Penguin Group

Does free information mean free people? At the start of the twenty-first century we were promised that the internet would liberate the world. We could come together as never before, and from Iran's 'twitter revolution' to Facebook 'activism', technological innovation would spread democracy to oppressed peoples everywhere. We couldn't have been more wrong. In «The Net Delusion» Evgeny Morozov destroys this myth, arguing that 'internet freedom' is an illusion, and that technology has failed to help protect people's rights. Not only that — in many cases the internet is actually helping authoritarian regimes. From China to Russia to Iran, oppressive governments are using cyberspace to stifle dissent: planting clandestine propaganda, employing sophisticated digital censorship and using online surveillance. We are all being manipulated in more subtle ways too — becoming pacified by the net, instead of truly engaging. This book is a wake-up call. It shows us how our misplaced faith in cyber-utopia means the West risks missing the real challenges. Morozov argues that we must look at other ways of promoting democracy abroad, and forces us — policymakers and citizens alike — to recognize that all our freedoms are at stake.

'What we all need', said Larry, 'is sunshine... a country where we can grow'. 'Yes, dear, that would be nice', agreed Mother, not really listening. 'I had a letter from George this morning — he says Corfu's wonderful. Why don't we pack up and go to Greece?'. 'Very well, dear, if you like', said Mother unguardedly. Escaping the ills of the British climate, the Durrell family — acne-ridden Margo, gun-toting Leslie, bookworm Lawrence and budding naturalist Gerry, along with their long suffering mother and Roger the dog — take off for the island of Corfu. But the Durrells find that, reluctantly, they must share their various villas with a menagerie of local fauna — among them scorpions, geckos, toads, bats and butterflies. Recounted with immense humour and charm, «My Family and Other Animals» is a wonderful account of a rare, magical childhood.

The Caucasus mountains are a land of jagged peaks and rugged people, who for over 200 years have rebelled against Russia's attempts to add them to its empire. Oliver Bullough's extraordinary debut tells their story for the first time. Travelling from remote village to refugee camp, rocky mountain gorge to forgotten massacre site, he discovers exiles, fighters, lost sects, defiant survivors — and an unbreakable spirit.

Ever since the gods of Ancient Egypt were unleashed on the modern world, Carter Kane and his sister, Sadie, have been in trouble. As descendants of the magical House of Life, they command certain powers. But now a terrifying enemy — Apophis, the giant snake of chaos — is rising. If Carter and Sadie don't destroy him, the world will end in five days' time. And in order to battle the forces of chaos, they must revive the sun god Ra — a feat no magician has ever achieved. First they must search the world for the three sections of the Book of Ra, then they have to learn how to chant the spells... Can the Kanes destroy Apophis before he swallows the sun and plunges the earth into darkness... forever?

Philip Marlowe's on a case: his client, a dried-up husk of a woman, wants him to recover a rare gold coin called a Brasher Doubloon, missing from her late husband's collection. That's the simple part. It becomes more complicated when Marlowe finds that everyone who handles the coin suffers a run of very bad luck: they always end up dead. That's also unlucky for a private investigator, because leaving a trail of corpses around LA gets cops' noses out of joint. If Marlowe doesn't wrap this one up fast, he's going to end up in jail — or worse, in a box in the ground...

Go anywhere in the world today and you'll see or hear English in some form. It may not necessarily be the Queen's English that you're hearing, but it is, nevertheless, a form of universally recognised English — it is Globish. In his wonderfully witty and informative new book, Robert McCrum explores the curious history, vivacity and endurance of English and ponders why, while British and American empires have waxed and waned, the English language, freer from its moorings like never before, has quietly taken over the world.

How did George Eliot's love life affect her prose? Why did Kafka write at three in the morning? In what ways is Barack Obama like Eliza Doolittle? Can you be over-dressed for the Oscars? What is Italian Feminism? If Roland Barthes killed the Author, can Nabokov revive him? What does 'soulful' mean? Is Date Movie the worst film ever made? A collection of essays that brims over with personality and warmth, «Changing My Mind» is journalism at its most expansive, intelligent and funny — a gift to readers and writers both. Within its covers an essay is more than a column of opinions: it's a space in which to think freely.

In a climate when iconoclasm is the smartest intellectual stance — whether against bankers, traders, politicians, the energy industry, or journalists — one of today's most prominent rabble-rousers gives his quick-witted and snappy guide to questioning the status quo. With characteristic panache and brio, Taleb uses aphorisms to condense his rambunctious ideas and style. This paperback edition will serve as a perfect reference for anyone searching for the right questions to ask.

As soon as the financial crisis erupted, the finger-pointing began. Should the blame fall on greedy traders, lazy regulators, or clueless home buyers? According to Bethany McLean, author of the bestselling Enron book «The Smartest Guys in the Room», and Joe Nocera, the star «New York Times» columnist, the real answer is all of the above. Many devils helped bring hell to the economy. Yet despite all the analysis of the crash, no one has put all the pieces together and named those responsible. Until now.

'The whole place seemed completely bonkers: dusty, tatty, disorganized and impossibly old-fashioned, set in an age of doilies and flag-waving patriotism and jam still for tea, some sunny day'. Appointed editor of «The Lady» — the oldest women's weekly in the world — Rachel Johnson faced the challenge of a lifetime. For a start, how do you become an editor when you've never, well, edited? How do you turn around a venerable title, full of ads for walk-in baths, during the worst recession ever? And forget doubling the circulation in a year — what on earth do you wear to work when you've spent the last fifteen years at home in sweatpants? Will Rachel save «The Lady» — or sink it?

It is 1940, and bombs fall nightly on London. In the thick of the chaos is young American radio reporter Frankie Bard. She huddles close to terrified strangers in underground shelters, and later broadcasts stories about survivors in rubble-strewn streets. But for her listeners, the war is far from home. Listening to Frankie are Iris James, a Cape Cod postmistress, and Emma Fitch, a doctor's wife. Iris hears the winds stirring and knows that soon the letters she delivers will bear messages of hope or tragedy. Emma is desperate for news of London, where her husband is working — she counts the days until his return. But one night in London the fates of all three women entwine when Frankie finds a letter — a letter she vows to deliver...

China's Communist Party is the largest, most powerful political machine in the world. Here, for the first time, Richard McGregor delves deeply into its inner sanctum, revealing how this secretive cabal keeps control of every aspect of the country — its military and media, legal system and businesses, even its religious organizations. How has the Party merged Marx, Mao and the market to create a global superpower? And what does this mean for the world?

An English couple, Perry and Gail, are taking an off-peak holiday on the Caribbean island of Antigua. By seeming chance they bump into a Russian millionaire called Dima who owns a peninsula and a diamond-encrusted gold watch. He also has a tattoo on his right thumb, and wants a game of tennis. What else he wants propels the young lovers on a tortuous journey through Paris to a safe house in the Swiss Alps, to the murkiest cloisters of the City of London and its unholy alliance with Britains Intelligence Establishment.

Celebrating Britain's very best food Jamie grew up in one of the first true British «gastropubs», which his Mum and Dad still run today. For him, the heart and soul of real British cooking is food that puts a smile on your face. And that's what he wants to share in the new book: the essence of British food, done properly. Over the years, British food culture has embraced flavours and influences from all the people who came and made Great Britain their home. The food reflects an open-minded culture as well as the country's beauty. There are over 100 of Jamie's favourite recipes: some are indisputable classics, some are his versions of the classics, some should be classics but just haven't been made famous yet and others he's made up from the great bounty of British produce. Wherever you're from, if you love food this book will offer you a little taste of happiness.

Enter a vanished and unjust world: Jackson, Mississippi, 1962. Where black maids raise white children, but aren't trusted not to steal the silver... There's Aibileen, raising her seventeenth white child and nursing the hurt caused by her own son's tragic death; Minny, whose cooking is nearly as sassy as her tongue; and, white Miss Skeeter, home from College, who wants to know why her beloved maid has disappeared. Skeeter, Aibileen and Minny. No one would believe they'd be friends; fewer still would tolerate it. But as each woman finds the courage to cross boundaries, they come to depend and rely upon one another. Each is in a search of a truth. And together they have an extraordinary story to tell...

During the winter of 1972, a woman spends a single night with a young Chilean poet before he departs New York, leaving her his desk. It is the only time they ever meet. Two years later, he is arrested by Pinochet's secret police and never seen again. Across the ocean, in the leafy suburbs of London, a man caring for his dying wife discovers a lock of hair among her papers that unravels a terrible secret. In Jerusalem, an antiques dealer has spent a lifetime reassembling his father's study, plundered by the Nazis from Budapest in 1944; now only one item remains to be found. Connecting these lives is a desk of many drawers that exerts a power over those who possess it or give it away. And as the narrators of «Great House» make their confessions, this desk comes finally to stand for all that has been taken from them, and all that binds them to what has disappeared. «Great House» is a story haunted by questions: What do we pass on to our children and how do they absorb our dreams and losses? How do we respond to disappearance, destruction, and change? Nicole Krauss has written a soaring, powerful novel about memory struggling to create a meaningful permanence in the face of inevitable loss.

Dirk Pitt is in the Middle East doing routine survey work when a spot of lucks leads him to an Ottoman wreck with a very curious cargo. While investigating the find, Pitt interrupts a night raid on Istanbul's Topkapi Palace Museum. Suddenly he's at the centre of a race to acquire a series of ancient and legendary artifacts. Meanwhile, a series of mosques across Turkey and Egypt are blown up, stoking tensions that may push the whole region to the brink of war. As Pitt comes to realize that the search for these artifacts and the bombings are related, he finds himself in a desperate bid to prevent a brother and sister team restoring the glory days of the Ottoman Empire for their own fanatical ends... Packed with breathtaking suspense and fired by an extraordinary imagination, Crescent Dawn is a barnstorming read for all fans of action, suspense and intrigue.

This is the latest Kay Scarpetta novel from #1 New York Times bestselling author Patricia Cornwell. In this fast-paced story, we travel back to the beginning of Scarpettas professional career when she enlisted in the Air Force to pay off her medical school debt. Now, more than twenty years later, her secret military ties have brought her back to Dover Air Force Base, and she is confronted with a case that could ruin her both professionally and personally.

Are you searching for your next challenge? Are you tempted to go to business school? Before you do, save your money and read «The Personal MBA». Getting an MBA takes two years of your life. And most of it is spent on PowerPoint presentations and outdated financial models, rather than learning what it takes to run a real business. «The Personal MBA» distils the most valuable lessons of the finest business schools and the best business books of all time into simple, memorable ideas and tools. It covers concepts such as The Iron Law of the Market, The 12 Forms of Value, The Pricing Uncertainty Principle, and The 4 Methods to Increase Revenue. This book is all you need to learn the fundamentals of business quickly, and discover exactly how to apply them to transform your career.

From the targeting of schools and hospitals, to the indiscriminate use of white phosphorus, Israel's conduct in 'Operation Cast Lead' has rattled even some of its most strident supporters. In this book, Noam Chomsky and Ilan Pappe survey the fallout from that devastation, and place the massacre in Gaza in the context of Israel's long-standing war against the Palestinians. «Gaza in Crisis» is a rigorous, historically informed and much-needed analysis of the situation and will be welcomed by all those eager for Chomsky's insights into yet another political catastrophe.

Captain Thomas Forsyth's tour of Afghanistan is cut brutally short when he is badly wounded by a roadside bomb. Returning home, to his mother — a racehorse trainer and the 'First Lady' of racing — Tom discovers the training business is on the edge, and facing a threat far more dangerous than a run of bad form. Tom finds himself on a very different, but just as deadly, battlefield where his military skills are tested... kill or be killed?

Those who survived the Second World War stared out onto a devastated, morally ruined world. Much of Europe and Asia had been so ravaged that it was unclear whether any form of normal life could ever be established again. Everywhere the 'Atlantic' world (the USA, Britain and a handful of allies) was on the defensive and its enemies on the move. For every Atlantic success there seemed to be a dozen Communist or 'Third World' successes, as the USSR and its proxies crushed dissent and humiliated the United States on both military and cultural grounds. For all the astonishing productivity of the American, Japanese and mainland western European economies (setting aside the fiasco of Britain's implosion), most of the world was either under Communist rule or lost in a violent stagnancy that seemed doomed to permanence. Then, suddenly, the Atlantic won — economically, ideologically, militarily — with astonishing speed and completeness.

Eugene Rogan has written an authoritative new history of the Arabs in the modern world. Starting with the Ottoman conquests in the sixteenth century, this landmark book follows the story of the Arabs through the era of European imperialism and the Superpower rivalries of the Cold War, to the present age of unipolar American power. Drawing on the writings and eyewitness accounts of those who lived through the tumultuous years of Arab history, «The Arabs» balances different voices — politicians, intellectuals, students, men and women, poets and novelists, famous, infamous and the completely unknown — to give a rich, complex sense of life over nearly five centuries. Rogan's book is remarkable for its geographical sweep, covering the Arab world from North Africa through the Arabian Peninsula, and for the depth in which it explores every facet of modern Arab history. Charting the evolution of Arab identity from Ottomanism to Arabism to Islamism, it covers themes including the conflict between national independence and foreign domination, the Arab-Israeli struggle and the peace process, Abdel Nasser and the rise of Arab Nationalism, the political and economic power of oil and the conflict between secular and Islamic values. This multilayered, fascinating and definitive work is the essential guide to understanding the history of the modern Arab world — and its future.

David Bell embodies the American dream. He's twenty-eight, has survived office coups, scandals, and beaten lesser rivals, to become an extremely successful TV exec. The images that flicker across America's screens, the fantasies that enthrall viewers, they are of his making. But David's dream is turning sour, nightmarish. He wants reality, to touch, feel and record what is real. He takes a camera and journeys across America in a mad, roving quest to discover and capture some sense of his own and his country's past, present and future. «Americana» is Don DeLillo's brilliant first novel.