Penguin Group

A beautiful Italian girl driving home in an open top sports car, a little boy playing on a south Coast beach and the Senior Steward of the Jockey Club on his way to a press reception in Baltimore. One after the other they suffer the same nightmare ordeal — kidnapping. But there is one thing connecting these particular cases. For the Italian girl is a jockey and the little boy an only son of a race horse owner. A picture of the person behind this interanational chain of crime starts to emerge — a lover of Verdi, a man with a cool and calculating brain and an aficionado of the racing world. Andrew Doublas, brought in to advise and help the vicitms and their families, proceeds with all his customary diplomacy and courage. Only to find himeself playing a dangerous part: the role usually reserved for his clients...

Revered for his magnificent works of fiction, Jorge Luis Borges thought of himself primarily as a poet. Poems of the Night is a moving collection of the great literary visionary's poetic meditations on nighttime, darkness, and the crepuscular world of visions and dreams, themes that speak implicitly to the blindness that overtook Borges late in life-and yet the poems here are drawn from the full span of Borges's career. Featuring such poems as «History of the Night» and «In Praise of Darkness» and more than fifty others in luminous translations by an array of distinguished translators-among them W.S. Merwin, Christopher Maurer, Alan Trueblood, and Alastair Reid-this volume brings to light many poems that have never appeared in English, presenting them en face with their Spanish originals.

Humbert Humbert — scholar, aesthete and romantic — has fallen completely and utterly in love with Lolita Haze, his landlady's gum-snapping, silky skinned twelve-year-old daughter. Reluctantly agreeing to marry Mrs Haze just to be close to Lolita, Humbert suffers greatly in the pursuit of romance; but when Lo herself starts looking for attention elsewhere, he will carry her off on a desperate cross-country misadventure, all in the name of Love. Hilarious, flamboyant, heart-breaking and full of ingenious word play, Lolita is an immaculate, unforgettable masterpiece of obsession, delusion and lust.

Nick Hornby's second bestselling novel is about sex, manliness and fatherhood. Will is thirty-six, comfortable and child-free. And he's discovered a brilliant new way of meeting women — through single-parent groups. Marcus is twelve and a little bitnerdish: he's got the kind of mother who made him listen to Joni Mitchell rather than Nirvana. Perhaps they can help each other out a little bit, and both can start to act their age.

View our feature on Mean Streets. An anthology of solid and suspenseful novellas from #1 New York Times bestselling author Jim Butcher New York Times bestselling author Simon R. Green National bestselling authors Kat Richardson Thomas E. Sniegoski Here are four novellas featuring Harry Dresden, John Taylor, Harper Blaine, and Remy Chandler... paranormal private investigators who walk the streets no one else can walk and take the jobs no one else will take... Of course, if a case involves werewolves, zombies, demons, or other «unusual» circumstances, it may cost a bit extra.

If you've ever wondered how to climb the social ladder with grace, how to feel confident in every situation, or even how to make a lasting impression (but not the kind that lands you on the latest «Worst Dressed List») — Derek Blasberg is here, with quotes and secrets from all the socialites so girls everywhere can learn how to have class. This hilarious handbook will provide everything you need to know about fashion, socialising, dating, and etiquette. With tons of practical tips and tools for learning to flaunt what you've got, dozens of specific how-tos, common no-nos, and huge blunders that even smart girls make, this tongue-in-cheek book will train you to be a lady, and not a tramp!

»New York Times» bestselling Grand Master of Crime Fiction Foreign Office diplomat Peter Darwin uncovers a peculiar operation involving a veterinary surgeon and the unexplained deaths of several valuable racehorses.

She was a princess, daughter of perhaps the most hated king in Europe. He was just a lowly hussar. Their love affair in turn-of-the-century Vienna was to scandalize a continent. The story of Princess Louise of Belgium and Geza Mattachich, stepson of a minor Croatian count, began with no more than an exchanged glance in a park. Yet the princess and her soldier, divided by wealth and status, pursued their devotion to one another through scandal, ruin, madness and imprisonment. Dan Jacobson's brilliant imagining of this forgotten episode of the Hapsburg court brings to life one of the century's great love stories.

‘Crime? What crime? … My killing a loathsome, harmful louse, a filthy old moneylender woman … and you call that a crime? Raskolnikov, a destitute and desperate former student, wanders through the slums of St Petersburg and commits a random murder without remorse or regret. He imagines himself to be a great man, a Napoleon: acting for a higher purpose beyond conventional moral law. But as he embarks on a dangerous game of cat and mouse with a suspicious police investigator, Raskolnikov is pursued by the growing voice of his conscience and finds the noose of his own guilt tightening around his neck. Only Sonya, a downtrodden prostitute, can offer the chance of redemption. This vivid translation by David McDuff has been acclaimed as the most accessible version of Dostoyevsky’s great novel, rendering its dialogue with a unique force and naturalism. This edition also includes a new chronology of Dostoyevsky’s life and work.

A young man arrives in the Ukraine, clutching in his hand a tattered photograph. He is searching for the woman who fifty years ago saved his grandfather from the Nazis. Unfortunately, however, he is aided in his quest by Alex, a translator with an uncanny ability to mangle English into bizarre new forms; a ‘blind’ old man haunted by memories of the war; and an undersexed guide dog named Sammy Davis Jr, Jr. What they are looking for seems elusive – a truth hidden behind veils of time, language and the horrors of war. What they find turns all their worlds upside down …

White Teeth is a comic epic of multicultural Britain which tells the story of immigrants in England over a period of 40 years.

The Penguin Writers' Guides series provides authoritative, succinct and easy-to-follow guidance on specific aspects of written English. Whether you need to brush up your skills or get to grips with something for the first time, these invaluable Guides will help you find the best way to get your message across clearly and effectively. Many of us are spending more and more time using emails, especially at work. This practical guide steers you through all the basics and netiquette' of emailing strangers, business contacts and colleagues: from setting up an email account, presentation and formatting of your emails to how to avoid offensive blunders and the legal issues surrounding this kind of writing. It offers indispensable guidance for simple and direct writing — including cultural differences, appropriate language and common pitfalls — so that your emails give the best possible impression.

'On a slow chilly Sunday in January, shortly after the Lakers overcame a sixteen point halftime deficit and beat New Jersey, I got a call from a murderer'. Eight years ago, psychologist Alex Delaware evaluated two teenage boys charged with the shocking murder of young Kristal Malley. Now one of the killers is out of prison — and wants to meet up with Alex. But by the time the pair do come face to face again, one of them is dead. Was Rand Duchay just another victim of an LA street crime? Or is something more sinister going on here? Alex and Detective Milo Sturgis mean to find out. To do so, they will follow a trail of blood that will lead them to the depths of cruelty — and straight to the heart of murderous betrayal.

Philip Swallow, Morris Zapp, Persse McGarrigle, the lovely Angelica — the jet-propelled academics are on the move, in the air, on the make, in Small World.

Considered by many to be the greatest novel ever written, Tolstoy's masterpiece is a story of family life set against the backdrop of war. The novel begins in 1805 in the crowded and gossip-filled rooms of a St Petersburg party and follows the fortunes of the aristocratic Bolkonsky and Rostov families as Napoleon's armies sweep through Europe, culminating in the French invasion of Russia in 1812 and Napoleon's defeat. Tolstoy's vast novel takes in both the epic sweep of national events and the private experience of individuals, from the keen young soldier to Napoleon himself, and at the heart of it all the complicated triangle of affection that binds his central characters.

Glamour. Duty. Tragedy: The Woman Behind the Princess. Sarah Bradford delivers an authoritative and explosive study of the greatest icon of the twentieth century: Diana. After more than a decade interviewing those closest to the Princess and her select circle, Sarah Bradford exposes the real Diana: the blighted childhood, the old-fashioned courtship which saw her capture the Prince of Wales, the damage caused by the spectre of Camilla Parker Bowles, through to the collapse of the royal marriage and Diana's final and complicated year as single woman. Diana paints an honest portrait of a woman riddled with contradictions and whose vulnerability and unique empathy with the suffering made her one of the most extraordinary figures of the modern age.

A heartwarming tale of a girl's constant affection and goodness through wealth and destitution. As a young child Sara Crewe is brought over from India by her father to join a girls' seminary in London. Her greatest joy is to «pretend» things to make life more magical, both for herself and those less fortunate than herself. She is a general favourite, but her splendid clothes, French maid and personal carriage set her apart from the rest and create jealousy in Miss Minchin, the avaricious head of the school. When she is suddenly and tragically thrown into poverty Sara must keep a strong hold on her vivid imagination and tender heart to prove to those who ill-treat her that even through hardship and want she can remain «a little princess». This timeless classic will never lose its appeal to both adults and children alike.

Adventurer Richard Hannay has just returned from South Africa and is thoroughly bored with his London life — until a murder is committed in his flat, just days after the victim had warned him of an assassination plot that could bring Britain to the brink of war. An obvious suspect for the police and an easy target for the killers, Hannay goes on the run in his native Scotland, where he must use all his wits to stay one step ahead of the game — and warn the government before it is too late. One of the most popular adventure stories ever written, The Thirty-Nine Steps established John Buchan as the original thriller writer and inspired many other novelists and filmmakers including Alfred Hitchcock.

The sweet scents of rural life infuse this beautifully crafted collection of Roald Dahl's country stories, but there is always something unexpected lurking in the undergrowth ... Whether it is taking a troublesome cow to be mated with a prime bull; dealing with a rat-infested hayrick; learning the ways and means of maggot farming; or describing the fine art of poaching pheasants using nothing but raisins and sleeping pills, Roald Dahl brings his stories of everyday country folk and their strange passions wonderfully to life. Lacing each tale with dollops of humour and adding a sprinkling of the sinister, Dahl ensures that this collection is brimful of the sweet mysteries of life.

The Red Army had much to avenge when it finally reached the frontiers of the Reich in January 1945. Political instructors rammed home the message of Wehrmacht and SS brutality. The result was the most terrifying example of fire and sword ever known, with tanks crushing refugee columns under their tracks, mass rape, pillage and destruction. Hundreds of thousands of women and children froze to death or were massacred because Nazi Party chiefs, refusing to face defeat, had forbidden the evacuation of civilians. Over seven million fled westwards from the terror of the Red Army. Antony Beevor reconstructs the experiences of those millions caught up in the nightmare of the Third Reich's final collapse, telling a terrible story of pride, stupidity, fanatacism, revenge and savagery, but also one of astonishing endurance, self-sacrifice and survival against all odds.

As the citizens of an unnamed Caribbean nation creep through the dusty corridors of the presidential palace in search of their tyrannical leader, they cannot comprehend that the frail and withered man laying dead on the floor can be the self-styled General of the Universe. Their egocentric, maniacally violent leader, known for serving up traitors to dinner guests and drowning young children at sea, can surely not die the humiliating death of a mere mortal? Tracing the demands of a man whose egocentric excesses mask the loneliness of isolation and whose lies have become so ingrained that they are indistinguishable from truth, Marquez has created a fantastical portrait of despotism that rings with an air of reality.

Sweeping through crumbling towns, travelling fairs and windswept ports, Gabriel García Márquez introduces a host of extraordinary characters and communities in his mesmerising tales of everyday life: smugglers, bagpipers, the President and Pope at the funeral of Macondo’s revered matriarch; a very old angel with enormous wings, stranded in a young couple’s back garden; a town plagued by dying birds that fall from the sky and an awestruck village captivated by a beautiful drowned sailor. Teeming with the magical oddities for which his novels are loved, Márquez’s stories are a delight.

Jonathan Coe’s previous novel, «The Rotters’ Club», was a novel of innocence: a nostalgic, humorous evocation of adolescent life in 1970s Britain. «The Closed Circle» is its mirror image: a novel of experience. On Millennium night, with Blair presiding over a superficially cool, sexed-up new version of the country, Benjamin Trotter finds himself watching the celebrations on his parents’ TV in the same Birmingham house in which he grew up. Watching, in fact, his younger brother, Paul, now a bright young New Labour MP who has bought wholeheartedly into the Blairite dream. Neither of them can know that their lives are about to implode. Set against the backdrop of Britain’s racial and social tensions and the country’s increasingly compromised role in America’s ‘war against terrorism’, «The Closed Circle» shuttles between London and Birmingham, taking in fat cats, media advisers and political protestors. As its characters struggle to make sense of the perennial problems of love, vocation and family in a changing world, it offers a bitter-sweet conclusion to the unfinished business of The Rotters’ Club.

You open your home and your heart to a victim. But your house is anything but safe... Samantha Laschen is a doctor specialising in post-traumatic stress disorder. She's moved to the coast to escape her problems and to be alone with her young daughter. But now the police want her to take in Fiona Mackenzie, a girl whose parents have been savagely murdered. Yet by allowing Fiona in, Sam is exposing herself — and her daughter — to risks she couldn't possibly have imagined...