Random House, Inc.

Deutschland heute: ein Netzwerk hochrangiger Politiker, führender Konzernchefs und toleranter Justizbehörden, die den Rechtsstaat aushöhlen, die Gemeinsinn durch Egoismus und Gesetze durch die Macht des Kapitals ersetzen. Wer wen erpresst, wer die Drahtzieher sind und warum die Justiz nicht ermittelt – dieses Buch enthüllt Gaunerkartelle, Korruptionsaffären und Verstrickungen von Ministern, Topmanagern und Staatsanwälten.

Es muss nicht immer Kaviar sein – für Russen schon gar nicht. Das wahre Symbol für Luxus und feine Lebensart ist in Russland die Ananas. Dieses Beispiel zeigt: Kulinarisch ist die ehemalige Sowjetunion hierzulande unbekanntes Terrain. Dank Wladimir Kaminer ist damit nun Schluss. Er führt durch Töpfe und Teller der alten Sowjetrepubliken, bringt dem Laien nebenbei Länder und Leute näher und natürlich die aufregendste Cuisine der Welt! Unterstützt wird er dabei von seiner Frau Olga, die besten Rezepte aus ihrer Sammlung beisteuert … Unvergessliche Begegnungen mit der sowjetischen Küche und ausgefallene Rezepte – ein Hochgenuss!

Philip Roth's twenty-seventh book takes its title from an anonymous fifteenth-century English allegorical play whose drama centres on the summoning of the living to death and whose hero, Everyman, is intended to be the personification of mankind. The fate of Roth's Everyman is traced from his first shocking confrontation with death on the idyllic beaches of his childhood summers and during his hospitalisation as a nine-year-old surgical patient through the crises of health that come close to killing him as a vigorous adult, and into his old age, when he is undone by the death and deterioration of his contemporaries and relentlessly stalked by his own menacing physical woes. A successful commercial advertising artist with a New York ad agency, he is the father of two sons who despise him and a daughter who adores him, the beloved brother of a good man whose physical well-being comes to arouse his bitter envy, and the lonely ex-husband of three very different women with whom he's made a mess of marriage. Everyman is a painful human story of the regret and loss and stoicism of a man who becomes what he does not want to be. The terrain of this savagely sad short novel is the human body, and its subject is the common experience that terrifies us all.

Ellie has a boyfriend! Interested in her — not in her best friends, Magda and Nadine! She and Russell are made for each other — drawn together by their shared enjoyment of art. If only Dad thought Russell was perfect too... And as Ellie runs into trouble with a parent who thinks his daughter is too young for after-dark trysts in the park with oh-so-gorgeous Russell, Magda has a crush on a teacher — and Nadine’s falling for slimy Liam again. What they need is a girls’ night out — Girls Out Late!

Magda is tall and glamorous, Nadine is willowy and ‘gothic’ and Ellie, well, Ellie is just plain normal. The three girls have been best friends ‘forever’ but now Ellie is convinced she’s fat; Nadine wants to be a model; and Magda worries that her appearance is giving guys the wrong idea… They all long to change their looks and they’re all under pressure!

REASONS TO READ MY BOOK, NUMBERS 1 TO 9 1. It’s about three girls in Year Nine 2. You can learn all sorts of secrets about me (I’m Ellie) 3. Ditto my best friend Nadine 4. Ditto my equally best friend Magda 5. You can see if your nine all-time heros/heroines match up with mine 6. You can squirm at my most embarrassing moments 7. You can have lots of laughs (mostly at me!) 8. You might even cry a bit, too 9. PLUS, you get to find out a lot more about BOYS!

Ellie, Magda and Nadine are back — but they're not very happy! Ellie's glorious romance with Russell is teetering on the rocks. Magda's lost her pet and is desperately upset (though the others didn't even know she still had a hamster!). And Nadine is fed up with the other two lecturing her about the dangers of meeting someone on the Internet. She thinks her e-mail boyfriend sounds wonderful! Buckets of tears are wept and hundreds of tissues sniffled into. Can the girls' friendship survive these testing times? A superb fourth instalment in the «Girls» series, following «Girls In Love», «Girls Under Pressure» and «Girls Out Late». This book is a perfect read for older fans from the best-selling author, Jacqueline Wilson.

Economics is changing radically. This paradigm shift, the biggest in the field for over a century, will have profound implications for business, government and society for decades to come. In this groundbreaking book, economic thinker and writer Eric Beinhocker surveys the cutting-edge ideas of the leading economists, physicists, biologists and cognitive scientists who are fundamentally reshaping economics, and brings their work alive for a broad audience. These researchers argue that the economy is a ‘complex adaptive system’, more akin to the brain, the internet or an ecosystem than to the static picture of economic systems portrayed by traditional theory. They claim it is the evolutionary process of differentiation, selection and amplification, acting on designs for technologies, social institutions and businesses that drives growth in the economy over time. If Adam Smith provided the inspiration for economics in the twentieth century, it is Charles Darwin who is providing it in the twenty-first. If we can understand how evolution creates wealth, then we can better answer the question ‘How can we create more wealth for the benefit of individuals, businesses and society?’ Beinhocker shows how 'Complexity Economics' turns conventional wisdom on its head in areas such as business strategy, the design of organisations, the workings of stock markets and public policy. As sweeping in scope as its title, «The Origin of Wealth» is a landmark book that shatters orthodox economic theory, and will rewire our thinking about how we came to be here – and where we are going.

Winston Churchill 'mobilized the English language and sent it into battle'. President John F. Kennedy conferring Honorary US Citizenship, April 1963 Winston Churchill was the most eloquent and expressive statesman of his age. When Britain stood alone and all but defenceless, with his resolute and pugnacious tone and puckish sense of humour he inspired his fellow-countrymen to resist, to fight and to conquer. While the definitive collection of Churchill's speeches fills eight volumes, here, his grandson, Winston S. Churchill, has put together a personal selection of his favourite speeches in a single volume. He has chosen from his grandfather's entire output covering the whole of Churchill's life, from his maiden speech to his last days. It includes Churchill's best-known speeches as well as some that have never been published in popular form.

There is currently an epidemic of 'affluenza' throughout the world — an obsessive, envious, keeping-up-with-the-Joneses — that has resulted in huge increases in depression and anxiety among millions. Over a nine-month period, bestselling author Oliver James travelled around the world to try and find out why. He discovered how, despite very different cultures and levels of wealth, affluenza is spreading. Cities he visited include Sydney, Singapore, Moscow, Copenhagen, New York and Shanghai, and in each place he interviewed several groups of people in the hope of finding out not only why this is happening, but also how one can increase the strength of one's emotional immune system. He asks: why do so many more people want what they haven't got and want to be someone they're not, despite being richer and freer from traditional restraints? And, in so doing, uncovers the answer to how to reconnect with what really matters and learn to value what you've already got. In other words, how to be successful and stay sane.

You go into a bookshop and buy If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller by Italo Calvino. You like it. But alas there is a printer’s error in your copy. You take it back to the shop and get a replacement. But the replacement seems to be a totally different story. You try to track down the original book you were reading but end up with a different narrative again. This remarkable novel leads you through many different books including a detective adventure, a romance, a satire, an erotic story, a diary and a quest. But the real hero is you, the reader.

This intimate, shocking — and thoroughly unauthorized — portrait of the Hiltons chronicles the family’s amazing odyssey from poverty and obscurity to glory and glamour. From Conrad Hilton, the eccentric “innkeeper to the world” who built a global empire beginning with a fleabag in a dusty Texas backwater, to Paris Hilton, his great-granddaughter, whose fame took off with a sex video, «House of Hilton» is the unauthorized, eye-popping portrait of one of America’s most outrageous dynasties. If you want to know how Paris Hilton became who she is, you have to know where she came from. From scores of candid and exclusive interviews, from private documents and public records, New York Times bestselling author Jerry Oppenheimer has dug deeply into her paternal and maternal family roots to reveal the often shocking, tragic, and comic lives that helped shape the world’s most famous and fabulous “celebutante”. The cast of characters includes Paris’s maternal grandmother, a materialistic “stage mother from hell”. There is Paris’s maternal grandfather, who became an alcoholic housepainter. The life of Paris’s mother, Kathy Hilton, groomed by her mother to be a star and marry rich, is candidly revealed, too, as is that of Paris’s father, Rick, Conrad’s grandson. Paris’s tabloid antics are truly in the Hilton tradition. Set against a glittery Hollywood backdrop — with appearances by stars like Elizabeth Taylor, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Natalie Wood, and Joan Collins — House of Hilton brings to light a cornucopia of closely held Hilton family secrets and sexual peccadilloes, such as the many affairs and the nightclub-brawling, boozing, and pill-popping life of Paris’s great-uncle, Nick Hilton. The story of his hellish marriage to Liz Taylor alone rivals any of today’s Hollywood breakups. Behind it all was Conrad Hilton, who built his worldwide empire through the Great Depression while others were jumping out of windows. A devout Catholic publicly, his personal life was that of an unrepentant sinner. His first marriage was to Mary Barron Hilton, a sexy, hard-drinking, gambling Kentucky teenager half Conrad’s age. Wife number two was the gorgeous Zsa Zsa, who, like Paris, was famous for being famous. Their tumultuous marriage and headline-making divorce are revealed here in all their juicy glory. In all, «House of Hilton» is a gripping American saga, from the fire and passions that built a business empire to the debauchery and amorality passed on from one generation to the next.

The new grand theory of leadership by Ram Charan... The breakthrough book that links know-how —the skills of people who know what they are doing — with the personal and psychological traits of the successful leader. How often have you heard someone with a commanding presence deliver a bold vision that turned out to be nothing more than rhetoric and hot air? All too often we mistake the appearance of leadership for the real deal. Without a doubt, intelligence, vision, and the ability to communicate are important. But something big is missing: the know-how of running a business — the capacity to take it in the right direction, do the right things, make the right decisions, deliver results, and leave the people and the business better off than they were before. For well over four decades, Ram Charan has been learning in the most visceral way the underlying reasons why leaders succeed and fail. As one of the most influential advisers to top management teams of leading companies around the world, he has had a front-row seat to observe the cause and effect of leadership practices and behaviors. Ram Charan’s insight into the real content of leadership provides you with the eight fundamental skills needed for success in the twenty-first century: • Positioning (and, when necessary, repositioning) your business by zeroing in on the central idea that meets customer needs and makes money • Connecting the dots by pinpointing patterns of external change ahead of others • Shaping the way people work together by leading the social system of your business • Judging people by getting to the truth of a person • Molding high-energy, high-powered, high-ego people into a working team of leaders in which they equal more than the sum of their parts • Knowing the destination where you want to take your business by developing goals that balance what the business can become with what it can realistically achieve • Setting laser-sharp priorities that become the road map for meeting your goals • Dealing creatively and positively with societal pressures that go beyond the economic value creation activities of your business «Know-How» is the missing link of leadership. By showing how the eight know-hows link to, interact with, and reinforce personal and psychological traits, Ram Charan provides a holistic and innovative portrait of successful leaders of the twenty-first century.

In April 1992 a young man from a well-to-do family hitchhiked to Alaska and walked alone into the wilderness north of Mt. McKinley. His name was Christopher Johnson McCandless. He had given $25,000 in savings to charity, abandoned his car and most of his possessions, burned all the cash in his wallet, and invented a new life for himself. Four months later, his decomposed body was found by a moose hunter....

The long-awaited novel from Nathan Englander, author of „For the Relief of Unbearable Urges“, which won the 2000 Pen/Malamud Award.

It was January 2021, and Rick Deckard had a license to kill. Somewhere among the hordes of humans out there, lurked several rogue androids. Deckard's assignmet — find them and then...»retire» them. Trouble was, the androids all looked exactly like humans, and they didn't want to be found!

2,300 years ago an unbeaten army of the West invaded the homeland of a fierce Eastern tribal foe. This is one soldier’s story... The bestselling novelist of ancient warfare returns with a riveting historical novel that re-creates Alexander the Great’s invasion of the Afghan kingdoms in 330 b.c. In a story that might have been ripped from today’s combat dispatches, Steven Pressfield brings to life the confrontation between an invading Western army and fierce Eastern warriors determined at all costs to defend their homeland. Narrated by an infantryman in Alexander’s army, The Afghan Campaign explores the challenges, both military and moral, that Alexander and his soldiers face as they embark on a new type of war and are forced to adapt to the methods of a ruthless foe that employs terror and insurgent tactics. An edge-of-your-seat adventure, The Afghan Campaign once again demonstrates Pressfield’s profound understanding of the hopes and desperation of men in battle and of the historical realities that continue to influence our world.

»Arctic Tale» accompanies a new Paramount Vantage motion picture from the producers of March of the Penguins, a 2005 Academy Award winner. The film, narrated by Queen Latifah, follows the dual drama of Seela and Nanu, a walrus calf and polar bear cub, as they embark on their astonishing journey from infancy to maturity amidst the stark beauty of the Arctic landscape. Protected by mothers who will stop at nothing to ensure their safe passage to adulthood, both cubs romp in their cold playground as ever-present threats of starvation, predators, and a harsh homeland are overcome in an unrelenting life-and-death struggle to survive.

Batman strikes fear in the hearts of criminals, but there’s a killer stalking Gotham who’s even better at inspiring fright – and his method just might be unbeatable...because it’s invisible. Unbeknownst to the general public, a powerful new designer drug has hit the streets of Gotham, courtesy of an evil genius determined to turn the expression “scared to death” into lethal reality. Unlike the Caped Crusader, who petrifies only villains, this mastermind is targeting decent citizens – and he’s come up with the ultimate delivery system. After all, the public can’t refuse something they can’t see, hear, or smell. That’s the beauty of a terror toxin that is undetectable by the human senses. And with all of Gotham’s super-villains incarcerated, Batman must hunt down a mystery madman about whom he knows nothing. Maybe the Dark Knight should be afraid...because there’s plenty to fear when you go head-to-head with fear itself.

Most Americans today are aware that jobs are being outsourced to China, India, and other nations at an alarming rate. From factory jobs to white-collar, high-tech positions, the exporting of labor is one of the most controversial issues in America. Yet few people know much about the other end — about the people who are actually working these jobs and how their own lives have been throw into tumult by these new economic forces. Andrew Ross spent a year in China, interviewing local employees and their managers in Taiwan, Shanghai, and the far western provinces. In this engaging and informative book, he shows how the Chinese workforce has inherited many of the same worries as American workers, such as job instability, long hours, and awareness of their own expendability. He reports on the daily reality of corporate free trade and explores the growing competition between China and India. This is an eye-opening exploration of an unseen side of our globalized world.

A heart-stopping adventure that places Cotton Malone and his family in grave peril… An ambitious and explosive thriller with a historical twist!

Denmark Wheeler had it all: a gorgeous wife, Sierra, whom he passionately loved, and a respectable job that allowed him to keep her living in the style to which she was accustomed. The good life wasn’t handed to him on a silver platter, though. Growing up in the Cleveland ghetto, his father was shot by a drug addict, he worked the streets to help his sister through college, and he made his fair share of enemies along the way. Yet not even his tough upbringing prepared him for the mysterious DVD that showed up on his doorstep, its contents revealing an explicit sexual encounter between his wife and another man, whose face was purposely blurred. Sierra’s betrayal is heart wrenching, and Denmark’s on the warpath to find out the identity of the man behind it. One thing’s sure: It’s someone close to him. Suddenly everyone is suspect, especially his two best buddies, and he’ll stop at nothing to exact his revenge – even if it means sleeping with their wives to get it. But when Denmark takes justice into his own hands, he discovers a truth even more shocking than his wife’s infidelity... In this gritty revenge tale, Freddie Lee Johnson III takes us into the mind of a man consumed with grief and rage. Full of jump-off-the-page characters and fast-paced drama, Other Men’s Wives is an explosive ride fueled by love, lust, and deceit.

There was never any question that Deirdre and Desmond Doyle would celebrate a gala twenty-fifth anniversary. Naturally, their daughter Anna, would plan their grand affair. Of all three Doyle children, Anna knew exactly what their mother wished — even as she lived her own secret life. Will Brendan, the rebellious son, even bother to return to London? Will Helen, the hapless would-be nun, embarrass them all? This is Deirdre’s day, a triumph for a woman obsessed with keeping up appearances, her silvery revenge after “marrying down” twenty-five years ago. She’s determined to show them all: the maid of honor, still unmarried, still gorgeous, now a successful London business woman…the best man, once Desmond’s close friend, now his boss…their reluctant priest, who harbors his own guilty secret. As family and friends gather, a lifetime of lies takes its toll. But what begins as a family charade brings with it the transforming power of love — and truth.

The Soviet writer Andrey Platonov saw much of his work suppressed or censored in his lifetime. In recent decades, however, these lost works have reemerged, and the eerie poetry and poignant humanity of Platonov’s vision have become ever more clear. For Nadezhda Mandelstam and Joseph Brodsky, Platonov was the writer who most profoundly registered the spiritual shock of revolution. For a new generation of innovative post-Soviet Russian writers he figures as a daring explorer of word and world, the master of what has been called “alternative realism.” Depicting a devastated world that is both terrifying and sublime, Platonov is, without doubt, a universal writer who is as solitary and haunting as Kafka. This volume gathers eight works that show Platonov at his tenderest, warmest, and subtlest. Among them are “The Return”, about an officer’s difficult homecoming at the end of World War II, described by Penelope Fitzgerald as one of “three great works of Russian literature of the millennium”; “The River Potudan”, a moving account of a troubled marriage; and the title novella, the extraordinary tale of a young man unexpectedly transformed by his return to his Asian birthplace, where he finds his people deprived not only of food and dwelling, but of memory and speech. This prizewinning English translation is the first to be based on the newly available uncensored texts of Platonov’s short fiction.