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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
The Colour of Milk
by Nell LeyshonThe Colour of Milk is the new novel by Orange longlisted author and playwright Nell Leyshon.'this is my book and i am writing it by my own hand'The year is eighteen hundred and thirty one when fifteen-year-old Mary begins the difficult task of telling her story. A scrap of a thing with a sharp tongue and hair the colour of milk, Mary leads a harsh life working on her father's farm alongside her three sisters. In the summer she is sent to work for the local vicar's invalid wife, where the reasons why she must record the truth of what happens to her - and the need to record it so urgently - are gradually revealed.'Haunting, distinctive voices... Mary's spare simple words paint brilliant pictures in the reader's mind . . . Nell Leyshon's imaginative powers are considerable' Independent'Brontë-esque undertones . . . a disturbing statement on the social constraints faced by 19th-century women' FT'A small tour de force - a wonderfully convincing voice, and a devastating story told with great skill and economy' Penelope Lively'I loved it. The Colour of Milk is charming, Brontë-esque, compelling, special and hard to forget. I loved Mary's voice - so inspiring and likeable. Such a hopeful book' Marian Keyes'Brilliant, devastating and unforgettable' Easy LivingNell Leyshon's first novel, Black Dirt, was longlisted for the Orange Prize, and shortlisted for the Commonwealth prize. Her plays include Comfort me with Apples, which won an Evening Standard Award, and Bedlam, which was the first play written by a woman for Shakespeare's Globe. She writes for BBC Radio 3 and 4, and won the Richard Imison Award for her first radio play. Nell was born in Glastonbury and lives in Dorset.
Artful
by Ali SmithOriginally four lectures given at Oxford University, Ali Smith's Artful is a tidal wave of ideas.Refusing to be tied down to either fiction or the essay form, Artful is narrated by a character who is haunted - literally - by a former lover, the writer of a series of lectures about art and literature. Full of both the poignancy and humour of fiction and all the sideways insights and jaunty angles you would expect from Ali Smith's criticism, it explores form, style, life, love, death, mortality, immortality and what art and writing can mean.Shortlisted for the Man Booker prize and the Orange prize, and winner of the Encore Award and the Arts Council Scottish Book Award, Ali Smith is one of our most interesting writers at work today. Artful shows her at her most innovative, warm and generous best.Praise for Artful:'Artful is a revelation; a new kind of book altogether . . . it could have only been written by Ali Smith. It will open doors for writers; a kind of Room of One's Own for today's readers. Only Smith won't stay in one room. An intimate study of grief; Artful makes you glad to be alive' Jackie Kay 'Smart, allusive, informal, playful, audacious' Independent'Ali Smith's latest book once again finds her testing the boundaries of genre . . . powerful and moving' London Review of Books 'Artful transports the reader to this magical terrain . . . with its blending of criticism and fiction, Artful belongs in a genre of its own . . . a joyful and optimistic paean to the healing powers of art. It will be entertaining reading for anyone interested in the art of writing, and also of living, well' Anita Sethi, New Statesman 'A brilliant and moving book and as delightfully dodgy as the character from Oliver Twist whom the title evokes' Claire Harman, Evening Standard Books of the YearPraise for Ali Smith:'Smith can make anything happen, which is why she is one of our most exciting writers today' Daily Telegraph'She's a genius, genuinely modern in the heroic, glorious sense' Alain de Botton'A true and valuable British original' Nick Hornby'Smith's love of language lights up all her books . . . she's someone to relish' The New York Times Book ReviewAli Smith was born in Inverness in 1962 and lives in Cambridge. She is the author of There but for the, Free Love, Like, Hotel World, Other Stories and Other Stories, The Whole Story and Other Stories, The Accidental, Girl Meets Boy and The First Person and Other Stories.
The Hound of the Baskervilles: Third Of The Four Sherlock Holmes Novels (A\sherlock Holmes Graphic Novel Ser.)
by Arthur Conan Doyle'Mr. Holmes, they were the footprints of a gigantic hound!'The death, quite suddenly, of Sir Charles Baskerville in mysterious circumstances is the trigger for one of the most extraordinary cases ever to challenge the brilliant analytical mind of Sherlock Holmes. As rumours of a legendary hound said to haunt the Baskerville family circulate, Holmes and Watson are asked to ensure the protection of Sir Charles' only heir, Sir Henry - who has travelled all the way from America to reside at Baskerville Hall in Devon. And it is there, in an isolated mansion surrounded by mile after mile of wild moor, that Holmes and Watson come face to face with a terrifying evil that reaches out from centuries past . . .
The Sign of Four: Second Of The Four Sherlock Holmes Novels (Mobi Classics Series)
by Arthur Conan Doyle'You are a wronged woman and shall have justice. Do not bring police. If you do, all will be in vain. Your unknown friend.'When a beautiful young woman is sent a letter inviting her to a sinister assignation, she immediately seeks the advice of the consulting detective Sherlock Holmes. For this is not the first mysterious item Mary Marston has received in the post. Every year for the last six years an anonymous benefactor has sent her a large lustrous pearl. Now it appears the sender of the pearls would like to meet her to right a wrong. But when Sherlock Holmes and his faithful sidekick Watson, aiding Miss Marston, attend the assignation, they embark on a dark and mysterious adventure involving a one-legged ruffian, some hidden treasure, deadly poison darts and a thrilling race along the River Thames.
The Valley of Fear: A Sherlock Holmes Novel - Primary Source Edition (The Penguin English Library)
by Arthur Conan Doyle'There should be no combination of events for which the wit of man cannot conceive an explanation.'In this tale drawn from the note books of Dr Watson, the deadly hand of Professor Moriarty once more reaches out to commit a vile and ingenious crime. However, a mole in Moriarty's frightening criminal organization alerts Sherlock Holmes of the evil deed by means of a cipher. When Holmes and Watson arrive at a Sussex manor house they appear to be too late. The discovery of a body suggests that Moriarty's henchmen have been at their work. But there is much more to this tale of murder than at first meets the eye and Sherlock Holmes is determined to get to the bottom of it.
A Study in Scarlet: A Sherlock Holmes Adventure (A\sherlock Holmes Mystery Ser. #1)
by Arthur Conan Doyle'There's a scarlet thread of murder running through the colourless skein of life, and our duty is to unravel it, and isolate it, and expose every inch of it.'From the moment Dr John Watson takes lodgings in Baker Street with the consulting detective Sherlock Holmes, he becomes intimately acquainted with the bloody violence and frightening ingenuity of the criminal mind. In A Study in Scarlet , Holmes and Watson's first mystery, the pair are summoned to a south London house where they find a dead man whose contorted face is a twisted mask of horror. The body is unmarked by violence but on the wall a mysterious word has been written in blood. The police are baffled by the crime and its circumstances. But when Sherlock Holmes applies his brilliantly logical mind to the problem he uncovers a tragic tale of love and deadly revenge . . .
The Penguin Book of American Verse
by Geoffrey MooreA classic anthology of American poetry, from the colonial beginnings in the seventeenth century right through to the twentieth century. From Anne Bradstreet to Ralph Waldo Emerson, from William Carlos Williams to Walt Whitman, from Emily Dickenson to Ai, this collection ranges widely across the American poetic spectrum.
Ashenden
by Elizabeth WilhideSpring 2010, and when Charlie and Ros inherit Ashenden from their aunt Reggie a decision must be made. The beautiful eighteenth-century house, set in acres of English countryside, is in need of serious repair. Do they try to keep it in the family, or will they have to sell?Moving back in time, in an interwoven narrative spanning two and a half centuries, we witness the house from its beginnings through to the present day. Along the way we meet those who have built the house, lived in it and loved it; those who have worked in it, and those who would subvert it to their own ends, including Mrs Trimble, housekeeper to the rackety, spendthrift Mores; the wealthy Henderson family, in their Victorian heyday; six-year-old Pudge; Walter Beckmann, prisoner in its grounds; and Reggie and Hugo, agents of its postwar revival.Through good times and bad, the better we get to know the house, the more we care about its survival. A novel about people, architecture and living history, Ashenden is an evocative and allusive reflection on England and its past.
All My Sons: Drama Curriculum Unit (Penguin Modern Classics)
by Arthur MillerIn Joe and Kate Keller's family garden, an apple tree - a memorial to their son Larry, lost in the Second World War - has been torn down by a storm. But his loss is not the only part of the family's past they can't put behind them. Not everybody's forgotten the court case that put Joe's partner in jail, or the cracked engine heads his factory produced which caused it and dropped twenty-one pilots out of the sky ...
A View from the Bridge (Penguin Modern Classics)
by Arthur MillerEddie Carbone is a longshoreman and a straightforward man, with a strong sense of decency and of honour. For Eddie, it's a privilege to take in his wife's cousins, straight off the boat from Italy. But, as his niece begins to fall for one of them, it's clear that it's not just, as Eddie claims, that he's too strange, too sissy, too careless for her, but that something bigger, deeper is wrong, and wrong inside Eddie, in a way he can't face. Something which threatens the happiness of their whole family.
The Price: A Drama (Penguin Modern Classics)
by Arthur MillerVictor, a New York cop nearing retirement, moves among furniture in the disused attic of a house marked for demolition. Cabinets, desks, a damaged harp, an overstuffed armchair - the relics of a lost life of affluence he's finally come to sell. But when his brother Walter, who he hasn't spoken to in years, arrives, the talk stops being just about whether Victor's been offered a fair price for the furniture, and turns to the price that one and not the other of them paid when their father lost both his fortune and the will to go on ...
After the Fall: The Misfits; After The Fall; Incident At Vichy; The Price; Creation Of The World; Playing For Time (Penguin Modern Classics)
by Arthur MillerQuentin is a successful lawyer in New York, but inside his head he is struggling with his own sense of guilt and the shadows of his past relationships. One of these an ill-fated marriage to the charming and beautiful Maggie, who went from operating a switchboard to become a self-destructive star - a singer everyone wanted a piece of. After the Fall is often seen as the most explicitly autobiographical of Arthur Miller's plays, and Maggie as an unflinching portrait of Miller's ex-wife Marilyn Monroe, only two years after her suicide. But in its psychological acuity and depth, and its brilliant, dreamlike structure, it is a literary, and not just biographical, masterpiece.
Incident at Vichy: A Play (Penguin Modern Classics)
by Arthur MillerIn Vichy France, 1942, a group of men sit outside an office, waiting to be interviewed. The reason they have been pulled off the street and taken there is obvious enough. They are, for the most part, Jews. But how serious an offence this is, and how they are to suffer for it, is not clear, and they hope for the best. But as rumours pass between them of trains full of people locked from the outside and furnaces in Poland, and although they reassure themselves that nothing so monstrous could be true, their panic rises.