Penguin Books LTD Digital
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A young prince meets with his father's ghost, who alleges that his own brother, now married to his widow, murdered him. The prince devises a scheme to test the truth of the ghost's accusation, feigning wild madness while plotting a brutal revenge. But his apparent insanity soon begins to wreak havoc on innocent and guilty alike.
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The bitter, deformed brother of the King is secretly plotting to seize the throne of England. Charming and duplicitous, powerfully eloquent and viciously cruel, he is prepared to go to any lengths to achieve his goal - and, in his skilful manipulation of events and people, Richard is a chilling incarnation of the lure of evil and the temptation of power.
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In Going Solo, the world's favourite storyteller, Roald Dahl, tells of life as a fighter pilot in Africa.
'They did not think for one moment that they would find anything but a burnt-out fuselage and a charred skeleton, and they were astounded when they came upon my still-breathing body lying in the sand nearby.' In 1938 Roald Dahl was fresh out of school and bound for his first job in Africa, hoping to find adventure far from home. However, he got far more excitement than he bargained for when the outbreak of the Second World War led him to join the RAF. His account of his experiences in Africa, crashing a plane in the Western Desert, rescue and recovery from his horrific injuries in Alexandria, flying a Hurricane as Greece fell to the Germans, and many other daring deeds, recreates a world as bizarre and unnerving as any he wrote about in his fiction.
'Very nearly as grotesque as his fiction. The same compulsive blend of wide-eyed innocence and fascination with danger and horror' Evening Standard 'A non-stop demonstration of expert raconteurship' The New York Times Book Review Roald Dahl, the brilliant and worldwide acclaimed author of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, James and the Giant Peach, Matilda, and many more classics for children, also wrote scores of short stories for adults. These delightfully disturbing tales have often been filmed and were most recently the inspiration for the West End play, Roald Dahl's Twisted Tales by Jeremy Dyson. Roald Dahl's stories continue to make readers shiver today.
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Widely regarded as the first modern autobiography, The Confessions is an astonishing work of acute psychological insight. Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-78) argued passionately against the inequality he believed to be intrinsic to civilized society. In his Confessions he relives the first fifty-three years of his radical life with vivid immediacy - from his earliest years, where we can see the source of his belief in the innocence of childhood, through the development of his philosophical and political ideas, his struggle against the French authorities and exile from France following the publication of émile. Depicting a life of adventure, persecution, paranoia, and brilliant achievement, The Confessions is a landmark work by one of the greatest thinkers of the Enlightenment, which was a direct influence upon the work of Proust, Goethe and Tolstoy among others.
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How far would you go to keep the man of your dreams?
From Liane Moriarty, the author of What Alice Forgot, The Hypnotist's Love Story is a stunning novel about love, life and knowing where to draw the line . . .
Hypnotherapist Ellen is fascinated by what makes people tick. So when she falls in love with Patrick, the fact that he has a stalker doesn't faze her in the slightest. If anything it intrigues her, and the more she hears about Saskia, the more she wants to meet this woman. But what Ellen doesn't know is that they've already met . . .
Saskia has been posing as one of Ellen's clients. Unable to let go of the life she so abruptly lost, she wants to know everything about the woman who took her place. And the further she inches her way into Ellen's world, the more trouble she stirs up.
Ellen's love story is about to take an unexpected turn. But it's not only Saskia who doesn't know where to stop: Ellen also has to ask herself what lines she's prepared to cross to get the happy ending she's always wanted.
Thought-provoking, sympathetic and smart, Liane Moriarty's The Hypnotist's Love Story is a novel for anyone who's ever loved, lost or found it hard to let go.
Praise for What Alice Forgot:
'Gripping, thought-provoking and funny' Marie Claire 'The perfect holiday read' She Magazine 'A call to embrace life' Easy Living Liane Moriarty is the author of three bestselling novels, Three Wishes, The Last Anniversary and What Alice Forgot. Writing as L.M.Moriarty, she is also the author of the Space Brigade books for children (published in the US as the Nicola Berry, Earthling Ambassador series). She lives in Sydney with her husband and son.
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Spud's nearly 15 and although he is no longer the youngest or the smallest in his dorm, his second year at boarding school is beset with women trouble, misguided late-night adventures and excruciating family visits. With his dreams of a stage career in tatters after a disastrous house play production of Noah's Ark, Spud, armed with only his wits and his diary, invites us to delve further into the mind of a boy who discovers that the long path to manhood is never easy... especially when all around him the madness continues...
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A compelling and beautiful story about a girl who learns to live from a boy who wants to die.'If you're looking for the next The Fault in Our Stars, this is it' - GuardianA New York Times bestseller.Soon to be a major film starring Elle Fanning.Theodore Finch is fascinated by death, and he constantly thinks of ways he might kill himself. But each time, something good, no matter how small, stops him. Violet Markey lives for the future, counting the days until graduation, when she can escape her Indiana town and her aching grief in the wake of her sister's recent death.When Finch and Violet meet on the ledge of the bell tower at school, it's unclear who saves whom. And when they pair up on a project to discover the 'natural wonders' of their state, both Finch and Violet make more important discoveries: It's only with Violet that Finch can be himself - a weird, funny, live-out-loud guy who's not such a freak after all. And it's only with Finch that Violet can forget to count away the days and start living them. But as Violet's world grows, Finch's begins to shrink. How far will Violet go to save the boy she has come to love?An intense, gripping novel, perfect for fans of John Green, Jay Asher, Rainbow Rowell, Gayle Forman and Jenny Downham.Selected as the launch title for the Zoella Book Club.'This book is amazing - I couldn't put it down' - Zoe Sugg aka Zoella'A searingly honest and heartbreakingly poignant tale about the power and beauty of love' - Heat'Sparkling' - Entertainment Weekly
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Two cousins grow up in the 1860s on a lonely farm in the thirsty mountain veld. Em is fat, sweet and contented, a born housewife; Lyndall, clever, restless, beautiful . . . and doomed. Their childhood is disrupted by a bombastic Irishman, Bonaparte Blenkins, who gains uncanny influence over the girls' gross, stupid stepmother . . . This novel is one of the most astonishing, least-expected fiction masterpieces of its time and one that has had an enduring influence.
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Hunting stories, like traveller's tales, are proverbially dangerous to reputations, however literally true they may be . . .' So wrote J Percy FitzPatrick of his perennial best-seller, never out of print in the century since its first publication. Here is the story of the 'Boy' who went to seek his fortune and of his bull-terrier, the plucky runt of the litter; of Marokela, the champion Zulu haulier; of Jantje, the Bushman with all his lore; and of pioneer types from previous goldrushes in California and Australia. A tribute to the life of the 1880s in the outposts of the agrarian Transvaal, this complete edition includes for the first time the author's 'Postscript' and 'The Creed of Jock'.
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'No sooner had he made it clear to himself and his friends that she had hardly a good feature in her face, than he began to find it was rendered uncommonly intelligent by the beautiful expression of her dark eyes ...' When Elizabeth Bennet first meets eligible bachelor Fitzwilliam Darcy, she thinks him arrogant and conceited; he is indifferent to her good looks and lively mind. When she later discovers that Darcy has involved himself in the troubled relationship between his friend Bingley and her beloved sister Jane, she is determined to dislike him more than ever. In the sparkling comedy of manners that follows, Jane Austen shows the folly of judging by first impressions and superbly evokes the friendships, gossip and snobberies of provincial middle-class life.
The Penguin English Library - 100 editions of the best fiction in English, from the eighteenth century and the very first novels to the beginning of the First World War.
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The Plague is Albert Camus's world-renowned fable of fear and courage The townspeople of Oran are in the grip of a deadly plague, which condemns its victims to a swift and horrifying death. Fear, isolation and claustrophobia follow as they are forced into quarantine. Each person responds in their own way to the lethal disease: some resign themselves to fate, some seek blame, and a few, like Dr Rieux, resist the terror.
An immediate triumph when it was published in 1947, The Plague is in part an allegory of France's suffering under the Nazi occupation, and a story of bravery and determination against the precariousness of human existence.
'A matchless fable of fear, courage and cowardice' Independent 'Magnificent'The Times Albert Camus was born in Algeria in 1913. He studied philosophy in Algiers and then worked in Paris as a journalist. He was one of the intellectual leaders of the Resistance movement and, after the War, established his international reputation as a writer. His books include The Plague, The Just and The Fall, and he won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1957. Camus was killed in a road accident in 1960.
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From the legendary author of Things Fall Apart comes this long-awaited memoir recalling Chinua Achebe's personal experiences of and reflections on the Biafran War, one of Nigeria's most tragic civil wars Chinua Achebe, the author of Things Fall Apart, was a writer whose moral courage and storytelling gifts have left an enduring stamp on world literature. There Was a Country was his long-awaited account of coming of age during the defining experience of his life: the Nigerian Civil War, also known as the Biafran War of 1967-1970. It became infamous around the world for its impact on the Biafrans, who were starved to death by the Nigerian government in one of the twentieth century's greatest humanitarian disasters.
/> Caught up in the atrocities were Chinua Achebe and his young family. Achebe, already a world-renowned novelist, served his Biafran homeland as a roving cultural ambassador, witnessing the war's full horror first-hand. Immediately after the war, he took an academic post in the United States, and for over forty years he maintained a considered silence on those terrible years, addressing them only obliquely through his poetry. After years in the making There Was A Country presents his towering reckoning with one of modern Africa's most fateful experiences, both as he lived it and came to understand it.
Marrying history and memoir, with the author's poetry woven throughout, There Was a Country is a distillation of vivid observation and considered research and reflection. It relates Nigeria's birth pangs in the context of Achebe's own development as a man and a writer, and examines the role of the artist in times of war.
Reviews:
'No writer is better placed than Chinua Achebe to tell the story of the Nigerian Biafran war ... [The book] makes you pine for the likes of Achebe to govern ... We have in There Was a Country an elegy from a master storyteller who has witnessed the undulating fortunes of a nation' Noo Saro-Wiwa, Guardian 'Chinua Achebe's history of Biafra is a meditation on the condition of freedom. It has the tense narrative grip of the best fiction. It is also a revelatory entry into the intimate character of the writer's brilliant mind and bold spirit. Achebe has created here a new genre of literature' Nadine Gordimer 'Part-history, part-memoir, [Achebe's] moving account of the war is laced with anger, but there is also an abiding tone of regret for what Nigeria might have been without conflict and mismanagement' Sunday Times About the author:
Chinua Achebe was born in Nigeria in 1930. He published novels, short stories, essays, and children's books. His volume of poetry, Christmas in Biafra, was the joint winner of the first Commonwealth Poetry Prize. Of his novels, Arrow of God won the New Statesman-Jock Campbell Award, and Anthills of the Savannah was a finalist for the 1987 Booker Prize. Things Fall Apart, Achebe's masterpiece, has been published in fifty different languages and has sold more than ten million copies. Achebe lectured widely, receiving many honors from around the world. He was the recipient of the Nigerian National Merit Award, Nigeria's highest award for intellectual achievement. In 2007, he won the Man Booker International Prize. He died in 2013.
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Beautiful Darkness (Book 2)
Kami Garcia Margaret Stohl
- Penguin books ltd digital
- 28 Octobre 2010
- 9780141958118
Beautiful Darkness is the second bewitching instalment in the bestselling love story Beautiful Creatures - a romance that is bound to capture the hearts of Twilight fans everywhere.
Some loves are meant to be. Others are cursed . . .
One night in the rain, Ethan Wate opened his eyes and fell in love with Lena Duchannes. His life would never be the same.
Lena is a Caster and her family is locked in a supernatural civil war: full of darkness and demons. On her sixteenth birthday Lena made a terrifying choice, which now haunts her day and night.
And as her seventeenth birthday approaches Lena and Ethan face even greater danger. A Caster and a Mortal can never truly be together.
Every kiss is a curse.
Ethan's next heartbeat could be his last.
It is their curse now . . .
*Don't miss the Warner Brothers and Alcon Entertainment blockbuster movie of Beautiful Creatures directed by Richard LaGravenese (P.S. I Love You) and featuring an all star cast including Emma Thompson, Jeremy Irons, Viola Davies and hot young Hollywood talent Alice Englert, Alden Ehrenreich and Emmy Rossum.
Praise for Beautiful Creatures:
'Watch out Twilight and Hunger Games' - The Guardian 'Move over Twilight, there's a new supernatural saga in town.' - E!
'This novel has been generating Twilight-level buzz.' - Teen Vogue About the authors:
B>kamigarcia is a superstitious American southerner who can make biscuits by hand and pies from scratch! She attended George Washington University and is a teacher and reading specialist. She lives in Los Angeles, California with her family.
@mstohl has written and designed many successful video games, which is why her two beagles are named Zelda and Kirby. She has degrees from Yale and Stanford Universities in the US and has also studied in the prestigious creative writing department at UEA, Norwich. She lives in Santa Monica, California with her family.
Www.beautifulcreaturesthebook.com Also available in the Beautiful Creatures series: Beautiful Creatures, Beautiful Chaos and Beautiful Redemption.
*Don't miss the brand new DANGEROUS CREATURES series, set in the world of Beautiful Creatures* Exclusive ebook novellas also available:
Dream Dark Dangerous Dream
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You cannot pretend to read a book. Your eyes will give you away. So will your breathing. A person entranced by a book simply forgets to breathe. The house can catch alight and a reader deep in a book will not look up until the wallpaper is in flames.' Bougainville. 1991. A small village on a lush tropical island in the South Pacific. Eighty-six days have passed since Matilda's last day of school as, quietly, war is encroaching from the other end of the island. When the villagers' safe, predictable lives come to a halt, Bougainville's children are surprised to find the island's only white man, a recluse, re-opening the school. Pop Eye, aka Mr Watts, explains he will introduce the children to Mr Dickens. Matilda and the others think a foreigner is coming to the island and prepare a list of much needed items. They are shocked to discover their acquaintance with Mr Dickens will be through Mr Watts' inspiring reading of Great Expectations. But on an island at war, the power of fiction has dangerous consequences. Imagination and beliefs are challenged by guns. Mister Pip is an unforgettable tale of survival by story; a dazzling piece of writing that lives long in the mind after the last page is finished.
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And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks
Jack Kerouac William S Burroughs
- Penguin books ltd digital
- 4 Avril 2013
- 9780141889542
In 1944, Jack Kerouac and William S. Burroughs were charged as accessories to murder. One of their friends, Lucien Carr, had stabbed another, David Kammerrer. Carr had come to each of them and confessed; Kerouac helped him get rid of the weapon - neither told the police. For this failing they were arrested. Months later, the two writers - unpublished at the time - collaborated on And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks, a fictionalized account of the summer of the killing.
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In Gods and Kings Dana Thomas, author of Deluxe, tells the story of how John Galliano and Alexander McQueen changed the face of fashion
In the first decade of the 21st century the fashion world was dominated by two very different but equally successful and turbulent figures. But, within twelve months, Alexander McQueen had committed suicide, and John Galliano had professionally imploded. Who was to blame? And how was fashion changed by their rise and fall? Spanning the 80s, 90s and noughties, Gods and Kings tells the story of these two charismatic figures and times of great change in the world of fashion, from London's raucous art and club scene to the old-world glamour of Parisian couture, and reveals the machinations of this notoriously secretive industry.[Praise for Dana Thomas's Deluxe]:
'A crisp, witty social history that's as entertaining as it is informative' - New York Times 'Definitive' - Daily TelegraphDana Thomas began her career writing for the Style section of The Washington Post and served as Newsweek's European culture and fashion correspondent for fifteen years. She has written for The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, WSJ, the Financial Times, Vogue, Harper's Bazaar, and was the European editor of Condé Nast Portfolio. She is a contributing editor for T: The New York Times Style Magazine, and is the author of the New York Times bestseller, Deluxe: How Luxury Lost Its Lustre. She lives in Paris. -
Little Dorrit
Charles Dickens Helen Small Stephen Wall
- Penguin books ltd digital
- 2 Octobre 2008
- 9780141900292
Penguin Classics e-books give you the best possible editions of Charles Dickens's novels, including all the original illustrations, useful and informative introductions, the definitive, accurate text as it was meant to be published, a chronology of Dickens's life and notes that fill in the background to the book. This Penguin Classics edition of Little Dorrit also includes an appendix on the Marshalsea prison.
When Arthur Clennam returns to England after many years abroad, he takes a kindly interest in Amy Dorrit, his mother's seamstress, and in the affairs of Amy's father, William Dorrit, a man of shabby grandeur, long imprisoned for debt in the Marshalsea. As Arthur soon discovers, the dark shadow of the prison stretches far beyond its walls to affect the lives of many, from the kindly Mr Panks, the reluctant rent-collector of Bleeding Heart Yard, and the tipsily garrulous Flora Finching, to Merdle, an unscrupulous financier, and the bureaucratic Barnacles in the Circumlocution Office. A masterly evocation of the state and psychology of imprisonment, Little Dorrit is one of the supreme works of Dickens's maturity.
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The Old Curiosity Shop
Charles Dickens Norman Page
- Penguin books ltd digital
- 31 Mars 2003
- 9780141908052
Penguin Classics e-books give you the best possible editions of Charles Dickens's novels, including all the original illustrations, useful and informative introductions, the definitive, accurate text as it was meant to be published, a chronology of Dickens's life and notes that fill in the background to the book.
The Old Curiosity Shop and the tale of Little Nell gripped the nation when it first appeared in 1841. Described as a 'tragedy of sorrows', it shows Nell uprooted from a secure and innocent childhood and cast into a world where evil takes many shapes, the most fascinating of which is the stunted, lecherous and demonic Quilp. Blending realism with non-realistic genres such as fairy-tale, allegory and pastoral, The Old Curiosity Shop contains some of Dickens most memorable comic and grotesque creations, including the dwarf Daniel Quilp, Dick Swiveller and Kit Nubbles.
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Following a wild and raging storm, the Swiss family Robinson are stranded at sea. But the thundering waves have swept them off to a tropical island, where a new life awaits them. Their ship is laden with supplies and the island is packed with treasures, so they soon adapt and discover new dangers and delights every day . . .
With an inspiring introduction by American author and America's first children's laureate Jon Scieszka.
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With an essay by J. I. M. Stewart.
'Every night as I gazed up at the window I said softly to myself the word paralysis. It had always sounded strangely in my ears ... But now it sounded to me like the name of some maleficent and sinful being. It filled me with fear, and yet I longed to be nearer to it and to look upon its deadly work' From a child grappling with the death of a fallen priest, to a young woman's dilemma over whether to elope to Argentina with her lover, to the dance party at which a man discovers just how little he really knows about his wife, these fifteen stories bring the gritty realism of existence in Joyce's native Dublin to life. With Dubliners, James Joyce reinvented the art of fiction, using a scrupulous, deadpan realism to convey truths that were at once blasphemous and sacramental.
The Penguin English Library - 100 editions of the best fiction in English, from the eighteenth century and the very first novels to the beginning of the First World War.
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'Literature for me was a magnificent destiny for which I was not yet fully prepared.'Paul and Henrietta Manning and their solitary, academic daughter Jane have nothing in common with Dolly, widow of Henrietta's brother. Corseted and painted, Dolly is a frivolous, superficial woman, who has little time for those without that inestimable quality - charm. Jane, in particular, falls into this category, especially after the death of her parents. But Jane has money - and a conscience - and these bind her to Dolly. Through disagreements, disappointments and disapprovals, Jane and Dolly are enmeshed in an uneasy alliance in which history and family create closer ties than friendship ever could.
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'I was foolish enough to think that I was strong enough, and cheerful enough by nature, to avoid unhappiness. I was not yet old enough to see that I was in error.'Alan Sherwood is a cautious, solitary London solicitor who finds himself obsessed by his glamorous cousin Sarah. But Sarah is self-seeking and predatory and their short-lived affair leaves Alan desolate. He finds distraction in Angela, a homely, needy acquaintance of Sarah and they drift into marriage. Alan, however, is haunted by his memories of Sarah, and, attempting to recapture the wordless passion of their time together, he arranges a final meeting. It is an act of betrayal that changes his life for ever.
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'I never liked her, nor did she like me; strange, then, how we managed to keep up a sort of friendship for so long.'Fay Langdon has relinquished her singing career to marry Owen, a highly successful solicitor. At one of their dinner parties Fay meets the glamorous, self-obsessed Julia and is destined to join the handful of acolytes who provide Julia with ammunition for her merciless scorn and disapprobation. As the years pass and Fay and Julia's lives grow empty of purpose, they are drawn together by their fear of age and isolation. Yet a mutual mistrust continues to exist between them until Fay is driven to one last heroic act.
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The ever-popular novelist and story-teller Robert Graves wrote fascinating and durable stories, here collected together in a single volume for the first time by the poet's daughter Lucia Graves.
