Penguin Group

Shabby and lumbering, with a face like a Norfolk dumpling, Father Brown makes for an improbable super-sleuth. But his innocence is the secret of his success: refusing the scientific method of detection, he adopts instead an approach of simple sympathy, interpreting each crime as a work of art, and each criminal as a man no worse than himself. This complete edition brings together all of the Father Brown stories, including two not previously available in Penguin: The Donnington Affair, in which Chesterton rises to the challenge of solving a murder-mystery half written by someone else (Max Pemberton), and The Mask of Midas, which was found in Chesterton's papers after his death.

»New York Times» bestselling author Linda Fairstein is at her explosive best as she plunges into the byzantine world of New York City's most powerful and sacred institutions — and unearths the most sinister of secrets... Prosecutor Alexandra Cooper has been called to a Harlem Baptist Church, where a woman has been decapitated and set on fire on the church steps — with the imprint of a Star of David necklace seared into her flesh. Then a second body is found at a cathedral in Little Italy. Alex is blind to the sick and inconceivable motives feeding a particularly vicious serial killer — until she mines the depths of the city's vast and serpentine religious history. What Alex follows is a dangerous path that takes her far beyond the scope of her investigation, and directly into the path of a frightening and inescapable truth.

A universal favorite, «The Importance of Being Earnest» displays Oscar Wilde's theatrical genius at its brilliant best. Subtitled «A Trivial Comedy for Serious People», this hilarious attack on Victorian manners and morals turns a pompous world on its head, lets duplicity lead to happiness, and makes riposte the highest form of art. Also included in this special collection are Wilde's first comedy success, «Lady Windermere's Fan», and his richly sensual melodrama, «Salome.»

A «Library Journal» Best Book of the Year What would you do with a second chance at life? Having survived a life-threatening illness, Kate celebrates by gathering with six close friends. At an intimate outdoor dinner on a warm September evening, the women challenge Kate to start her new lease on life by going white-water rafting down the Grand Canyon with her daughter. But Kate is reluctant to take the risk. That is, until her friend Marion proposes a pact: if Kate will face the rapids, each woman will do one thing in the next year that scares her. Kate agrees, with one provision — she didn't get to choose her challenge, so she gets to choose theirs. Whether it's learning to let go of the past or getting a tattoo, each woman's story interweaves with the others, forming a seamless portrait of the power of female friendships. From the author of The School of Essential Ingredients comes a beautifully crafted novel about daring to experience true joy, starting one small step at a time.

A «New York Times» bestselling tale of passion and belief, magic and adventure from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author Bethia Mayfield is a restless and curious young woman growing up in Martha's vineyard in the 1660s amid a small band of pioneering English Puritans. At age twelve, she meets Caleb, the young son of a chieftain, and the two forge a secret bond that draws each into the alien world of the other. Bethia's father is a Calvinist minister who seeks to convert the native Wampanoag, and Caleb becomes a prize in the contest between old ways and new, eventually becoming the first Native American graduate of Harvard College. Inspired by a true story and narrated by the irresistible Bethia, «Caleb's Crossing» brilliantly captures the triumphs and turmoil of two brave, openhearted spirits who risk everything in a search for knowledge at a time of superstition and ignorance.

From «New York Times» bestselling author Luanne Rice, a moving family story that «will strike a chord in every mother, daughter, or sister» («Marie Claire») In «The Silver Boat,» «New York Times» bestselling author Luanne Rice has written a heart-wrenching yet heartwarming portrait of a family in all its flawed complexity. The McCarthy sisters have come to Martha's Vineyard to say good-bye to their family's beach house — the place they were happiest together. Each has her own complicated issues and is struggling with the difficult process of letting go, but when a cache of old letters spurs them to visit Ireland, each woman comes to see herself in a new light. True-to-life sisters, the beach, laughter, and passionate love — «The Silver Boat» is Luanne Rice at her very best.

Wedding florist Emma Grant gets to play with flowers every day and work with her three best friends in the process. She couldn’t ask for a better job. And her love life seems to be thriving. Though men swarm around her, she still hasn’t found Mr. Right. And the last place she’s looking is right under her nose.

From #1 «New York Times» — bestselling author Roberts comes the first book in a new series: a novel of love, friendship, and family — and the unpredictable moments that turn a pretty picture into a true work of art.

Claire Tomalin brings her extraordinary gifts of scholarship, fluent writing and empathy for her subjects to bear on one of our greatest, and most elusive, novelists. Widely acclaimed as the finest of Austen biographies, the book offers us a brave, sharp-tongued character who fairly bounces off the page. (Val Hennesy). And along the way it gives us an authoratative, graceful,succinct account of a wide swathe of English society which brilliantly illuminates' the novelist. (Victoria Glendinning).

Pursuing art and adventure across Europe, Katherine Mansfield lived and wrote with the Furies at her heels. Dying at the age of only 34, she became posthumously one of the most influential writers of the last century. Sexually ambiguous, craving love yet quarrelsome and capricious, she glittered in the brilliant circles of DH Lawrence and Virginia Woolf, her beauty and recklessness inspiring admiration, jealousy, rage and devotion. Claire Tomalin's biography brings her nearer than we have ever been to this haunted and haunting writer.

'I am jealous of everything whose beauty does not die. I am jealous of the portrait you have painted of me... Why did you paint it? It will mock me some day — mock me horribly!' Enthralled by his own exquisite portrait, Dorian Gray exchanges his soul for eternal youth and beauty. Influenced by his friend Lord Henry Wotton, he is drawn into a corrupt double life, indulging his desires in secret while remaining a gentleman in the eyes of polite society. Only his portrait bears the traces of his decadence.

With his lightning-quick wit, unbridled creativity and his ear for the absurd, Milligan revolutionised British comedy, leaving a legacy of influence that stretches from Monty Python's Flying Circus to the work of self-confessed acolytes such as Eddie Izzard and Stephen Fry today. Throughout his life, Milligan wrote prolifically — scripts, poetry, fiction, as well as several volumes of memoir, in which he took an entirely idiosyncratic approach to the truth. In this ground-breaking work, Norma Farnes, his long-time manager, companion, counsellor and confidante, gathers together the loose threads, reads between the lines and draws on the full breadth of his writing to present his life in his own words: an autobiography — of sorts. From his childhood in India, through his early career as a jazz musician and sketch-show entertainer, his spells in North Africa and Italy with the Royal Artillery, to that fateful first broadcast of The Goon Show and beyond into the annals of comedy history, this is the autobiography Milligan never wrote.

It's Sunday, July 18th. My father announced at breakfast that he is going to have a vasectomy. I pushed my sausages away untouched. In this second instalment of teenager Adrian Mole's diaries, the Mole family is in crisis and the country is beating the drum of war. While his parents have reconciled after both embarked on disastrous affairs, Adrian is shocked to learn of his mother's pregnancy. And even though at the mercy of his rampant hormones and the fickle whims of the divine Pandora, a victim of a broken home and his own tortured (though unrecognised) genius, Adrian continues valiantly to chronicle the pains and pleasures of a misspent adolescence.

Mick Little used to be a shipbuilder on Glasgow yards. But as they closed one after another down the river, search for work took him and his beloved wife Cathy to Australia, and back again, struggling for a living, longing for home. Thirty years later the yards are nearly gone and Cathy is dead. And now Mick will have to find a new way to live.

This book takes a dramatically original approach to the history of humanity, using objects which previous civilisations have left behind them, often accidentally, as prisms through which we can explore past worlds and the lives of the men and women who lived in them. The book's range is enormous. It begins with one of the earliest surviving objects made by human hands, a chopping tool from the Olduvai gorge in Africa, and ends with an object from the 21st century which represents the world we live in today. Neil MacGregor's aim is not simply to describe these remarkable things, but to show us their significance — how a stone pillar tells us about a great Indian emperor preaching tolerance to his people, how Spanish pieces of eight tell us about the beginning of a global currency or how an early Victorian tea-set tells us about the impact of empire. Each chapter immerses the reader in a past civilisation accompanied by an exceptionally well-informed guide. Seen through this lens, history is a kaleidoscope — shifting, interconnected, constantly surprising, and shaping our world today in ways that most of us have never imagined. An intellectual and visual feast, it is one of the most engrossing and unusual history books published in years.

A girl can get into all kinds of trouble just by going back to work... Henrietta Tate gave up everything for her husband Marcus and their kids. But now that the children are away at school and she's rattling round their large country house all day she's feeling more than a little lost. So when a friend puts her in touch with Laurie, a historian in need of a PA, Henrietta heads for London. Quickly, she throws herself into the job. Marcus is — of course — jealous of her spending so much time with her charming new boss. And soon enough her absence causes cracks to form in their marriage that just can't be papered over. Then Rupert, a very old flame, reappears, and Henrietta suddenly finds herself torn between three men. How did this happen? She's not that kind of girl... is she?

By the waters running through the valleys of Kashmir, teenage boys come to play cricket, talk about girls, and just be. But a few years later, when they are young men and violence grips the region, they are gone. Only the son of the local headman has stayed. He knows his friends have slipped over the border to Pakistan, and turned militant to bear arms against the Indian army. He would like to join them — but he cannot. Instead, put in an impossible position by an Indian army Captain, he must cross into the shadowland between the opposing sides, a ghost walking among the dead. His fate, like that of his lost brothers, unknown...

Holly Golightly is a free spirited, lop-sided romantic girl about town. Her apartment rocks to Martini-soaked parties and she plays hostess to millionaires and gangsters alike. Yet Holly never loses sight of her ultimate dream — to find a real life place like Tiffany's that makes her feel at home.

When Andi married Ethan she not only got the man she loved but also the chance to be a mother, to his daughters Emily and Sophia. Unable to have a child of her own, Andi saw this opportunity at motherhood as a precious gift. If only it were that simple. For this is not a happy family, and the trouble lies with Emily. Her conflicted feelings towards her stepmother leave Andi feeling hated in her own home despite years of trying to reach out to her stepdaughter. And with each new drama, Emily drives Andi and Ethan further apart. Just as Andi starts to contemplate a life without Ethan and the girls, Emily comes home with some shocking news. News that will change their lives forever. In 1996 Jane Green revolutionized women's literature with Straight Talking and its free-spirited heroine Tasha. Fifteen years later, Jane a 2.5 million bestselling author, now a mother of four, married twice and dealing with all the things a woman in her forties faces on a daily basis, is releasing her best ever coming of age tale that will satisfy her most demanding fans.

On the outbreak of war, Belle Reilly's husband Jimmy enlists and heads for the deadly trenches of northern France. Volunteering to help battlefield wounded, Belle is posted to France as a Red Cross ambulance driver. There, a tragic accident brings her face to face with Etienne — a man from her past she's never quite forgotten.

The influence of the British Empire is everywhere, from the very existence of the United Kingdom to the ethnic composition of our cities. This title describes the selection process for colonial officers, the importance of sport, the sweating domestic life of the colonial officer's wife and the crazed end for General Gordon of Khartoum.

In almost every major war there comes a point where defeat looms for one side and its rulers cut a deal with the victors, if only in an attempt to save their own skins. In Hitler's Germany, nothing of this kind happened: in the end the regime had to be stamped out town by town with an almost unprecedented level of brutality. Just what made Germany keep on fighting? Kershaw's gripping, revelatory book recounts these final months, from the failed attempt to assassinate Hitler in July 1944 to the German surrender in May 1945.

Fiver could sense danger. Something terrible was going to happen to the warren — he felt sure of it. So did his brother Hazel, for Fiver's sixth sense was never wrong. They had to leave immediately, and they had to persuade the other rabbits to join them. And so begins a long and perilous journey of a small band of rabbits in search of a safe home. Fiver's vision finally leads them to Watership Down, but here they face their most difficult challenge of all... Watership Down is an epic journey, a stirring tale of adventure, courage and survival against the odds. First published in 1972, this paperback reissue with a stunning new cover celebrates its 40th anniversary.

Famed for his illustrations of such classics as Rime of the Ancient Mariner and The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, Willy Pogany created striking drawings for Alice's Adventures in Wonderland in 1929. This splendid edition features numerous black-and-white images that offer a fresh accompaniment in the classic 20th-century style to a treasured tale.