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Penguin Group
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«Annie and Duncan are a mid-thirties couple who have reached a fork in the road, realising their shared interest in the reclusive musician Tucker Crowe (in Duncan's case, an obsession rather than an interest) is not enough to hold them together any more. When Annie hates Tucker's 'new release', a terrible demo of his most famous album, it's the last straw — Duncan cheats on her and she promptly throws him out. Via an internet discussion forum, Annie's harsh opinion reaches Tucker himself, who couldn't agree more. He and Annie start an unlikely correspondence which teaches them both something about moving on from years of wasted time. Nick Hornby's compelling new novel, four years after «A Long Way Down», is about the nature of creativity and obsession, and how two lonely people can gradually find each other.» |
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«It's 1910. «Anna Karenina» and «War and Peace» have made Leo Tolstoy the world's most famous author. But fame comes at a price. In the tumultuous final year of his life, Tolstoy is desperate to find respite, so leaves his large family and the hounding press behind and heads into the wilderness. Too ill to venture beyond the tiny station of Astapovo, he believes his last days will pass in isolation. But as we learn through the journals of those closest to him, the battle for Tolstoy's soul will not be a peaceful one. Jay Parini introduces, translates and edits this collection of Tolstoy's autobiographical writing, diaries, and letters related to the last year of Tolstoy's life published to coincide with the 2009 film of Parini's novel «The Last Station: A Novel of Tolstoy's Final Year».» |
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When Fifi moves to London with her bricklayer boyfriend Dan, her mother is outraged. Despite initial feelings of horror at her new surroundings, Fifi finds the freedom from her middle-class family background exhilarating. Insatiably inquisitive, Fifi is fascinated by her new neighbours and wants to know what goes on behind all those shabby front doors. Why is Yvette, the French dressmaker, such a hermit? Why doesn't widower Frank join his daughter and grandchildren in Australia? And why doesn't the formidable and well-bred Miss Diamond move somewhere smarter? But most of all she is ghoulishly fascinated by the Muckles who live opposite in terrible squalor. She listens to their violent quarrels, watches their ill-treated and wretchedly unhappy children, and is appalled by all she sees. When Fifi tries to help the Muckles' youngest child, who has been physically abused by her father, Fifi unwittingly unleashes a chain of events which will not only bring heart ache to her and Dan, but terrible danger to all the inhabitants of Dale Street... |
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Nina Landry has given up city life for the isolated community of Sandling Island, lying off the bleak east coast of England. At night the wind howls. Sometimes they are cut off by the incoming tide. For Nina though it is home. It is safe. But when Nina's teenage daughter Charlie fails to return from a sleepover on the day they're due to go on holiday, the island becomes a different place altogether — a place of secrets and suspicions where no one — friends, neighbours or the police — believes Nina's instinctive fear that her daughter is in terrible danger. Alone, she undergoes a frantic search for Charlie. And as day turns to night, she begins to doubt not just whether they'll leave the island for their holiday — but whether they will ever leave it again. |
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Hewn into the towering cliffs of central Greece, the Meteora monasteries are all but inacessible. The Holy Trinity is the most isolated, its sacred brotherhood the guardians of a long-forgotten secret. In the dead of night, the sanctity of the holy retreat is shattered by an elite group of warriors, carrying ancient weapons. One by one, they hurl the silent monks from the cliff-top — the holy men taking their secret to their rocky graves. Halfway across Europe, a terrified academic fears for his life. Richard Byrd has nearly uncovered the location of one of the Seven Ancient Wonders — the statue of Zeus and his mighty throne. But Byrd's search has also uncovered a forbidden conspiracy, and there are those who would do anything to conceal its dark agenda... |
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Presents the story of Martin Eden, an impoverished seaman who pursues, obsessively and aggressively, dreams of education and literary fame. This title also discusses the conflict between London's support of socialism and Martin's powerful self-will. |
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«This legendary novel has been the source of much anxiety and contention for Nabokov's fans — and family. The late Vladimir Nabokov requested that this unfinished work be destroyed, but his son, Dmitri, did not oblige, although neither did he allow the work to be published — until now. «The Original of Laura» is about a wonderfully large man called Philip Wild, married to a very promiscuous woman, and whose meditations concern the nature of death. The novel was complete in Nabokov's mind, though he died before he could translate his vision on to paper. It is hard, however, to imagine any scholars, Nabokov enthusiasts or literature lovers being disappointed by even these fragments.» |
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Most people get presents on their sixteenth birthday. I get a prophecy that could save or destroy the world. That's how it is when you're the son of Poseidon, God of the Sea. According to an ancient prophecy, bad things will happen when I turn sixteen — because I'm the one who gets to decide the fate of the entire world. But no pressure. This is the one where Kronos, Lord of the Titans, is beginning his attack on New York City, where Mount Olympus stands virtually unguarded. Oh, and the dreaded (and not to mention enormous) monster Typhon is also heading our way. So it's me and forty of my demigod friends versus untold evil... |
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Look, I didn't want to be a half-blood. I never asked to be the son of a Greek god. I was just a normal kid, going to school, playing basketball, skateboarding. The usual. Until I accidentally vaporized my maths teacher. That's when things started really going wrong. Now I spend my time fighting with swords, battling monsters with my friends and generally trying to stay alive. This is the one where Zeus, God of the Sky, thinks I've stolen his lightning bolt — and making Zeus angry is a very bad idea... |
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«Percy Jackson has had an unnervingly quiet school year. But then he discovers that the magical borders protecting Half Blood Hill are failing. Unless something is done, the camp will be attacked by demons and monsters. The only way to restore power to the camp's borders is to find the mythical Golden Fleece. And the only person who can undertake this dangerous quest is Percy...This is the eagerly anticipated follow-up to «Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief», overall winner of the Red House Children's Book Award. It is perfect for fans of «Harry Potter» and «Artemis Fowl».» |
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«In these top-secret files, Rick Riordan, Camp Half-Blood's senior scribe, gives you an inside look at the world of demigods that no regular human child is allowed to see. These highly classified archives include three of Percy Jackson's most perilous adventures, a «Spotter's Guide to Monsters», a «Who's Who in Greek Mythology», «Percy's Summer Camp Report» and much more. So, if you're armed with this book, you'll have everything you need to know to keep you alive in your training. Your own adventures have just begun...» |
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In his autobiography, published in 1975, the private Andy Warhol talks about love, sex, food, beauty, fame, work, money, success; about New York and America; and about himself — his childhood in McKeesport, Pennsylvania, good times and bad times in the Big Apple, the explosion of his career in the Sixties, and life among celebrities. |
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A New Year. Five women gather for their first ever Reading Group; each is uncertain, clasping her expectations and fears close to her chest. A New Page. Harriet and Nicole are best friends who find themselves — in different ways — trapped in loveless marriages. And Polly is the epitome of a successful single mum, until a marriage proposal and an unexpected pregnancy threaten to derail her. Susan is the self-elected mother of the group but ironically she's facing the terror of a future without her mother. And finally Clare is a woman consumed by love for the children she is longing — but unable — to have. A New Reading Group. Over the coming year their lives will intertwine in surprising ways. Loves are lost, hearts are broken and worlds are turned upside down, but through it all they have the Reading Group. Where the stories end, real life begins. |
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Assassin, art-restorer and spy, Gabriel Allon, is summoned once more by his masters to undertake what appears to be a routine assignment: travel to Amsterdam to purge the archives of a murdered Dutch terrorism analyst. But once in Amsterdam, Gabriel soon discovers there is a conspiracy of terror festering in the city's Islamic underground, a plot that is about to explode on the other side of the English Channel, in the middle British capital. |
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The Shooting Party wraps a story of concealed love and fatal jealousy into a classic murder mystery. When a young woman dies during a shooting party at the country estate of a dissolute count, a magistrate is called to investigate. But suspicion descends upon virtually everyone, for, as we soon learn, the victim was at the center of a tangled web of relationshipsawith her elderly husband, with the lecherous count, and with the magistrate himself. One of Anton Chekhovas earliest experiments in fiction, this short, riveting novel prefigures the mature style he would develop in his magnificent stories and plays. |
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Alexander Pushkin was Russia's first true literary genius. Best known for his poetry, he also wrote sparkling prose that revealed his national culture with elegance and understated humour. Here, his gift for portraying the Russian people is fully revealed. The Tales of Belkin, his first prose masterpiece, presents a series of interlinked stories narrated by a good-hearted Russian squire — among them The Shot, in which a duel is revisited after many years, and the grotesque The Undertaker. Elsewhere, works such as the novel-fragment Roslavlev and the Egyptian Nights, the tale of an Italian balladeer seeking an audience in St. Petersberg, demonstrate the wide range of Pushkin's fiction. A Journey to Arzrum, the final piece in this collection, offers an autobiographical account of Pushkin's own experiences in the 1829 war between Russia and Turkey, and remains one of the greatest of all pieces of journalistic adventure writing. |
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Robin, a postgrad student in Coventry, has spent four and a half years not writing his thesis. He and his academic colleagues, united by pallor, social ineptitude and sexual inexperience, once spent hours discussing their theories, but they somehow never made it into print.Now his unfinished thesis languishes in a drawer, and Robin hides in his room, increasingly frightened by a world he doesn't understand. His friends have failed him and romance eludes him. His only outlet is his short stories, scribbled in notebooks and expressing his secret obsessions and frustrations.Then, when an unfortunate and embarassing incident in a public park lands him in serious trouble, Robin's life finally spirals out of control ... |
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Can you ever really trust a vampire? Cassandra Palmer can see the future and communicate with spirits — talents that make her attractive to the dead and the undead. The ghosts of the dead aren't usually dangerous; they just like to talk...a lot. The undead are another matter. Like any sensible girl, Cassie tries to avoid vampires. But, when the bloodsucking mafioso she escaped three years ago finds Cassie again with vengeance on his mind, she's forced to turn to the vampire Senate for protection. The undead senators won't help her for nothing, and Cassie finds herself working with one of their most powerful members, a dangerously seductive master vampire — and the price he demands may be more than Cassie is willing to pay.. |
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«Boisterous, ribald, and ultimately shattering, Ken Kesey's «One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest» is the seminal novel of the 1960s that has left an indelible mark on the literature of our time. Here is the unforgettable story of a mental ward and its inhabitants, especially the tyrannical Big Nurse Ratched and Randle Patrick McMurphy, the brawling, fun-loving new inmate who resolves to oppose her. We see the struggle through the eyes of Chief Bromden, the seemingly mute half-Indian patient who witnesses and understands McMurphy's heroic attempt to do battle with the awesome powers that keep them all imprisoned.» |
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24 August 1939: The fate of the world is hanging in the balance. Hitler has ambitions to invade Poland and hopes Stalin will now help him. The West must try to stop him. If they don't, world war will result. In this dramatic account Richard Overy re-creates hour-by-hour the last days of peace in 1939, as politicians and the public braced themselves for a war they feared might spell the end of European civilization. Nothing was predictable or inevitable. The West hoped that Hitler would see sense if they stood firm. Hitler was convinced the West would back down. The one constant feature was the determination of Poland to fight against the armed might of Germany. Countdown to War brings to life a defining moment in the history of the twentieth century. |
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