Penguin Group

In this latest novel from bestselling author John Verdon, ingenious puzzle solver Dave Gurney puts under the magnifying glass a notorious serial murder case – one whose motives have been enshrined as law-enforcement dogma — and discovers that everyone has it wrong. The most decorated homicide detective in NYPD history, Dave Gurney is still trying to adjust to his life of quasi-retirement in upstate New York when a young woman who is producing a documentary on a notorious murder spree seeks his counsel. Soon after, Gurney begins feeling threatened: a razor-sharp hunting arrow lands in his yard, and he narrowly escapes serious injury in a booby-trapped basement. As things grow more bizarre, he finds himself reexamining the case of The Good Shepherd, which ten years before involved a series of roadside shootings and a rage-against-the-rich manifesto. The killings ceased, and a cult of analysis grew up around the case with a consensus opinion that no one would dream of challenging — no one, that is, but Dave Gurney. Mocked even by some who’d been his supporters in previous investigations, Dave realizes that the killer is too clever to ever be found. The only gambit that may make sense is also the most dangerous – to make himself a target and get the killer to come to him. To survive, Gurney must rely on three allies: his beloved wife Madeleine, impressively intuitive and a beacon of light in the gathering darkness; his de-facto investigative “partner” Jack Hardwick, always ready to spit in authority’s face but wily when it counts; and his son Kyle, who has come back into Gurney’s life with surprising force, love and loyalty. Displaying all the hallmarks for which the Dave Gurney series is lauded — well-etched characters, deft black humor, and ingenious deduction that ends in a climactic showdown – Let the Devil Sleep is something more: a reminder of the power of self-belief in a world that contains too little of it.

Behind the doors of the most famous address in the country, all is not well.Edward Clare was voted into Number Ten after a landslide election victory. But a few years later and it is all going wrong. The love of the people is gone. The nation is turning against him.Panicking, Prime Minister Clare enlists the help of Jack Sprat, the policeman on the door of No 10, and sets out to discover what the country really thinks of him. In disguise, they venture into the great unknown: the mean streets of Great Britain.And for the first time in years, the Prime Minister experiences everything life in this country has to offer — an English cream tea, the kindness of strangers, waiting for trains that never come and treatment in a hospital — and at last he remembers some of things he once really cared about... 'Wickedly entertaining. There is a gem on nearly every page. Nothing escapes Townsend's withering pen. Satirical, witty, observant... a clever book'. Observer. A delight. Genuinely funny... compassion shines through the unashamedly ironic social commentary.' Guardian' Poignant, hilarious, heart-rending, devastating.' New Statesman' Hilarious. Sue Townsend's laughter is infectious. John Mortimer, Sunday Telegraph Books of the Year.

How can you resist? A romance to rival One Day or The Time Traveler's Wife, Tracey Garvis-Graves' On the Island is a love story with a twist that will appeal to fans of Louise Bagshawe or Tasmina Perry. When thirty-year-old English teacher Anna Emerson is offered a summer job tutoring T.J. Callahan at his family's holiday home in the Maldives, she accepts without hesitation: a tropical island trumps the library any day. T.J. has no desire to leave town, not that anyone asked him. He's almost seventeen and if having had cancer wasn't bad enough, he now has to spend his first summer in remission with his family — and a stack of overdue essays — instead of his friends. Anna and T.J. are en route to join T.J.'s family in the Maldives when the pilot of their seaplane suffers a fatal heart attack and crash-lands in the Indian Ocean. Adrift in shark-infested waters, their life jackets keep them afloat until they make it to the shore of an uninhabited island. There, Anna and T.J. must work together to obtain water, food, fire, and shelter, but even once their basic needs are met, they encounter plenty of other obstacles — including the possibility, as the days turn to weeks and then months, that T. J.'s cancer could return. And, as T.J. celebrates yet another birthday on the island, Anna begins to wonder if the biggest challenge of all might be living with a boy who is gradually becoming a man...A story of love and survival, On The Island reached the top ten in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Amazon.com bestseller lists, and USA Today's top 15. Film rights have been optioned by MGM, with Temple Hill Productions (responsible for Twilight) slated to produce. Tracey Garvis-Graves lives in a suburb of Des Moines, Iowa, with her husband, two children, and dog Chloe. This is her first novel.

Jojo Harvey is a dead ringer for Jessica Rabbit and the most ferocious literary agent in town. A former NYPD cop, she now lives in London making million-dollar book deals while trying to make partner at her firm... all the while sleeping with the boss man. Lily Wright is an author who believes in karma, and is waiting for the sky to fall after stealing her former best friend's man. Though her first book failed to sell, her life turns upside down when her most recent book becomes a huge bestseller. Gemma Hogan is an event designer extraordinaire, but her personal life is nonexistent after losing the love of her life and her best friend in one fell swoop. To make matters worse, her father has just left her mother. While taking care of her mother, she e-mails a close colleague about her frustrations, who in turn forwards the hilarious e-mails to a famous literary agent named Jojo Harvey, who just happens to represent her former friend, now enemy, Lily Wright. Written in the charming and chatty voice that has become Marian Keyes's signature style, this hilarious and heartwarming novel proves there are three sides to every story... especially in the world of publishing!

Enter the world of Susan Lilian Townsend — sun — worshippers, work-shy writers, garden centre lovers and those in search of a good time are all welcome... This sparkling collection of Sue Townsend's hilarious non-fiction covers everything from hosepipe bans to Spanish restaurants, from writer's block to slug warfare, from slob holidays to the banning of beige. These funny, perceptive and touching pieces reveal Sue, ourselves and the nation in an extraordinary new light. Sit back and chortle away as one of Britain's most popular and acclaimed writers takes a feather to your funny bone.

What if being Royal was a crime? The UK has come over all republican. The Royal Family exiled to an Exclusion Zone with the other villains and spongers. And to cap it all, the Queen has threatened to abdicate.Yet Prince Charles is more interested in root vegetables than reigning... unless his wife Camilla can be Queen in a newly restored monarchy. But when a scoundrel who claims to be the couple's secret lovechild offers to take the crown off their hands, the stage is set for a right Royal showdown.And the question for Camilla (and rest of the country) will be: Queen of the vegetable patch or Queen of England?'Wickedly satirical, mad, ferociously farcical, subversive. Great stuff. Daily Mail 'Brilliantly satirical. Evening Standard One of our finest living comic writers. The Times'Brilliantly funny. Closer'Another fantastic read from Townsend. OK!

Elizabeth II has lived through the Abdication, the Blitz and World War Two, the sex and spy scandals of the swinging sixties, the Cold War and the nuclear threat and the Fall of the Berlin Wall. She has known 11 US Presidents including JFK and Ronald Reagan, and other world leaders like President Mandela and Pope John XXII. Her Prime Ministers have ranged from Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher to David Cameron, the last only ten years older than her grandson. Her own family experiences, a mixture of happiness and crisis, weddings and divorces, and, in the case of Diana, violent death, have been lived in the glare of tabloid headlines. More than 2 billion people watched the wedding of her grandson Prince William to Catherine Middleton in 2010 shortly before she made the first State Visit to Ireland by a British monarch for 100 years. Our world has changed more in her lifetime than in any of her predecessors': the Queen has remained a calm presence at the centre, earning the respect of monarchists and republicans. How has she done it?

One of Keyes' bestsellers, featuring the single career young women living in Dublin.

The New York Times Bestseller, acclaimed by author such as Freakonomics co-author Steven D. Levitt, Black Swan author Nassim Nicholas Taleb and Nudge co-author Richard Thaler, Thinking Fast and Slow offers a whole new look at the way our minds work, and how we make decisions. Why is there more chance we'll believe something if it's in a bold type face? Why are judges more likely to deny parole before lunch? Why do we assume a good-looking person will be more competent? The answer lies in the two ways we make choices: fast, intuitive thinking, and slow, rational thinking. This book reveals how our minds are tripped up by error and prejudice (even when we think we are being logical), and gives you practical techniques for slower, smarter thinking. It will enable to you make better decisions at work, at home, and in everything you do.

'When you have a large collection of animals to transport from one end of the world to the other you cannot, as a lot of people seem to think, just hoist them aboard the nearest ship and set off with a gay wave of your hand'. Gerald Durrell and his wife are the proud owners of a small zoo on the island of Jersey. But there's one thing that's better than a small zoo — a bigger one! So Durrell heads off to South America to collect more animals. Along windswept Patagonian shores and in Argentine tropical forests, he encounters a range of animals from penguins to elephant seals. But as always, he is drawn to those rare and interesting creatures which he hopes will thrive and breed in captivity... Told with enthusiasm and without sentimentality, Gerald Durrell's The Whispering Land is an often hilarious but always inspiring foray into the South American wilds.

Adrian Mole is thirty-nine and a quarter. He lives in the country in a semi-detached converted pigsty with his wife Daisy and their daughter. His parents George and Pauline live in the adjoining pigsty. But all is not well. The secondhand bookshop in which Adrian works is threatened with closure. The spark has fizzled out of his marriage. His mother is threatening to write her autobiography (A Girl Called Shit). And Adrian's nightly trips to the lavatory have become alarmingly frequent. As his troubles multiply, a drunken call to old flame Dr Pandora Braithwaite (BA, MA, PhD, MP and Junior Minister) awakens memories of what might have been and causes Adrian to wonder: is Pandora the only one who can possibly save him?

Sal Paradise, a young innocent, joins the slightly crazed Dean Moriarty on a breathless, exuberant ride back and forth across the United States. Their hedonistic search for release or fulfilment through drink, sex, drugs and jazz becomes an exploration of personal freedom, a test of the limits of the American dream. A brilliant blend of fiction and autobiography, Jack Kerouac's exhilarating novel defined the new 'Beat' generation. It had tremendous impact on both sides of the Atlantic and made him famous overnight.

In his younger days, Simon Bolivar swept the Spanish back to Europe, liberating South America with his youthful vitality. But lonely, embittered and sickly at the age of forty-six, his power has dwindled, coups abound and it's time for The Liberator to send himself into the exile of retirement. Wending his way down the Magdalena River towards the Caribbean with his faithful servant, Jose Palacios, Bolivar's journey is hindered by his own reluctance to let his power go. Despite the assassination attempts, jeering and humiliation he encounters, his fear of fading into the shadows keeps him clinging to the man he used to be...

Including The Importance of Being Earnest, An Ideal Husband, A Woman of No Importance, Lady Windermere's Fan, and Salome, this collection showcases Wilde's brilliance and timeless wit.

Gideon Cross. As beautiful and flawless on the outside as he was damaged and tormented on the inside. He was a bright, scorching flame that singed me with the darkest of pleasures. I couldn't stay away. I didn't want to. He was my addiction, my every desire... mine. My past was as violent as his, and I was just as broken. We'd never work.

Geoffrey Hosking is one of the foremost historians of Russia and its people. The result of a lifetime's knowledge, this monumental and authoritative work has been acclaimed as the definitive single-volume history of Russia, tracing its story from the settlement of Kiev through to the present day. This second edition is updated throughout, with a new chapter on the recent role of Putin and Medvedev, and their impact on Russia's economy, politics and its citizens.

France, 1916. Sophie Lefevre must keep her family safe whilst her adored husband Edouard fights at the front. When she is ordered to serve the German officers who descend on her hotel each evening, her home becomes riven by fierce tensions.

Our journey began in fire... Gideon Cross came into my life like lightning in the darkness — beautiful and brilliant, jagged and white hot. I was drawn to him as I'd never been to anything or anyone in my life. I craved his touch like a drug, even knowing it would weaken me. I was flawed and damaged, and he opened those cracks in me so easily...

Spain, 1936 and the brink of civil war. Young, poor Sara Quiroga is swept up in a whirlwind romance with her wily love Ramiro. Fleeing Madrid together for Morocco, her love blinds her to his real failings. Soon abandoned, left penniless and in debt to the authorities, she has to rely on the one skill she still possesses: sewing. Taken under the wing of the bullish but caring housekeeper Candelaria, Sara is able to sew for the glamorous foreign English and German women in Tetouan. Privy to their unbridled gossip, Sara becomes invaluable to the British secret service, a position that is filled with untold risk. A tale of danger, espionage, love and war, The Seamstress is a WWII tale like no other.

After catching her husband having an affair and being fired from her job, Maggie Walsh suddenly finds her perfectly organized existence has become a perfect mess. She decides, for the first time in her life, to do something daring — and flees to her best friend, Emily, in the faraway wonderland of Los Angeles. In this mecca of tanned, beautiful bodies, unsvelte, uncool Maggie is decidedly a fish out of water. Yet, overnight, she's mixing with film folk, pitching scripts, even experimenting with sex — and discovering that the end of a marriage is not the end of the world.

Coco Chanel was many things to many people. Raised in emotional and financial poverty, she became one of the defining figures of the twentieth century. She was mistress to aristocrats, artists and spies. She broke rules of style and decorum, seducing both men and women, yet in her work expected the highest standards.

This acclaimed book by Steven Pinker, author of The Language Instinct and The Blank Slate, argues that, contrary to popular belief, humankind has become progressively less violent, over millenia and decades. Can violence really have declined? The images of conflict we see daily on our screens from around the world suggest this is an almost obscene claim to be making. Extraordinarily, however, Steven Pinker shows violence within and between societies — both murder and warfare — really has declined from prehistory to today. We are much less likely to die at someone else's hands than ever before. Even the horrific carnage of the last century, when compared to the dangers of pre-state societies, is part of this trend. Debunking both the idea of the 'noble savage' and an over-simplistic Hobbesian notion of a 'nasty, brutish and short' life, Steven Pinker argues that modernity and its cultural institutions are actually making us better people.

Here Comes Trouble is Michael Moore's blistering anti-memoir, a hilarious book tracing the origins of his political rabble-rousing and his early forays into campaigning for change. Michael Moore has been called an iconoclast, a maverick, a vital dissenting voice and a one of the most un-American people alive. But what made him the man he is today? In his sensational and provocative 'anti-memoir', Moore reveals the family, friends and amazing events that have shaped him: from teachers and Senator Robert Kennedy to parents and the Vietnam War. Here Comes Trouble might just be the most hilarious, provoking, inspiring, poignant and important non-autobiography you ever read. A comic genius. (Independent). Moore is a wake-up call, a call to action, a kick in the mental backside. (Guardian). In addition to his work as a bestselling author, Michael Moore is the award-winning director of Bowling for Columbine, Fahrenheit 9/11, Sicko and Capitalism: A Love Story. He lives in Michigan.

It is midsummer in Sweden — when the light lingers through dawn and the long winter comes to an end. Now, in this magical time, a brutal killer has chosen to strike, and the murder of a female priest sends shockwaves through the community. It has been almost two years since attorney Rebecka Martinsson returned to her birthplace, Kiruna, in order to stop an eerily similar murder spree. Now she is back in Kiruna, where a determined policewoman works on the case and the people who loved or loathed the victim mourn or revel in her demise. As Rebecka is drawn into a mystery that soon will claim another victim, the dead woman's world consumes her: a world of hurt and healing, sin and sexuality, and above all, of lethal sacrifice.