Penguin Group

The short stories of Kingsley Amis — the great master of post-war comic prose — are dark, playful, moving, surprising and extremely funny. This definitive collection gathers all Amis' short fiction in a single volume for the first time and encompasses five decades of storytelling. In The 2003 Claret, written in 1958, a time machine is invented for the weighty task of sending a man to 2010 to discover what the booze will taste like. In Boris and the Colonel a Cambridge spy is unearthed in the sleepy English countryside with the help of a plucky horse, while in Mason's Life two men meet inside their respective dreams. The collection spans many genres, offering ingenious alternative histories, mystery and horror, satirical reflections and a devilishly funny attacks. Amis' stories reveal the scope of his imagination and the warmth beneath his acerbic humour, and they all share the unmistakable style and wit of one of Britain's best loved writers.

'I pushed her back into the house without saying anything, shut the door. We stood looking at each other inside. She dropped her hand slowly and tried to smile. Then all expression went out of her white face and it looked as intelligent as the bottom of a shoe box... I lit my cigarette, puffed it slowly for a moment and then asked: What are you doing here? Before creating Philip Marlowe, Raymond Chandler perfected the hardboiled private detective story in the pages of Blask Mask magazine — tough, spare tales of gumshoes and murder, laced with a weary lyricism and deadpan, laconic wit. Killer in the Rain is vintage Chandler, the groundwork for his classic first novel The Big Sleep.

Twice Harri tries to marry the love of her life. Twice she fails. Since there are only so many times she can leave her man standing at the altar, Harri loses him. After this second pre-wedding panic attack, Harri is at sea. Her parents try to distract her, but it's obvious they know more than they want to admit about why she's always been a little fragile. What they are forced to reveal turns Harri's world upside-down. It seems that not only has she lost James but everything else she thought she could dependen on too. As the truth of her past comes out, and the world she thought she knew crumbles around her, Harri struggles to pick up the pieces. Can she find herself again and, if she does, will it be too late for love?

Feeling the itch to stitch and the urge to preserve? Well then, get your craft on with crafter-about-town Jazz Domino Holly. As the daughter of rock-royalty and founder of the Shoreditch Sisters Women's Institute, Jazz is the perfect guide. Have fun and impress your friends and family with your crafting skills as you learn how to: unravel the mystery of knits and purls and whip up a Girlie Bow Headband; fix your stitches and sew a string of Heart-Felt Bunting; feel the heat in the kitchen and bake a batch of Queen of Crafts Jam Tarts; preserve tradition and fill your empty jars with delicious Oh My Darling Clementine Marmalade; get green-fingered and plant a Herbal Tea Garden; become your own beauty expert and mix up a pot of Get Lippy Lip Balm. Jazz will show you how to make all these things and many, many more. You'll be hosting the perfect tea party, organising a bake-off and setting up your own knitting circle in no time (and having a lot of fun along the way).

Based on the classic story The Elves and the Shoemaker, this vibrantly illustrated story is sure to become a favourite in every home. Meet the poor and hungry shoemaker who wakes up one morning to find that his shoes have been magically made for him! Part of the Ladybird First Favourite Tales series — a perfect introduction to fairy tales for preschoolers — this hardback book contains lots of funny rhythm and rhyme to delight young children. Ideal for reading aloud and sharing with 2-4 year olds.

Welcome a brand-new edition of Insight Guide France, with new features, new maps, and specially commissioned color-photographs throughout the entire guide. A full-color, highly visual guide to the whole of France, covering all the major cities, with expert recommendations to the best sights, cross-referenced with Insights respected mapping and detailed Travel Tips!

A transport plane carrying a high-ranking Taliban prisoner is shot down in a blizzard over Afghanistan's mountainous Hindu Kush. The storm makes rescue impossible, and for two people-navigator Michael Parson and a female Army interpreter, Sergeant Gold-a battle for survival begins against not only the hazards of nature, but the treacheries of man: the Taliban stalking them, the villagers whose loyalties are unknown, and a prisoner who would very much like the three of them to be caught.

We the Living depicts the struggle of the individual against the state, and the impact of the Russian Revolution on three human beings who demand the right to live their own lives and pursue their own happiness. This classic novel is not a story of politics, but of the men and women who fight for existence within a totalitarian state.

Acclaimed as one of the funniest and most assured Irish novels of the last decade, An Evening of Long Goodbyes is the story of Dubliner Charles Hythloday and the heroic squandering of the family inheritance. Featuring drinking, greyhound racing, vanishing furniture, more drinking, old movies, assorted Dublin lowlife, eviction and the perils of community theatre, Paul Murray's debut novel is a tour de force of comedic writing wrapped in an honest-to-goodness tale of a man — and a family — living in denial...

Ken is so obsessed with death that he's planning his own funeral — right down to the last morbid detail. He will die in the bosom of his family. There's just one problem. His family want nothing to do with him. His upwardly mobile son Nick hasn't seen him in fifteen years — and doesn't want to be reminded of the miserable old man he escaped. But Ken is nothing if not dogged. Whether he likes it or not, Ken's going to remind him of exactly what Nick has been missing... And who he really is.

According to «Time», Paul Allen is one of the 100 Most Influential People In The World. «Idea Man» is the story of the fascinating life of a man who has made an unprecedented impact in science, technology, business, sports, music, and philanthropy. His memoir features previously untold stories that offer insight into everything from the true origins of Microsoft to a behind-the-scenes view of the dawn of private space travel. It offers reflections from someone who has led an extraordinary life, learned a lot, and helped improve the world.

A brand new edition of Insight's Step by Step New York. This itinerary-based guide details 18 of New York's best walks and tours, written by a local expert and arranged by theme for a tailor-made travel experience. All itineraries are marked on a separate, fully indexed pull-out map, to ensure easy navigation.

'What we were after was lashings of ultraviolence'. In this nightmare vision of youth in revolt, fifteen-year-old Alex and his friends set out on a diabolical orgy of robbery, rape, torture and murder. Alex is jailed for his teenage delinquency and the State tries to reform him — but at what cost? Social prophecy? Black comedy? Study of freewill? «A Clockwork Orange» is all of these. It is also a dazzling experiment in language, as Burgess creates a new language — 'nadsat', the teenage slang of a not-too-distant future.

Los Angeles PI Philip Marlowe is working for the Sternwood family. Old man Sternwood, crippled and wheelchair-bound, is being given the squeeze by a blackmailer and he wants Marlowe to make the problem go away. But with Sternwood's two wild, devil-may-care daughters prowling LA's seedy backstreets, Marlowe's got his work cut out — and that's before he stumbles over the first corpse...

Arthur's final test of courage is upon him... Arthur has crushed Lancelot's rebellion, but at a cost. Guinevere's betrayal has left him reeling, and his Saxon enemies seek to destroy him while he is weak. Chaos threatens to engulf Britain. Yet Arthur is a military genius and noble leader. As the battle draws close, he prepares to fight his way to victory at Mount Badon and also win back the woman he lost. But in the final journey of the warlord, the intrigues of Mordred, now the adult heir to the throne of Britain, and the magics of the priestess Nimue could prove to be Arthur's downfall.

'Of all my novels this bright brute is the gayest', Nabokov wrote of «King, Queen, Knave». Comic, sensual and cerebral, it dramatizes an Oedipal love triangle, a tragi-comedy of husband, wife and lover, through Dreyer the rich businessman, his ripe-lipped ad mercenary wife Martha, and their bespectacled nephew Franz. 'If a resolute Freudian manages to slip in' — Nabokov darts a glance to the reader — 'he or she should be warned that a number of cruel traps have been set here and there'.

An elegant literary mystery set during the Gilded Age. New York City, 1911. Representing the widow of a Wall Street financier, lawyer William Dysart travels to a small Long Island town with a generous offer for Miss Sybil Curtis's cottage and five acres of land. But when Sybil refuses to sell, the widow threatens to use her influence with the state to seize the property. Intrigued by Sybil's defiance and afflicted by a growing affection for her, William develops a desire to help her that becomes an obsession he cannot define, one that tears away the facade of his life, and presents him with truths he's unprepared to face.

Constantly rewriting his own story, Malcolm X became a criminal, a minister, a leader, and eventually an icon, assassinated at the age of 39. This title presents a sweeping story of the darkest days of racial unrest, from the rise of the Ku Klux Klan to the struggles of the civil rights movement, examining his engagement with the Nation of Islam.

'But it hadn't been given for nothing. It had been given, even the most wildly squandered sum, as an offering to destiny that he might not remember the things most worth remembering, the things that he would now always remember'. F. Scott Fitzgerald's stories defined the 1920s 'Jazz Age' generation, with their glittering dreams and tarnished hopes. In these three tales of a fragile recovery, a cut-glass bowl and a life lost, Fitzgerald portrays, in exquisite prose and with deep human sympathy, the idealism of youth and the ravages of success. This book includes: Babylon Revisited, The Cut-Glass Bowl, and The Lost Decade.

'There, in Russia five years ago, when Cuba had been taken out of the oven to cool and Vietnam was still coming to a simmer, Bech did find a quality of life — impoverished yet ceremonial, shabby yet ornate, sentimental, embattled, and avuncular-reminiscent of his neglected Jewish past'. Borges became famous as a writer of short stories that contained new realities: elaborately conceived, ingenious and gamesome precis of impossible worlds or imaginary books. In these five stories, there is danger on the high seas, an ungracious teacher of etiquette and an encyclopaedia of an unknown planet — and Borges' unique imagination and intellect plays throughout. This book includes Rich In Russia, Foreword, Bech in Rumania, Appendix A and Appendix B.

'The woods were gradually thinning. I was tormented by strange hallucinations. I gazed at the weird tree trunks, around some of which were coiled thick, flesh-coloured snakes; suddenly I thought I saw, between the trunks, as though through my fingers, the mirror of a half-open wardrobe'. These three stories of menace, magic and melancholy display Vladimir Nabokov's astonishing range and inventiveness. Whether describing an escape across a surreal tropical landscape, a fateful meeting or an unexpected — and threatening — return, each tale shows his dazzling sleight of hand, intellectual playfulness and fantastical imagination. This book includes Terra Incognita, Spring in Fialta and The Doorbell.

This is Freud's groundbreaking study of a wealthy young Russian man, subject to psychotic episodes and neuroses. Through the patient's dream of childhood wolves, Freud was able to determine his real problem — that of infantile neurosis brought about by a sexual complex and an Oedipal fixation. Great Ideas — Throughout history, some books have changed the world. They have transformed the way we see ourselves — and each other. They have inspired debate, dissent, war and revolution. They have enlightened, outraged, provoked and comforted. They have enriched lives — and destroyed them. Now Penguin brings you the works of the great thinkers, pioneers, radicals and visionaries whose ideas shook civilization and helped make us who we are.

In this collection of wise, witty and fascinating essays, Borges discusses the existence (or non-existence) of Hell, the flaws in English literary detectives, the philosophy of contradictions, and the many translators of 1001 Nights. Varied and enthralling, these pieces examine the very nature of our lives, from cinema and books to history and religion. Great Ideas: throughout history, some books have changed the world. They have transformed the way we see ourselves — and each other. They have inspired debate, dissent, war and revolution. They have enlightened, outraged, provoked and comforted. They have enriched lives — and destroyed them. Now Penguin brings you the works of the great thinkers, pioneers, radicals and visionaries whose ideas shook civilization and helped make us who we are.

We were sitting on the porch, tutti-frutti melting on our plates, when suddenly, just as we were wishing that something would happen, something did; for out of the red road dust appeared Miss Bobbit.' Truman Capote's bewitching short stories, many of which were set in the Deep South of his youth, are among his finest works. Perceptive, sensitive and eloquent, filled with brooding atmosphere and gorgeous description, these three stories tell of genteel eccentrics, evocative childhood memories and a malevolent nocturnal meeting. This book includes: Children on Their Birthdays, A Christmas Memory, and A Tree of Night.