Penguin Group

Kerstin Kvist enters crumbling Lydstep Old Hall to live with the Cosways and to act as nurse to John: a grown man fed drugs by his family to control his lunatic episodes. But John's strangeness is grotesquely mirrored in that of his four sisters who roam the dark, mazy Essex country house under the strict gaze of eighty-year-old Mrs Cosway. Despite being treated as an outsider, Kerstin is nevertheless determined to help John. But she soon discovers that there are others in the family who are equally as determined that John remain isolated, for sinister reasons of their own…

'Big Daddy' Pollitt, the richest cotton planter in the Mississippi Delta, is about to celebrate his sixty-fifth birthday. His two sons have returned home for the occasion: Gooper, his wife and children, Brick, an ageing football hero who has turned to drink, and his feisty wife Maggie. As the hot summer evening unfolds, the veneer of happy family life and Southern gentility gradually slips away as unpleasant truths emerge and greed, lies, jealousy and suppressed sexuality threaten to reach boiling point. Made into a film starring Elizabeth Taylor and Paul Newman, «Cat on a Hot Tin Roof» is a masterly portrayal of family tensions and individuals trapped in prisons of their own making.

Following a treacherous rescue mission high in the freezing Alps, James Bond is preparing for life back at Eton. But James is under surveillance; his every move is being watched. He alone holds the clue to a sinister plot that will bring bloodshed and carnage to his school — and his country. Life for James Bond will never be the same again.

December 1899 – New York City Manhattan has bid farewell to its brightest star, the dazzling Miss Holland. Yet the rumours about her untimely demise continue. Meanwhile, her sister, the irrepressible Diana, has been seen in the company of not one, but three eligble bachelors. Might there be a fourth? In High Society reputation is everything. The Holland family simply can't afford to be the subject of such wicked whispers. Heaven forbid that they should fall so spectacularly from grace.. There is a very fine line between truth and love, lies and hate. And all is about to be gloriously revealed.

Two months have passed since the dramatic homecoming of Elizabeth Holland — Manhattan society eagerly awaits her return. But Elizabeth won't rejoin her sister Diana's side. The whispers are beginning — is all as it seems behind closed doors? Uptown, Henry and Penelope Schoonmaker are the city's most celebrated couple. But despite the glittering diamond she wears, the newlyweds share little more than scorn for each other. Manhattan's most envied residents appear to have everything they desire: wealth, beauty, happiness. However, in a city where appearance is everything, sometimes the most practiced smiles hide the most scandalous secrets...

Tevye is the compassionate, lovable, Bible-quoting dairyman from Anatevka, and «Tevye the Dairyman» is a heartwarming and poignant account of life in turn-of-the-century Russia. Through the workaday world of a rural dairyman, his grit, wit, and heart, his daughters' courtships and marriages, and the eventual menace of the pogroms, Sholem Aleichem reveals the fabric of a now-vanished world. Motl is the clear-eyed, spirited, mischievous boy who narrates «Motl the Cantor's Son», a comic novel about his emigration with his family from Russia to America. It is a journey that mirrors a larger exodus, telling the story of the disintegration of traditional Jewish life and the beginning of a new chapter of Jewish history in America.

Skeeve the Magnificent, magician to kings and King of Magicians, Businessman and Problem-Solver Extraordinaire, has come out of retirement. And he’s set up shop in the Bazaar, right on the home turf of his old company, M.Y.T.H. Inc. Too bad his former co-worker, Aahz the Pervect, is not exactly thrilled with the competition. Looks like a little wager is in order.

After the natural disaster of Hurricane Katrina and the manmade explosion at the vampire summit, everyone—human and otherwise—is stressed, including Louisiana cocktail waitress Sookie Stackhouse, who is trying to cope with the fact that her boyfriend, Quinn, has gone missing. It’s clear that things are changing—whether the weres and vamps of her corner of Louisiana like it or not. And Sookie—Friend to the Pack and blood-bonded to Eric Northman, leader of the local vampire community—is caught up in the changes. In the ensuing battles, Sookie faces danger, death, and once more, betrayal by someone she loves. And when the fur has finished flying and the cold blood finished flowing, her world will be forever altered.

The Mad Hatter, the Ugly Duchess, the Mock Turtle, the Queen of Hearts, the Cheshire Cat-characters each more eccentric than the last, and that could only have come from Lewis Carroll, the master of sublime nonsense. In these two brilliant burlesques he created two of the most famous and fantastic novels of all time that not only stirred our imagination but revolutionized literature.

A time-travelling romp about a 20th-century man who finds himself in Vienna in the 1890s. It´s a wonderful look at fathers and sons, as well as a cracking love story!

Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley is a long way from Hollywood. And that’s exactly how Cilla McGowan wants it. Cilla, a former child star who has found more satisfying work as a restorer of old houses, has come to her grandmother’s farmhouse, tools at her side, to rescue it from ruin. Sadly, no one was able to save her grandmother, the legendary Janet Hardy. An actress with a tumultuous life, Janet entertained glamorous guests and engaged in decadent affairs—but died of an overdose in this very house more than thirty years earlier. To this day, Janet haunts Cilla’s dreams. And during waking hours, Cilla is haunted by her melodramatic, five-times-married mother, who carried on in the public spotlight and never gave her a chance at a normal childhood. By coming east, rolling up her sleeves, and rehabbing this wreck of a house, Cilla intends to find some kind of normalcy for herself. Plunging into the project with gusto, she’s almost too busy to notice her neighbor, graphic novelist Ford Sawyer—but his lanky form, green eyes, and easy, unflappable humor (not to mention his delightfully ugly dog, Spock) are hard to ignore. Determined not to perpetuate the family tradition of ill-fated romances, Cilla steels herself against Ford’s quirky charm, but she can’t help indulging in a little fantasy. But love and a peaceful life may not be in the cards for Cilla. In the attic, she has found a cache of unsigned letters suggesting that Janet Hardy was pregnant when she died—and that the father was a local married man. Cilla can’t help but wonder what really happened all those years ago. The mystery only deepens with a series of intimidating acts and a frightening, violent assault. And if Cilla and Ford are unable to sort out who is targeting her and why, she may—like her world-famous grandmother— be cut down in the prime of her life.

In 1943, Argentina Marine pilotturned-agent Cletus Frade is setting up an OSS-operated airline. But before Frade can get airborne, two interwoven German operations must be grounded. And for Frade—whose father was killed by the Nazis—the mission is about to get personal.

The Normandy Landings that took place on D-Day involved by far the largest invasion fleet ever known. The scale of the undertaking was simply awesome. What followed them was some of the most cunning and ferocious fighting of the war, at times as savage as anything seen on the Eastern Front. As casualties mounted, so too did the tensions between the principal commanders on both sides. Meanwhile, French civilians caught in the middle of these battlefields or under Allied bombing endured terrible suffering. Even the joys of Liberation had their darker side. The war in northern France marked not just a generation but the whole of the post-war world, profoundly influencing relations between America and Europe. Making use of overlooked and new material from over thirty archives in half a dozen countries, «D-Day» is the most vivid and well-researched account yet of the battle of Normandy. As with Stalingrad and Berlin, Antony Beevor's gripping narrative conveys the true experience of war.

On the evening of March 16, 2008, Bear Stearns, a swashbuckling eighty-five-year-old institution in the financial world, sold itself for an outrageously low price to the $2 trillion global behemoth JP Morgan Chase. Bear Stearns no longer existed, and the calamitous financial meltdown of 2008 had begun. What went wrong? In House of Cards bestselling author and former investment banker William Cohan gives the reader a front-row seat at Wall Street’s catastrophic unravelling at the seams, and the end of the Second Gilded Age on Wall Street. Through the prism of Bear Stearns, he shows how a combination of risky bets, corporate political infighting, lax government regulations and truly bad decision-making have wrought havoc on the world financial system. Cohan’s minute-by-minute account of those ten days in March makes for breathless reading, as the bankers at Bear Stearns struggled to contain the cascading series of events that would doom the firm, as the US government and federal bank began to realize the dire consequences for the world economy should the company go bankrupt. But HOUSE OF CARDS does more than recount the incredible panic of the first stages of the financial meltdown. William D. Cohan beautifully demonstrates why the seemingly invincible Wall Street money machine came crashing down. He chronicles the swashbuckling corporate culture of Bear Stearns, the strangely crucial role competitive bridge played in the company’s fortunes, the brutal internecine battles for power, and the deadly combination of greed and inattention that helps to explain why the company’s leaders ignored the danger lurking in Bear’s huge positions in mortgage-backed securities. Full of insider knowledge and larger-than-life characters, such as Ace Greenberg, Bear Stearns’ miserly, take-no-prisoners chairman and his profane, colorful rival Jimmy Cayne, whose world-champion-level bridge skills were a lever in his corporate rise and the firm’s demise; and Jamie Dimon, the blunt-talking CEO of JPMorgan Chase, who won in the end, House of Cards is a shocking tale of greed, arrogance and stupidity in the financial world, and the consequences for all of us.

Explore Thailand’s fascinating natural wonders with the Rough Guide Map to Thailand – printed on waterproof, rip-proof paper, this fully updated map pin-points the best the country has on offer, from the frenetic, bustling city of Bangkok, to the historically significant River Kwai, as well as the dozens of idyllic islands and National Parks, where world-class diving and snorkelling are a must. Reliable and user-friendly, the Rough Guide Map to Thailand boasts innovative, legible colouring for relief features and detailed travel information researched on the ground. There are latitude and longitude grids and road distances for easy trip planning and to ensure planning your trip to this diverse, beautiful and culturally rich country is as easy as possible.

The Rough Guide to Moscow is the definitive guide to one of Europe’s most fascinating and rewarding cities. The full-colour introduction covers the awe-inspiring Kremlin and The Red Square and includes the essential list of ‘what not to miss’. There are lively explorations of all the sights, from Moscow’s lavish palaces to world-class museums, as well as detailed accounts of Russian history and politics that have formed this intriguing city. You’ll find two full-colour sections that highlight the New Moscow Style – contemporary art, design, fashion, galleries, boutiques, bars and clubs – and the magnificent art-deco metro, famous for its arts, murals, mosaics and ornate chandeliers. With updated and easy-to-use maps, expanded listings of nightlife, restaurants and hotels in Moscow for all budgets, The Rough Guide to Moscow is the must-have item to this colourful and spirited city. Make the most of your time with The Rough Guide to Moscow.

Every time Mr Fox steals a chicken from the farm, Farmers Boggis, Bunce and Bean grow wild with rage! They’re the nastiest crooks in the valley, and they’ve concocted a cunning plan to dig him out of his hole once and for all. But it never occurs to them that Mr Fox has a fantastic plan of his own... Releasing October 2009, Wes Anderson and Twentieth Century Fox bring to life Roald Dahl’s classic tale in breathtaking stop-motion animation. With a cast that includes George Clooney, Meryl Streep and Bill Murray, this film is guaranteed to delight Dahl fans of every age.

Topsy and Tim are always finding fun adventures in the real world, and this story is reassuring for young children having first experiences of their own. In Go on an Aeroplane share Topsy and Tim's aeroplane adventure as they meet the stewardess, the pilot. Also, learn all about the airport and discover that sucking sweets can stop little ears from popping! A trusted and well-loved pair who can help guide parents and children through 'first experiences', Topsy and Tim books have been beautifully updated with contemporary artwork. Topsy & Tim remain instantly recognisable to parents while in a fresh style that will appeal to a new generation of fans. Re-launching in April 2008 with the bestselling titles Learning to Swim, The New Baby, Start School, Go on an Aeroplane, Go Green and Have a Birthday Party these wonderful books deserve a place on the bookshelves of the next generation.

Topsy and Tim find fun and adventure in the real world. Their engaging stories are reassuring for young children having first experiences of their own. In Topsy and Tim: Go to the Dentist children can find out how to keep their teeth healthy and discover that going to the dentist isn't such a scary experience after all. A trusted and well-loved pair who can help guide parents and children through 'first experiences', Topsy and Tim books have been beautifully updated with contemporary artwork. Topsy & Tim remain instantly recognisable to parents while in a fresh style that will appeal to a new generation of fans, these wonderful books deserve a place on every child's bookshelves.

Topsy and Tim find fun and adventure in the real world. Their engaging stories are reassuring for young children having first experiences of their own. In Topsy and Tim: Go to the Zoo you can find out about all the animals they see and how the zookeepers look after them. A trusted and well-loved pair who can help guide parents and children through 'first experiences', Topsy and Tim books have been beautifully updated with contemporary artwork. Topsy & Tim remain instantly recognisable to parents while in a fresh style that will appeal to a new generation of fans, these wonderful books deserve a place on every child's bookshelves.

Anne Latham didn't know how complicated life could be until she became a werewolf. And until she was mated to Charles Cornick, the son and enforcer of Bran, the leader of the North American werewolves, she didn't know how dangerous it could be either... Anna and Charles have just been enlisted to attend a summit to present Bran's controversial proposition: that the wolves should finally reveal themselves to humans. But the most feared Alpha in Europe is dead set against the plan and it seems like someone else might be, too. When Anna is attacked by vampires using pack magic, the kind of power only werewolves should be able to draw on, Charles and Anna must combine their talents to hunt down whoever is behind it all or risk losing everything...

During the Nazis' brutal siege of Leningrad, Lev Beniov is arrested for looting and thrown into the same cell as a handsome deserter named Kolya. Instead of being executed, Lev and Kolya are given a shot at saving their own lives by complying woth an outrageous directive: secure a dozen eggs for a powerful Soviet colonel to use in his daughter's wedding cake. In a city cut off from all supplies and suffering unbelievable deprivation, Lev and Kolya embark on a hunt through the dire lawlessness of Leningrad and behind enemy lines to find the impossible. By turns insightful and funny, thrilling and terrifying, City of Thieves is a gripping, cinematic World War II adventure and an intimate coming-of-age story with an utterly contemporary feel for how boys become men.

For a woman married to the vampire of her nightmares, the honeymoon's over and reality bites... Pia Thomason is torn between two Dark Ones: her husband Kristoff — who doesn't trust her-and his best friend, Alec, who is MIA. So Pia goes back to her humdrum Seattle life, but fate has other plans. And she realizes that if she and Kristoff are going to be shackled together for better or worse, she may as well start to enjoy it...

In the privacy of her own home, and against her will, Susan Harris will experience an inconceivable act of terror. She will become the object of the ultimate computer's consuming obsession: to learn everything there is to know about human flesh.