Penguin Group

Martyrs to hypochondria and general seediness, J and his friends George and Harris decide that a jaunt up the Thames would suit them to a 'T'. But when they set off, they can hardly predict the troubles that lie ahead with tow-ropes, unreliable weather-forecasts and tins of pineapple chunks.

The bestselling author of Practical Magic and Turtle Moon now tells her most seductive and mesmerizing story. After nineteen years in California, March Murray returns to the small Massachusetts town where she grew up. For all this time, March has been avoiding her own troubled history, but when she encounters Hollis — the boy she loved so desperately, the man who has never forgotten her — the past collides with the present as their reckless love is reignited. This dark, romantic tale asks whether it is possible to survive a love that consumes you. The answers that March Murray discovers are both heartbreaking and wise, as complex as they are devastating — for in heaven and in our dreams, love is simple and glorious. But it is something altogether different here on earth...

Futuristic cop Eve Dallas is back on the job. This time it's Christmas in New York, and all the lonely hearts are easy pickings for a serial killer spreading death through a dating service.

The halls are decked, the tree is trimmed, and one young boy is wide awake and watching for a special late-night visitor. But waiting isn't easy — especially when every little noise sounds like Santa! Includes 24 flash cards. Full color.

The field of language is one which abounds with folk myths, misconceptions about the way in which language works or is used. This book tackles these folk beliefs head on in a series of entertaining and informative chapters in which a variety of linguists look at and correct a catalogue of errors, such as: aborigines speak a primitive language; French people speak faster; German is ugly; Italian is beautiful; English spelling is stupid; and so on.

The greatest works of comedy from the Bard, this book features «The Taming of the Shrew, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Twelfth Night» and «The Tempest».

The greatest works of tragedy from the Bard, this book features «Hamlet, Othello, King Lear» and «Macbeth».

Since its publication twenty years ago, J. M. Roberts's monumental History of the World has remained the unrivaled World History of our day (A.J.P. Taylor), selling more than a quarter of a million copies worldwide. Now in an equally masterful performance, Roberts displays his consummate skills of exposition in telling the tale of the European continent, from its Neolithic origins and early civilizations of the Aegean to the advent of the twenty-first century. A sweeping and entertaining history, The Penguin History of Europe comprehensively traces the development of European identity over the course of thousands of years, ranging across empires and religions, economics, science, and the arts. Roberts's astute and lucid analyses of the disparate spheres of learning that have shaped European civilization and our understanding of it make The Penguin History of Europe a remarkable journey through the last two centuries.

Draw me a star. And the artist drew a star. It was a good star. Draw me a sun, said the star. And the artist drew a sun. And on the artist draws, bringing the world to life picture by beautiful picture until he is spirited across the night sky by a star that shines on all he has made. In Draw Me a Star, Eric Carle celebrates the imagination in all of us with a beguiling story about a young artist who creates a world of light and possibility. A remarkable, quintessentially simple book encompassing Creation, creativity, and the cycle of life within the eternal.

Rosie Parker is no more than a child when her mother dies during the war. Left to the less-than-tender mercies of her father Cole and her brutish step-brothers Seth and Norman, she sees the arrival of housekeeper Heather Farley as a possible replacement mother and her salvation. But when Thomas Farley comes looking for his sister several years later, he discovers Heather has left the Parkers in mysterious circumstances, abandoning her small son. As the terrible truth about Heather's disappearance comes to light, Rosie is compelled to leave the farm and make her own way in the world. And if that means being exposed as the daughter of a murderer, that's a risk she'll have to take ... Rosie is the compelling story of how love and tenderness can grow, like wild roses, out of the most barren ground.

Hailed as the first great play to lay bare the emptiness of America's relentless drive for material success, Death of a Salesman is Miller's classic portrait of an ordinary man's struggle to leave his mark on the world.

This all-new Signet Classic contains many of T.S. Eliot's most important early peoms, leading to perhaps his greatest masterpiece, «The Waste land», which has long been regarded as one of the fundamental texts of modernism. By combining poetic elements from many diverse sources with bits of popular culture and common speech linked in a fragmented narrative, Eliot recreated the chaos and disillusionment of Europe in the aftermath of WWI. — «The Wast Land» is a modernist literary masterpiece. — Contains a number of early poems, including Spleen, The Death of St. Narcissus, The Love Song of J. Prufrock, Preludes, Gerontion, The Hippopotmaus, and Sweeny Among the Nightingales. — T.S Eliot is the winner of the 1948 Nobel Prize for Literature, and is one of America's greatest poets. — Edited and with an Introduction by Helen Vendler, a foremost scholar of moderism at Harvard University who writes regularly for the «New Yorker» and «The New Republic». — Vendler is also the author of books on other essential poets, including W.B. Yeats, Wallace Stevens, John Keats, George Herbert, and the forthcoming The Art of Shakespeare's Sonnete.

A story of love, war, loyalty and betrayal, «Excalibur» begins with the failure of Lancelot's rebellion and the ruin of Arthur's marriage to Guinevere. The Saxons, sensing the disunity of the Britons, seize the chance to destroy Arthur. The climax of the war comes with the legendary triumph at Mount Badon, and Arthur's great victory. But the promises he made then come back to haunt him after the years of peace and glory.

The classic novel of spellbinding suspense only the mind of Ira Levin could have imagined. She is a housewife — young, healthy, blissfully happy. He is an actor — charismatic and ambitious. The spacious, sun-filled apartment on Manhattan's Upper West Side is their dream home — a dream that turns into an unspeakable nightmare...new neighbors...and where evil wears the most innocent face of all...

This groundbreaking study was the first authoritative account of the Russian Front in the First World War to be published in the West and is now reissued with a new introduction. The battles fought on the Eastern Front were decisive to the course of the war. As well as reconstructing these events, Norman Stone explores the factors that influenced their outcome and draws some unexpected conclusions. Dispelling the popular myth of an economically crippled Russia he argues that the country was, in fact, going through a period of unprecedented economic growth. Tsarist Russia's weakness lay in its outdated administration which resulted in war shortages and an inefficient Army. In a fascinating reinterpretation of the connection between the war and the revolution that followed, he shows that although military events had almost ceased by the end of 1916, Russia was still in turmoil, undergoing a period of modernization which opened the way towards revolution.

Meet Holly Golightly — a true original, a free-spirited, lop-sided romantic who owns a fiery red cat as wild and restless as she is. With her tousled blond hair and upturned nose, dark glasses and chic black dresses, she is top notch in the style department and a sensation wherever she goes. Her brownstone apartment vibrates with martini-soaked parties as she plays hostess to millionaires and gangsters alike. Yet Holly never loses sight of her ultimate goal — to find a real life place like Tiffany's that makes her feel at home.

A classic of its kind, a dazzling parody of the earthy, melodramatic novels of the period. Flora Poste has been expensively educated to do everything but earn her own living. When she is orphaned at twenty, she decides her only option is to go and live with her relatives the Starkadders at «Cold Comfort Farm». What relatives, though: Judith, alone in her grief; raving old Ada Doom, who once saw something nasty in the woodshed; Amos, called by God; Seth, smouldering with sex; and Elfine, who just needs a little polish. Flora feels it incumbent upon her to bring order into the chaos. And she turns out to be remarkably good at it.

Jean Rhys's late, literary masterpiece «Wide Sargasso Sea» was inspired by Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre, and is set in the lush, beguiling landscape of Jamaica in the 1830s. Born into an oppressive, colonialist society, Creole heiress Antoinette Cosway meets a young Englishman who is drawn to her innocent sensuality and beauty. After their marriage the rumours begin, poisoning her husband against her. Caught between his demands and her own precarious sense of belonging, Antoinette is driven towards madness.

What did happen to Miss Quested in the Marabar Caves? This tantalizing question provides the intense drama at the centre of Forster's last and greatest novel, of racial tension in colonial India. After a mysterious incident during their visit to the Marabar Caves, the charming Dr Aziz is accused of assaulting Adela Quested, a naïve young Englishwoman. As he is brought to trial the fragile structure of Anglo-Indian relations collapses and the racism inherent in colonialism is exposed — a theme which still has powerful, dangerous realities today. Yet the novel is also, in Forster's words, 'about something wider than politics ... about the universe as embodied in the Indian earth and the Indian sky'.

The French Riviera: home to the Beautiful People. And none are more beautiful than Cécile, a precocious seventeen-year-old, and her father Raymond, a vivacious libertine. Charming, decadent and irresponsible, the golden-skinned duo are dedicated to a life of free love, fast cars and hedonistic pleasures. But then one long, hot summer Raymond decides to marry, and Cécile and her lover Cyril feel compelled to take a hand in his amours, with tragic consequences. «Bonjour Tristesse» scandalized 1950s France with its portrayal of teenager terrible Cécile, a heroine who rejects conventional notions of love, marriage and responsibility to choose her own sexual freedom.

»You can't trust anyone who sleeps with monsters». That's what Anita Blake had always believed. But now she was sharing a bed with the Master Vampire of the city. So when an arsonist began to target vampire victims, the creatures of the night turned to their former enemy. For now only «The Executioner» could save them from the inferno...

The second book in a trilogy telling the story of Arthur. After one last battle, Arthur will rule a peaceful land. But, unlike Merlin, Arthur has forgotten the Gods, who thrive on chaos. Arthur's plans are thrown into turmoil, as the search for the 13 sacred objects to restore the Gods begins.

The story of Humbert Humbert, poet and pervert, and his obsession with 12-year-old Dolores Haze. Determined to possess his Lolita both carnally and artistically, Humbert embarks on a disastrous courtship that can only end in tragedy.

Chromosome 6 is a prophetic thriller that challenges the medical ethics of genetic manipulation and cloning in the jungles of equatorial Africa, where one mistake could bridge the gap between man and ape — and forever change the genetic map of our existence...