Penguin Group

'Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers, — stern and wild ones, — and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss'. Set in the harsh Puritan community of seventeenth-century Boston, this tale of an adulterous entanglement that results in an illegitimate birth reveals Nathaniel Hawthorne's concerns with the tension between the public and the private selves. Publicly disgraced and ostracized, Hester Prynne draws on her inner strength and certainty of spirit to emerge as the first true heroine of American fiction. Arthur Dimmesdale stands as a classic study of a self divided; trapped by the rules of society, he suppresses his passion and disavows his lover, Hester, and their daughter, Pearl.

'I walk'd about on the shore, lifting up my hands, and my whole being, as I may say, wrapt up in the contemplation of my deliverance... reflecting upon all my comrades that were drown'd, and that there should not be one soul sav'd but my self...' Who has not dreamed of life on an exotic isle, far away from civilization? Here is the novel which has inspired countless imitations by lesser writers, none of which equal the power and originality of Defoe's famous book. Robinson Crusoe, set ashore on an island after a terrible storm at sea, is forced to make do with only a knife, some tobacco, and a pipe. He learns how to build a canoe, make bread, and endure endless solitude. That is, until, twenty-four years later, when he confronts another human being. First published in 1719, Robinson Crusoe has been praised by such writers as James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, and Samuel Johnson as one of the greatest novels in the English language. The Penguin English Library — 100 editions of the best fiction in English, from the eighteenth century and the very first novels to the beginning of the First World War.

This is the «Penguin English Library Edition» of «The Moonstone» by Wilkie Collins. 'Here was our quiet English house suddenly invaded by a devilish Indian Diamond — bringing after it a conspiracy of living rogues, set loose on us by the vengeance of a dead man'. When Rachel Verinder's birthday present — the Moonstone, a large Indian diamond — is stolen at her party, suspicion and the diamond's mysterious curse seem set to ruin everyone and everything she loves. Only Sergeant Cuff's famous detective skills offer any hope of peace and a future for them all. The intricate plot and modern technique of multiple narrators made Wilkie Collin's 1868 work a huge success in the Victorian sensation genre. With a reconstruction of the crime, red herrings and a 'locked-room' puzzle, «The Moonstone» was also a major precursor of the modern mystery novel. «The Penguin English Library» — 100 editions of the best fiction in English, from the eighteenth century and the very first novels to the beginning of the First World War.

'People screamed. People sprang off the pavement... The Invisible Man is coming! The Invisible Man!' With his face swaddled in bandages, his eyes hidden behind dark glasses and his hands covered even indoors, Griffin — the new guest at The Coach and Horses — is at first assumed to be a shy accident-victim. But the true reason for his disguise is far more chilling: he has developed a process that has made him invisible, and is locked in a struggle to discover the antidote. Forced from the village, and driven to murder, he seeks the aid of an old friend, Kemp. The horror of his fate has affected his mind, however — and when Kemp refuse to help, he resolves to wreak his revenge. The Penguin English Library — 100 editions of the best fiction in English, from the eighteenth century and the very first novels to the beginning of the First World War.

When a dinner-party guest named Miles locks himself in an upstairs room and refuses to come out, he sets off a media frenzy. He also sets in motion a mesmerizing puzzle of a novel, one that harnesses acrobatic verbal playfulness to a truly affecting story. Miles communicates only by cryptic notes slipped under the door. We see him through the eyes of four people who barely know him, ranging from a precocious child to a confused elderly woman. But while the characters' wit and wordplay soar, their story remains profoundly grounded. As it probes our paradoxical need for both separation and true connection, There but for the balances cleverness with compassion, the surreal with the deeply, movingly real, in a way that only Ali Smith can.

'The mind of man is capable of anything — because everything is in it, all the past as well as all the future. What was there after all? Joy, fear, sorrow, devotion, rage — who can tell — but truth — truth stripped of its cloak of time. Let the fool gape and shudder — the man knows, and can look on without a wink'. Marlow, a seaman, tells of a journey up the Congo. His goal is the troubled European and ivory trader Kurtz. Worshipped and feared by invaders as well as natives, Kurtz has become a godlike figure, his presence pervading the jungle like a thick, obscuring mist. As his boat labours further upstream, closer and closer to Kurtz's extraordinary and terrible domain, so Marlow finds his faith in himself and civilization crumbling. Conrad's Heart of Darkness has been considered the most important indictment of the evils of imperialism written to date. The Penguin English Library — 100 editions of the best fiction in English, from the eighteenth century and the very first novels to the beginning of the First World War.

Spot never seems sleepy — he would much rather stay up late and play with his toys instead of going to bed.

The new rule of marketing is that it doesn't matter if something is actually better or faster or more efficient. What matters is whether consumers believe the story. Godin teaches readers to create a story that fits the consumer's world view, a story they will intuitively embrace and share with friends.

Tohrment, the Brother who had it all, but lost everything to the enemy, is destined for a second chance at love and life. But will the past and his bitterness hold him back?

'I had sent my heroine straight down a rabbit-hole without the least idea what was to happen afterwards', wrote Dodgson, describing how Alice was conjured up one 'golden afternoon' in 1862 to entertain his child-friend Alice Liddell. In the nonsensical Wonderland and the back-to-front Looking-Glass kingdom, order is turned upside-down: a baby turns into a pig; time is abandoned at a tea-party; and, a chaotic game of chess makes 7-year-old a Queen.

Niall Ferguson recreates the excitement, brutality and adventure of the British Empire, showing on a vast canvas how the British Empire in the 19th century spearheaded real globalization with steampower, telegraphs, guns, engineers, missionaries and millions of settlers.

Leningrad, September 1941. Hitler orders German forces to surround the city at the start of the most dangerous, desperate winter in its history. For two pairs of lovers — young Anna and Andrei, Anna's novelist father and actress Marina — the siege becomes a battle for survival. They will soon discover what it is like to be so hungry you boil shoe leather to make soup, so cold you burn furniture and books. But this is not just a struggle to exist, it is also a fight to keep the spark of hope alive. The Siege is a brilliantly imagined novel of war and the wounds it inflicts on ordinary people's lives, and also a profoundly moving celebration of love, life and survival.

Nora Roberts presents a riveting novel of a canine search and rescue volunteer who fights danger and finds love in the Pacific Northwest.

Barley Blair is not a Service man: he is a small-time publisher, a self-destructive soul whose only loves are whisky and jazz. But it was Barley who, one drunken night at a dacha in Peredelkino during the Moscow Book Fair, was befriended by a high-ranking Soviet scientist who could be the greatest asset to the West since perestroika began, and made a promise. Nearly a year later, his drunken promise returns to haunt him. A reluctant Barley is quickly trained by British Intelligence and sent to Moscow to liaise with a go-between, the beautiful Katya. Both are lonely and disillusioned. Each is increasingly certain that if the human race is to have any future, all must betray their countries... In his first post-glasnost spy novel, le Carre captures the effect of a slow and uncertain thaw on ordinary people and on the shadowy puppet-masters who command them.

The modern woman is a Jill of all trades... Ava is a wife, lover, mother, daughter, friend, fixer, boss... so many different people, in fact, she no longer knows what it means to be herself. Not that anyone will let her — not her work-obsessed husband, nor her tearaway younger daughter, nor her out-of-control Dad, nor even her sassy-but-lonely best friend. There's always someone wanting something from her. She's trying to do her best for all of them but lately feels like she can't make everyone happy. And that's before she discovers that her elder daughter Alison is in deep, deep trouble. Can Ava keep a hold of the most precious pieces of her heart? And what will happen if she loses one?

Brimming with gluttony, booze and lust, Roger Micheldene is loose in America. Supposedly visiting Budweiser University to make deals for his publishing firm in England, Roger instead sets out to offend all he meets and to seduce every woman he encounters. But his American hosts seem made of sterner stuff. Who will be Roger's undoing? Irving Macher, the young author of an annoyingly brilliant first novel? Father Colgate, the priest who suggests that Roger's soul is in torment? Or will it be his married ex-lover Helene? One thing is certain — Roger is heading for a terrible fall. Outrageously funny and irreverent, One Fat Englishman (1963) is a devastating satire on Anglo-American relations.

Stella Rode has twice disturbed the ancient cloisters of Carne School: firstly by being the wrong sort, with her doyleys and china ducks, and secondly by being murdered. George Smiley, who has his own connection with the school, is asked by an old Service friend to investigate. As Smiley probes further beneath Carne's respectable veneer, he uncovers far more than a simple crime of passion. In his second George Smiley novel, le Carre moves outside the world of espionage to reveal the secrets at the heart of another particularly English institution. The result is a pitch-perfect murder mystery, with Smiley as master detective.

Scuba diving off the Tanzanian coast, husband and wife treasure-hunting team Sam and Remi Fargo discover a huge ship's bell, covered in cryptic carvings. But as they struggle to first recover the bell and then decode its clues, they find they are not alone in wanting to discover it secrets. When news of the find is publicised, Mexican President Quauhtli Garza is forced to act. He knows that this bell comes from a former Confederate ship that sank off the African coast and he fears that the discovery of a missing piece of a Quetzalcoatl statuette, which was aboard the ship, will undermine his plans for Mexico's future. With Garza determined to stop the Fargos' investigation at all costs, the couple are drawn into a deadly conspiracy that connects the 1883 Krakatoa explosion with an attempt to resurrect the fallen Aztec empire...

The King's English is Kingsley Amis' authoritative and witty guide to the use and abuse of the English language. A scourge of illiteracy and a thorn in the side of pretension, Amis provides indispensable advice about the linguistic blunders and barbarities that lie in wait for us, from danglers, four-letter words to jargon and even Welsh rarebit. If you have ever wondered whether it's acceptable to start a sentence with 'and', to boldly split an infinitive, or to cross your sevens in the French style, Amis has the answer — or a trenchant opinion. By turns reflective, acerbic and provocative, The King's English is for anyone who cares about how the English language is used.

'I guess it started the night our dad blew up the british museum...' Carter and Sadie Kane's dad is a brilliant Egyptologist with a secret plan that goes horribly wrong. An explosion shatters the ancient Rosetta stone and unleashes. Set, the evil god of chaos... Set imprisons Dr Kane in a golden coffin and Carter and Sadie must run for their lives. To save their dad, they embark on a terrifying quest from Cairo to Paris to the American South-west and discover the truth about their family's connection to the House of Life: an Egyptian temple of magic that has existed for thousands of years. The pharaohs of ancient Egypt are far from dead and buried. And so, unfortunately, are their gods...

In this urgent new book, Noam Chomsky surveys the threats and prospects of our early twenty-first century. Exploring challenges such as the growing gap between North and South, American exceptionalism (even under Obama), the fiascos of Iraq and Afghanistan, the Israeli assault on Gaza and the recent financial bailouts, he also sees hope for the future and a way to move forward — in the so-called democratic wave in Latin America and in the global solidarity movements which suggest 'real progress towards freedom and justice'. Hopes and Prospects is essential reading for anyone who is concerned about the primary challenges still facing the human race and is wondering where to find a ray of hope.

Now in paperback — this is the next mega-selling instalment in the hilarious «Diary of a Wimpy Kid» series. Greg's mom has a vision of 'family togetherness' that really doesn't sound a whole lot of fun. But there's a brand-new addition to the Heffley family to contend with and it looks like Greg might be outnumbered. It could be a real dog of a summer...

Now everyone can have their own Wimpy Kid diary! Draw your own Wimpy-Kid-style cartoons, fill in facts and lists, check out the full-colour comics inside and even write your own Wimpy Kid journal, just like Greg. This title now comes with dozens of pages of new content and a brand new cover.

The terrible conflict that dominated the mid 19th century, the Crimean War killed at least 800,000 men and pitted Russia against a formidable coalition of Britain, France and the Ottoman Empire. It was a war for territory, provoked by fear that if the Ottoman Empire were to collapse then Russia could control a huge swathe of land from the Balkans to the Persian Gulf. But it was also a war of religion, driven by a fervent, populist and ever more ferocious belief by the Tsar and his ministers that it was Russia's task to rule all Orthodox Christians and control the Holy Land. Orlando Figes' major new book reimagines this extraordinary war, in which the stakes could not have been higher and which was fought with a terrible mixture of ferocity and incompetence. It was both a recognisably modern conflict — the first to be extensively photographed, the first to employ the telegraph, the first 'newspaper war' — and a traditional one, with illiterate soldiers, amateur officers and huge casualties caused by disease. Drawing on a huge range of fascinating sources, Figes also gives the lived experience of the war, from that of the ordinary British soldier in his snow-filled trench, to the haunted, gloomy, narrow figure of Tsar Nicholas himself as he vows to take on the whole world in his hunt for religious salvation.