserverJames Robertson is the author of four previous novels, The Fanatic, Joseph Knight, The Testament of Gideon Mack and And the Land Lay Still. Joseph Knight was awarded the two major Scottish literary awards in 2003/4 - the Saltire Book of the Year and the Scottish Arts Council Book of the Year - and The Testament of Gideon Mack was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize, picked by Richard and Judy's Book Club, and shortlisted for the Saltire Book of the Year award. And the Land Lay Still was the winner of the Saltire Society Scottish Book of the Year Award 2010.
The Apartment: A Novel
by Greg BaxterThe Apartment, the astonishing first novel by Greg Baxter, is a tale of war and peace, friendship and aloneness.A man walks across an old European capital. Heavy snow falls. He has come here from far away, hoping to forget. Instead, he remembers: home, war, lost friends. Complicity. In the company of a new friend and alive to the new experiences of the city, he moves through the snow and his complicated history in search of an apartment.The Apartment, by the author of the acclaimed memoir A Preparation for Death, is a novel about war, the relationship between America and the rest of the world, and the brittle foundations of Western culture; but above all it is a book about the mysteries and alchemies of friendship - truthful, moving and brilliant. Acclaimed by Hisham Matar, Adam Thorpe and Roddy Doyle, among others, The Apartment is a deeply original and profoundly involving novel. 'Admirable for its scope, ambition and unashamed seriousness of purpose, as well as its willingness to take stylistic and structural risks' Julie Myerson, Observer'Stunningly good' Susan Jeffreys, Saturday Review, BBC Radio Four'Baxter's superbly elegant, understated writing explores the dynamics of America's relationship with the rest of the world' The Times'Lucidly written and astutely observed ... The novel exerts a hypnotic force ... Baxter continually undercuts our expectations for his novel. And it is precisely this sort of subversion, along with the author's shimmering prose, that makes The Apartment such a surprisingly compelling read' New York Times'Absorbing, atmospheric and enigmatic ... Its long, frigid journey into a long, sleepless night explores a man's uneasy relationship with his past, himself and a world in which violence is inescapable' Los Angeles Times'Powerful ... Baxter's clean and direct prose generates its own momentum' Daily Beast'A wonderful, horrible, wise novel' Dazed & Confused (Book of the Month)'A dark and sinewy novel, written with sparse clarity and affecting subtlety' Stuart Evers, Observer (Books of the Year)Greg Baxter was born in Texas in 1974. He lived for a number of years in Dublin, and now lives in Berlin. He is the author of the acclaimed memoir A Preparation for Death. The Apartment is his first novel.
A Good American
by Alex GeorgeGermany, 1904: When Frederick and Jette must flee her disapproving mother, where better to go than America, the land of the new? Originally set to board a boat to New York, at the last minute they take one destined for New Orleans, and later find themselves, more by chance than by design, in the small town of Beatrice, Missouri. Not speaking a word of English, they embark on their new life together.From bare-knuckle prizefighting and Prohibition to sweet barbershop harmonies and the Kennedy assassination, the family is caught up in the sweep of history as they find their place in their adopted country. Accompanied by a chorus of unforgettable characters, from a chicken-strangling church organist to a malevolent bicycle-riding dwarf, each new generation discovers afresh what it means to be an American.Poignant, funny and heartbreaking, A Good American is a universal story about our search for home.
The Infatuations
by Javier Marías Margaret Jull CostaThe Infatuations is a metaphysical murder mystery and a stunningly original literary achievement by Javier Marías, the internationally acclaimed author of A Heart So White and Your Face Tomorrow.Every day, María Dolz stops for breakfast at the same café. And every day she enjoys watching a handsome couple who follow the same routine. Then one day they aren't there, and she feels obscurely bereft.It is only later, when she comes across a newspaper photograph of the man, lying stabbed in the street, his shirt half off, that she discovers who the couple are. Some time afterwards, when the woman returns to the café with her children, who are then collected by a different man, and Maria approaches her to offer her condolences, an entanglement begins which sheds new light on this apparently random, pointless death.With The Infatuations, Javier Marías brilliantly reimagines the murder novel as a metaphysical enquiry, addressing existential questions of life, death, love and morality.The Infatuations is an extraordinary, immersive book about the terrible force of events and their consequences.'I am greatly impressed by the quality of Marías's writing . . . he uses language like an anatomist uses the scalpel to cut away the layers of the flesh in order to lay bare the innermost secrets of that strangest of species, the human being' W. G. Sebald'Years ago, I said that Marías was Spain's best living writer . . . Nothing, afterwards, has made me alter that opinion' Eduardo Mendoza, El País''[I am] enthralled by his strange mix of made-up memories, lost experiences and real-life fantasies' Marina Warner, Guardian'Stylish, cerebral . . . Marías is a startling talent' The New York TimesJavier Marías was born in Madrid in 1951. He has published ten novels, two collections of short stories and several volumes of essays. His work has been translated into thirty-two languages and won a dazzling array of international literary awards, including the prestigious Dublin IMPAC award for A Heart So White. He is also a highly practised translator into Spanish of English authors, including Joseph Conrad, Robert Louis Stevenson, Sir Thomas Browne and Laurence Sterne. He has held academic posts in Spain, the United States and in Britain, as Lecturer in Spanish Literature at Oxford University.Margaret Jull Costa has been a literary translator for over twenty-five years and has translated many novels and short stories by Portuguese, Spanish and Latin American writers, including Javier Marías, Fernando Pessoa, José Saramago, Bernardo Atxaga and Ramón del Valle-Inclán. She has won various prizes for her work, including, in 2008, the PEN Book-of-the-Month Translation Award and the Oxford Weidenfeld Translation Prize for her version of Eça de Queiroz's masterpiece The Maias, and, most recently, the 2011 Oxford Weidenfeld Translation Prize for The Elephant's Journey by José Saramago.
You Shall Know Our Velocity
by Dave EggersWill and Hand are burdened by $38,000 and the memory of their friend Jack. Taking a week out of their lives, they decide to travel around the world to give the money away. They can't really say why they're doing it, just that it needs to be done. Perhaps it's something to do with Jack's death - perhaps they'll find the reason later. But as their plans are frustrated, twisted and altered at every step and the natives prove far from grateful to their benefactors, Will and Hand find that the world is an infinitely bigger, more surreal and exhilarating place than they ever realised. In fact, it's somewhere to get lost in ...
How We Are Hungry
by Dave EggersHow We Are Hungry is a collection of Dave Eggers's short stories that twist and inspire the imagination Dave Eggers has championed the cause of the short story so magnificently that through his own McSweeney's magazine and through its many imitators the form is once again in the ascendant. Yet while celebrating the work of others, Eggers has also proved himself time and again one of the modern masters of the form.This unmissable collection is Egger's first, and showcases his talents in a variety of stories that are short-short, short-long and every length in between; and in stories that are dark, funny, inspiring, daring and endlessly inventive (including the acclaimed 'Up the Mountain Coming Down Slowly'). In short, in stories that will make you appreciate that Dave Eggers and the short story were made for each other - and, in turn, for you. 'Possibly the most admired and emulated American author of his generation' Independent 'Brilliant, confident floods of language' Sunday Herald 'Intensely pleasurable, striking in its beauty...a triumph of both form and content' Guardian
The Elephanta Suite
by Paul TherouxThis fabulous, far-reaching book breathtakingly captures the tumult, ambition, hardship and serenity that mark modern India. Theroux’s characters risk venturing far beyond its well-worn paths to discover woe or truth or peace. A holidaying middle-aged couple veer heedlessly from idyll to chaos. A buttoned-up Boston lawyer finds relief in Mumbai’s reeking slums. A young woman befriends an elephant in Bangalore. We also meet Indian characters as distinctive as they are indicative of their country’s subtle ironies: an executive who yearns to become a holy beggar, an earnest young striver whose personality is transformed by acquiring an American accent, a miracle-working guru, and more. The Elephanta Suite urges us towards a fresh, compelling, and often inspiring notion of India and its effect on those who try to lose — or find — themselves there.
The Family Arsenal
by Paul TherouxHood, a renegade American diplomat, envisions a new urban order through the opium fog of his room. His sometimes bedmate, Mayo, has stolen a Flemish painting and is negotiating for publicity with The Times. Meanwhile, Murf the bomb-maker leaves his mark in red whilst his girlfriend Brodie bombs Euston . . .Set in the grimy decay of south-east London, The Family Arsenal is a chilling novel of violence in the tradition of Brighton Rock.
The Templar's Secret (Caedmon Aisquith #4)
by C. M. PalovFor all fans of the Indiana Jones movies and the Dan Brown conspiracy thrillers comes C. M. Palov's brand new page-turning adventure The Templar's Secret which will take you on a breathless ride all over the globe and to a dark secret at the very heart of Christianity.A long lost gospel - the Evangelium Gaspar - holds the truth about Jesus of Nazareth and whoever possesses it will wield unlimited power . . .The death of the pope triggers a plot to seize the papacy. A shadowy conspirator and members of Santa Muerte, a satanic brotherhood, seek a lost gospel which holds a devastating truth about the Christain faith, which they will use it to blackmail the Vatican. But first they have to secure it . . .Cædmon Aisquith, Templar expert and former MI5 operative, receives an ominous ransom demand: find the Evangelium Gaspar or your kidnapped daughter will be killed. Racing against time, he must solve a series of clues involving esoteric symbols and artfully encoded riddles. All the while staying one step ahead of the bloodthirsty Santa Muerte. From India to Spain, and finally to a Merovingian church in the heart of Paris, Cædmon hunts the most explosive secret of all - a two-thousand-year-old cover-up that will forever change the course of history.With her previous novels, Stones of Fire, The Templar's Code and The Templar's Quest, Chloe Palov has fast established a huge readership of fans of the classic conspiracy thriller - The Templar's Secret is her most ambitious thriller yet. 'Heart-stopping suspense, ancient mysteries and rollercoaster action ... a book that will have you cheering as you read' James Rollins'The story crackles with tension and imagination from the first to the last page . . . intrigue, treachery, history and a wealth of secrets. Super' Steve BerryC. M. Palov graduated from George Mason University with a degree in art history. The author's résumé includes working as a museum guide, teaching English in Seoul, Korea and managing a bookshop. Twin interests in art and arcana inspired the author to write esoteric thrillers. C. M. Palov lives in West Virginia.
The Mosquito Coast (Penguin Readers Ser.penguin Readers Series)
by Paul TherouxThe Mosquito Coast - winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize - is a breathtaking novel about fanaticism and a futile search for utopia from bestseller Paul Theroux. Allie Fox is going to re-create the world. Abominating the cops, crooks, junkies and scavengers of modern America, he abandons civilisation and takes the family to live in the Honduran jungle. There his tortured, messianic genius keeps them alive, his hoarse tirades harrying them through a diseased and dirty Eden towards unimaginable darkness.'Stunning. . . exciting, intelligent, meticulously realised, artful' Victoria Glendinning, Sunday Times'An epic of paranoid obsession that swirls the reader headlong to deposit him on a black mudbank of horror' Christopher Wordsworth, Guardian'Magnificently stimulating and exciting' Anthony BurgessAmerican travel writer Paul Theroux is known for the rich descriptions of people and places that is often streaked with his distinctive sense of irony; his novels and collected short stories, My Other Life, The Collected Stories, My Secret History, The Lower River, The Stranger at the Palazzo d'Oro, A Dead Hand, Millroy the Magician, The Elephanta Suite, Saint Jack, The Consul's File, The Family Arsenal, and his works of non-fiction, including the iconic The Great Railway Bazaar are available from Penguin.
My Other Life: A Novel
by Paul TherouxThe fictional narrator of these memoirs, a man of many different guises, has reconstructed his past, giving it wit and life, tragedy and pathos, and imposed an order on it through careful editing. Life, it seems, has no apparent plot and so it can seem messier than fiction; sometimes it seems as if our hero is leading many different, separate lives . . .'A memoir; a collection of short stories; an assemblage of fables; an anthology of Theroux: a book in which he is everywhere present, as himself and as someone other . . . Endlessly inventive, beguiling, provocative and insidiously readable' Sunday Telegraph
My Secret History: A Novel
by Paul Theroux'Nothing on the shelf has quite prepared the reader for My Secret History . . . Parent saunters into the book aged fifteen, shouldering a .22 Mossberg rifle as earlier, more innocent American heroes used to tote a fishing pole. In his pocket is a paperback translation of Dante's Inferno . . . He is a creature of naked and unquenchable ego, greedy for sex, money, experience, another life' Jonathan Raban, Observer
Knitting: A Novel
by Anne BartlettWhen Sandra is widowed tragically early in her early 40s, with no children to distract her, and a career as a college lecturer only keeping her mildly busy, she feels she needs a new direction in her life. This comes in the unlikely shape of Martha, a woman she meets completely randomly when they both stop to help in a medical emergency in a shopping mall. Martha has also experienced grief, but appears to have worked it through. She is also a keen, talented, but almost obsessive knitter, who lives and breathes her skill. Sandra is fascinated by her work, and eager to develop other strands to her career, decides to organise an exhibition on the history of women’s clothing and textiles, asking Martha to help her by creating replicas of various items. What follows is not a conventional friendship, nor a conventional healing, but whatever it is, it changes Sandra’s life very much for the better…
Speaking with the Angel
by Nick HornbyA dozen of the most successful and popular writers today including: Helen Fielding, Robert Harris, Patrick Marber, Zadie Smith, John O'Farrell, Roddy Doyle, Melissa Bank and Irvine Welsh have written 6000-word fictional monologues along the lines of Alan Bennet's Talking Heads. And Colin Firth makes his début as a fiction writer. The result is a book of completely original stories that have heart, soul and wit. All the writers have given their work free, and Penguin is giving £1 per copy sold to the TreeHouse Trust, a charity which is setting up a unique school for autistic children
I Am Number Four: The Lost Files: Six's Legacy (I Am Number Four: The Lost Files #1)
by Pittacus LoreNumber Six - when John meets her in I Am Number Four she's strong, powerful, and ready to fight. But who is she? Where has she been living? How has she been training? When did she develop her legacies? And how does she know so much about the Mogadorians? In I Am Number Four: The Lost Files: Six's Legacy, discover the story behind Six. Before Paradise, Ohio, before John Smith, Six was traveling through West Texas with her Cêpan, Katarina. What happened there would change Six forever . . .
And Another Thing ...: Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. As heard on BBC Radio 4 (Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy Ser.)
by Eoin ColferDiscover the sixth book in the ludicrously inaccurately named Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy trilogy, as broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and featuring original cast members including Simon Jones, Geoff McGivern, Mark Wing-Davey and Sandra Dickinson.Arthur Dent led a perfectly ordinary, uneventful life until the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy hurled him deep into outer space. Now he's convinced a cruelly indifferent universe is out to get him. And who can blame him?His life is about to collide with a pantheon of unemployed gods, a lovestruck green alien, a very irritating computer and at least one very large slab of cheese. If, that is, everyone's favourite renegade Galactic President can get him off planet Earth before it is destroyed . . . again.'A triumph, fabulous. Colfer has given us a delight' Observer'I haven't read anything in a long time that made me laugh as much' The Times'Chock-full of fanciful, inventive one-liners and asides, brimming with a burning sense of the ridiculousness of life' Independent on Sunday'The best post-mortem impersonation I have ever read' Mark Lawson, Guardian