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Penguin Group
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«'It is now time that something was done. But the man who has the courage to do something must do it in the knowledge that he will go down in German history as a traitor. If he does not, however, he will be a traitor to his own conscience' — Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg, July 1944. The July 1944 plot to kill Adolf Hitler was a desperate attempt by a group of senior officers to redeem Germany's honour and end the Second World War. They were heroic because they knew their chances of success were slight and that the result of their failure would undoubtedly be a terrible death.They wanted to leave a message for later generations: that there were Germans who understood the evils of Nazism and were willing to act against it. This extraordinary story is the basis for Bryan Singer's major new film «Valkyrie», due to be released in February 2009. Published for the first time as a separate book, «Luck of the Devil» is taken from Ian Kershaw's bestselling «Hitler 1936-1945: Nemesis» and is a brilliant account of just what happened in those fateful days at Hitler's Wolf's Lair headquarters, when his opponents came so astonishingly close to assassinating what is one of the modern era's most terrible figures.» |
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It is 1905. Asta and her husband Rasmus have come to East London from Denmark with their two little boys. With Rasmus constantly away on business, Asta keep loneliness and isolation at bay by writing a diary. These diaries, published over seventy years later, reveal themselves to be more than a mere journal. For they seem to hold they key to an unsolved murder and to the mystery of a missing child. It falls to Asta's granddaughter Ann to unearth the buried secrets of nearly a century before. |
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The latest Vine novel, published by Viking in August, is called The Birthday Present, and I believe it is destined to take its place beside the very best of her novels. It has a sensational plot: a right-wing government minister is conducting an illicit sado-masochistic affair with a young married woman. As a surprise birthday present, he arranges for her to be 'kidnapped' off the street, and taken — bound and blindfolded — to a secret destination where he will be waiting. But she fails to turn up, and he soon finds out that something has gone horribly wrong. |
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«For four novels, Clive Cussler has charted the exploits of the Oregon, a clandestine spy ship completely dilapidated on the outside, but on the inside packed with sophisticated weaponry and intelligence-gathering equipment. Captained by the rakish, one-legged Juan Cabrillo and manned by a crew of former military and spy personnel, it is a private enterprise, available for any government agency that can afford it — and now Cussler sends the Oregon on its most extraordinary mission yet. The crew has just completed a top-secret mission against Iran in the Persian Gulf, when they come across a cruise ship adrift in the sea. Hundreds of bodies litter its deck, and as Cabrillo tries to determine what happened, explosions rack the length of the ship. Barely able to escape with his own life and that of the liner's sole survivor, Cabrillo finds himself plunged into a mystery as intricate — and as perilous — as any he has ever known, and pitted against a cult with monstrously lethal plans for the human race... plans he may already be too late to stop. «Plague Ship» is a high-stakes, high-seas journey that proves once again that Cussler is the master of high octane adventure.» |
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The violent death of a journalist leads secret agent Gabriel Allon to Russia. Not to the grim Moscow of Soviet times, but a modern Moscow awash with oil wealth and in thrall to a new generation of rich Stalinists plotting to challenge an old enemy: the United States. One such man is Ivan Kharkov, a former KGB colonel, whose global empire is built on a lucrative and deadly business. Kharkov is an arms dealer – and he's about to sell Russia's most dangerous weapon to al-Qaeda. Unless Allon can learn the time and place of the delivery, the world will suffer its deadliest terror attacks since 9/11. The countdown to Armageddon has begun... |
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«'It is the history of a revolution that went wrong — and of the excellent excuses that were forthcoming at every step for the perversion of the original doctrine', wrote Orwell for the first edition of «Animal Farm» in 1945. Orwell wrote it at the end of 1943, but it almost remained unpublished. Its savage attack on Stalin, at that time Britain's ally, led to it being refused by publisher after publisher. Orwell's simple, tragic fable, telling what happens when the animals drive out Mr Jones and attempt to run the farm themselves, has since become a world-famous classic.» |
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«George Orwell's first published work, «Down and Out in Paris and London», is a vivid, sensitive account of the time he lived as one of the poor in the late twenties. In a bug-infested hotel, surviving only between the pawnbroker and a little teaching and writing, Orwell shocked the middle-class establishment with his observation of the misery, the hopelessness and the despair of the poor of a previously unexplored Paris and London.» |
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Guy Crouchback is now attached to a commando unit undergoing training on the Hebridean isle of Mugg, where the whisky flows freely and HM forces have to show respect for the laird. But the comedy of Mugg is followed by the bitterness of Crete. |
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For Gertrude Stein and her companion Alice B. Toklas, life in Paris was based upon the rue de Fleurus and the Saturday evenings and ‘it was like a kaleidoscope slowly turning’. Picasso was there with ‘his high whinnying spanish giggle’, as were Cezanne and Matisse, Hemingway and Fitzgerald. As Toklas put it – ‘The geniuses came and talked to Gertrude Stein and the wives sat with me’. A light-hearted entertainment, this is in fact Gertrude Stein’s own autobiography and a roll-call of all the extraordinary painters and writers she met between 1903 and 1932. Audacious, sardonic and characteristically self-confident, this is a definitive account by the American in Paris. |
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Hidden away in the Record Department of the sprawling Ministry of Truth, Winston Smith skilfully rewrites the past to suit the needs of the Party. Yet he inwardly rebels against the totalitarian world he lives in, which demands absolute obedience and controls him through the all-seeing telescreens and the watchful eye of Big Brother, symbolic head of the Party. In his longing for truth and liberty, Smith begins a secret love affair with a fellow-worker Julia, but soon discovers the true price of freedom is betrayal |
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Lise has been driven to distraction by working in the same accountants' office for sixteen years. So she leaves everything behind her, transforms herself into a laughing, garishly-dressed temptress and flies abroad on the holiday of a lifetime. But her search for adventure, sex and the obsessional experience takes on a far darker significance as she heads on a journey of self-destruction. Infinity and eternity attend Lise's last terrible day in an unnamed southern city, as she meets her fate. |
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A man of devilish charm and enterprising spirit, Dougal Douglas is employed to revitalize the ailing firm of Meadows, Meade & Grindley. He succeeds, but not quite in the way his employer intended. Strange things begin to happen as Dougal exerts an uncanny influence on the inhabitants of Peckham Rye and brings lies, tears, blackmail and even murder into the lives of all he meets, from Miss Merle Coverdale, head of the typing pool, to Beauty, the resident femme fatale, and even Mr Druce, the unsuspecting Managing Director himself. |
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Full grown with a long, smoke-coloured beard, requiring the services of a cane and fonder of cigars than warm milk, Benjamin Button is a very curious baby indeed. And, as Benjamin becomes increasingly youthful with the passing years, his family wonders why he persists in the embarrassing folly of living in reverse. In this imaginative fable of ageing and the other stories collected here – including ‘The Cut-Glass Bowl’ in which an ill-meant gift haunts a family’s misfortunes, ‘The Four Fists’ where a man’s life shaped by a series of punches to his face, and the revelry, mobs and anguish of ‘May Day’ – F. Scott Fitzgerald displays his unmatched gift as a writer of short stories. |
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«'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.» |
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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. |
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Imagine, if you will, New York City, 1899... Society's elite: the glamour, the grandeur, the glittering parties, the most handsome beaus, the most beautiful debutantes... the rich girl, the humble boy, the forbidden love, the hushed whispers, the stolen glances, the whispers, the scandal, the mystery, the revenge... You are cordially invited to step into The Luxe, where the secrets are dark and the sins are delicious... R.S.V.P. |
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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... |
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