Penguin Group

THE MOTIVE, the latest installment in the excellent series of legal thrillers/police procedurals by John Lescroart, is an excellent sequel to the two previous stories in the series. THE FIRST LAW (review 2/9/2003) was a completely atypical story in the series — it involved an incident that would unavoidably alter the relationship of attorney Dismas (Diz) Hardy and Deputy Police Chief Abraham (Abe) Glitsky forever as well as create a significant inflection point in both of their lives and careers. THE SECOND CHAIR (review 4/22/2004) involves Hardy's initial attempts to regain his personal and professional balance in the wake of that incident. In that novel, Hardy agrees to act as second chair to one of his young associates who is tempted to engage in a plea bargain for her young client in view of the apparently overwhelming evidence which the SFPD has assembled.

In this first novel by CNN political correspondent Mitchell, a Washington, D.C. consultant lands herself in the middle of a high-profile scandal when a former flame is accused of selling military secrets to the Chinese.

This is an all new version of the popular PARALLEL TEXT series, containing eight pieces of contemporary fiction in the original Italian and in English translation. Including stories by Calvino, Benni, Sciascia and Levi, this volume gives a fascinating insight into Italian culture and literature as well as providing an invaluable educational tool.

The Gift is the phantasmal autobiography of Fyodor Godunov-Cherdynstev, a writer living in the closed world of Russian intellectuals in Berlin shortly after the First World War. This gorgeous tapestry of literature and butterflies tells the story of Fyodor's pursuits as a writer. Its heroine is not Fyodor's elusive and beloved Zina, however, but Russian prose and poetry themselves.

Spurred on by admiration for his novelist half-brother and irritation at the biography written about him by Mr Goodman ('his slapdash and very misleading book'), the narrator, V, sets out to record Sebastian Knight's life as he understands it. But buried amid the extensive quoting, digressions, seeming explanations and digs, Sebastian's erratic and troubled persona remains as elusive as ever. Nabokov's first novel written in English, The Real Life of Sebastian Knight is a nuanced, enigmatic potrayal of the conflict between the real and the unreal, and the futile quest for human truth.

The master of wit and irony Published here alongside their evocative original illustrations, these fairy tales, as Oscar Wilde himself explained, were written partly for children, and partly for those who have kept the childlike faculties of wonder and joy.

No warrior will ever do a darker deed... Having killed a dragon and bathed in its blood, the mighty Siegfried seems undefeatable. But during a bitter family feud, his naive and beautiful wife reveals the truth to their foes: he has one terrible weakness. So Siegfried's enemies hatch a plan. They will pretend that the feud is forgotten. They will ask him to join them on a hunt. And, taking him with them into the dark depths of a forest, they will exploit that weakness and plunge a spear deep into his heart.

There have been eighty requests to send an Observer into the hinterlands of the planet Aka to study the natives. Much to everyone's surprise, the eighty-first request is granted, and Observer Sutty is sent upriver to Okzat-Ozkat, a small city in the foothills of Rangma, to talk to the remnants in hiding of a cult practising a banned religion. On Aka, everything that was written in the old scripts has been destroyed; modern aural literature is all written to Corporation specifications. The Corporation expects Sutty to report back so the non-standardised folk stories and songs can be wiped out and the people 're-educated'. But Sutty herself is in for an education she never imagined.

A lonely widower. A ruthless assassin. A beautiful woman. A government agent. Drawn together in a deadly hunt, all four are inexorably propelled towards a confrontation with an evil beyond all human imagining.

A beautiful woman scarred by a hateful past. A compassionate cop haunted by a childhood by poverty. Violence brought them together and an unspeakable abomination may tear them apart.

Russian novelist Victor Pelevin is rapidly establishing himself as one of the most brilliant young writers at work today. His comic inventiveness and mind-bending talent prompted Time magazine to proclaim him a psychedelic Nabokov for the cyber-age. In his third novel, Buddha's Little Finger, Pelevin has created an intellectually dazzling tale about identity and Russian history, as well as a spectacular elaboration of Buddhist philosophy. Moving between events of the Russian Civil War of 1919 and the thoughts of a man incarcerated in a contemporary Moscow psychiatric hospital, Buddha's Little Finger is a work of demonic absurdism by a writer who continues to delight and astonish.

Tolstoy startled the world with this powerful story of adultery and its aftermath, of the human need for love and happiness, and of the unyielding demands of society.

In an all-new afterword, Koontz explains the impact this novel has had on his career. One of his most chilling bestsellers — a tale of an abandoned town and the unimaginable truth behind its silence — was the basis for the 1998 motion picture starring Peter O'Toole and Ben Affleck, with the screenplay written by Koontz.

This novel based on the television program finds Jessica Fletcher on a visit to a reputedly haunted castle in Scotland, where a local lass is found murdered in same way as a legendary witch.

The second of two classic police thrillers featuring detective Nick Miller, set in London’s seedy underworld. After a long night on the job, Detective Sergeant Nick Miller is on his way home – only to become the first policeman at the scene of a young woman’s mysterious suicide. What’s odd is that it appears she tried to conceal her identity before doing herself in. Miller follows a hazardous trail to find the powerful man responsible for the girl’s fate, only to watch him walk out of court a free man. But the dead girl’s father swears to exact justice with or without the law on his side…

Cujo, a huge St Bernard, is bitten by a rabid bat and changes from a lovable pet into a ferocious man-eating monster. He slaughters his garage-owning master and, as madness eats at his brain, focuses his deranged attention on Donna Trenton and her five-year-old son, who are trapped in their car.

Krentz's latest fast-paced, well-plotted romantic thriller takes place in the tiny Napa Valley village of Dunster-perhaps named after the Amanda Quick heroine Emma Dunster. A mysterious e-mail from a childhood friend, Pamela Webb, draws big-city reporter Irene Stenson home, but when Irene arrives, Pamela is dead, apparently of a drug overdose. Handsome but damaged ex-Marine Luke Danner, who owns the lodge where Irene is staying, helps her look into the case. The plot thickens when Pamela's house gets torched shortly after she dies, and soon Irene and Luke follow a trail that leads to Pamela's father, a powerful senator who may have played a role in the death of Irene's parents when she was a young girl. When Senator Webb's PR flack is found murdered after getting caught up in a blackmail scheme and Luke and Irene start their predictable but torrid romance, Krentz sets up a series of compelling confrontations, as Irene comes up with information that could jeopardize Webb's impending White House run. The dialogue, which dominates the book, is strong throughout; the plot is tight. Flaws like secondary-character overload and one-dimensional takes on politics aside, this is an impressive page-turner from a master of the genre.

When it comes to relationships, Colin Singleton’s type is girls named Katherine. And when it comes to girls named Katherine, Colin is always getting dumped. Nineteen times, to be exact. On a road trip miles from home, this anagram-happy, washedup child prodigy has ten thousand dollars in his pocket, a bloodthirsty feral hog on his trail, and an overweight, Judge Judy–loving best friend riding shotgun — but no Katherines. Colin is on a mission to prove The Theorem of Underlying Katherine Predictability, which he hopes will predict the future of any relationship, avenge Dumpees everywhere, and finally win him the girl. Love, friendship, and a dead Austro-Hungarian archduke add up to surprising and heart-changing conclusions in this ingeniously layered comic novel about reinventing oneself.

The foundations of capitalism are being battered by a flood of altruism, which is the cause of the modern world's collapse. This is the view of Ayn Rand, a view so radically opposed to prevailing attitudes that it constitutes a major philosophic revolution. In this series of essays, she presents her stand on the persecution of big business, the causes of war, the student rebellion, and the evils of altruism.

When Fathers and Sons was first published in Russia, in 1862, it was met with a blaze of controversy about where Turgenev stood in relation to his account of generational misunderstanding. Was he criticizing the worldview of the conservative aesthete, Pavel Kirsanov, and the older generation, or that of the radical, cerebral medical student, Evgenii Bazarov, representing the younger one? The critic Dmitrii Pisarev wrote at the time that the novel «stirs the mind . . . because everything is permeated with the most complete and most touching sincerity.» N. N. Strakhov, a close friend of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, praised its «profound vitality.» It is this profound vitality in Turgenev's characters that carry his novel of ideas to its rightful place as a work of art and as one of the classics of Russian Literature.

P.B. Jones is the amoral, bisexual protagonist of this unfinished novel. He discovers that bed-hopping rather than literary ability is the way to get published. He discovers along the way that prayers that are answered cause more pain than those that remain ignored.

The Autobiographies of Charles Darwin (1809-82) provide a fascinating glimpse into the mind of one of the world's intellectual giants. They begin with engaging memories of his childhood and youth and of his burgeoning scientific curiosity and love of the natural world, which led to him joining the expedition on the Beagle. Darwin follows this with survey of his career and ends with a reckoning of his life's work. Interspersed with these recollections are fascinating portraits — from his devoted wife Emma and his talented father, both bullying and kind, to the leading figures of the Victorian scientific world he counted among his friends, including Lyell and Huxley. Honest and illuminating, these memoirs reveal a man who was isolated by his controversial beliefs and whose towering achievements were attained by a life-long passion for the discoveries of science.

Good, solid teams are the backbone of business success. Without teams made up of people prepared to share information, think creatively and move forward, any business gives itself a severe handicap. This pocket book should help managers to grasp what makes a team function well--and badly. Its chapters cover a full range of topics from understanding team roles and balancing skills to creating goals, improving standards and handing problems. In order to assure its relevance to the widest possible audience, the advice and information is often generalised, and you may need to find more detailed and focused support within your organisation. But the words of wisdom are sound and newcomers to management as well as old hands will find them a handy reference tool. And it is entirely possible that many a bad manager may find a copy of this book «appears» on their desk out of either the courtesy of the good management fairy--or disgruntled staff. — Sandra Vogel

A Christmas Eve snowstorm transforms one small town into a glittering, romantic holiday haven. Three of today's bestselling YA authors whip up a recipe for holiday romance, in this trio of hilarious interconnected tales of love.