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Penguin Group
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«Take a fresh approach to Croatia with this «Step by Step» guide, part of a brand new, stylishly designed series from Insight Guides. Lavishly illustrated in full colour, this book features 15 irresistible self-guided walks and tours, written by a local expert and packed with great insider tips. The guide also comes with a free pull-out map.» |
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Are you mad about dinosaurs? From food and fossils to herds and horns, this book is packed with fascinating facts and key information for all young dinosaur enthusiasts. It also includes a link to fantastic downloadable Mad About posters. |
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In almost every major war there comes a point where defeat looms for one side and its rulers cut a deal with the victors, if only in an attempt to save their own skins. In Hitler's Germany, nothing of this kind happened: in the end the regime had to be stamped out town by town with an almost unprecedented level of brutality. Just what made Germany keep on fighting? Kershaw's gripping, revelatory book recounts these final months, from the failed attempt to assassinate Hitler in July 1944 to the German surrender in May 1945. |
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West Germany, a simmering cauldron of radical protests, has produced a new danger to Britain: Karfeld, menacing leader of the opposition. At the same time Leo Harting, a Second Secretary in the British Embassy, has gone missing — along with more than forty Confidential embassy files. Alan Turner of the Foreign Office must travel to Bonn to recover them, facing riots, Nazi secrets and the delicate machinations of an unstable Europe in the throes of the Cold War. As Turner gets closer to the truth of Harting's disappearance, he will discover that the face of International relations — and the attentions of the British Ministry itself — is uglier that he could possibly have imagined. |
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SKYE and SUMMER TANBERRY are identical twins, and Skye loves her sister Summer more than anyone else in the world. They do everything together, but lately Skye's been feeling like second-best ? It's the story of her life. And when her friend Alfie confesses he's fallen not for her, but for Summer, it hurts. Skye wants to be her own person, but with an effortlessly cool twin, how can she? Will Skye ever step out of Summer's shadow and find her own chance to shine? |
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As near as possible to experiencing what it was like to be there... It is almost impossible for a reader not to get caught up in the excitement. (Giles Foden, Guardian ). The Normandy Landings that took place on D-Day involved by far the largest invasion fleet ever known. The scale of the undertaking was simply awesome. What followed them was some of the most cunning and ferocious fighting of the war, at times as savage as anything seen on the Eastern Front. As casualties mounted, so too did the tensions between the principal commanders on both sides. Meanwhile, French civilians caught in the middle of these battlefields or under Allied bombing endured terrible suffering. Even the joys of Liberation had their darker side. Antony Beevor's gripping narrative conveys the true experience of war. |
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Plunging into the enchanted and luminous worlds of Speak, Memory, Ada, or Ardor; and the infamous Lolita, Lila Azam Zanganeh seeks out the Nabokovian experience of time, memory, sexual passion, nature, loss, love in all its forms, language in all its allusions. She explores his Russian childhood, his European sojourns, the landscapes of 'his' America, hallucinates an interview and seeks the 'crunch of happiness' in Vladimir Nabokov's singular vocabulary. This rhapsodic and beautifully illuminated book, which includes such fans as Salman Rushdie and Orhan Pamuk, will lure the innocent reader to a well of delights. |
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When Jonny went missing everything changed. His mother's heart is full of terror and sadness instead of joy. His father's study overflows with newspaper cuttings and profiles on missing people instead of the academic texts that were there before. His sister, once carefree, now carries the weight of the world on her shoulders. His bedroom at home remains untouched and ready for his return. A place is set for him at the table on Christmas day each year. His birthday is always celebrated; unopened gifts for him gather dust. The hands on the clock continue to move forwards and yet Jonny hasn't returned. Where is he? |
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What's it like to drive a car that's actively trying to kill you? This and many other burning questions trouble Jeremy Clarkson as he sets out to explore the world from the safety of four wheels. Avoiding the legions of power-crazed traffic wombles attempting to block highway and byway, he shows how the world of performance cars may be likened to Battersea Dogs' Home; reveals why St Moritz may be the most bonkers town in all of the world; reminds us that Switzerland is so afraid of snow that any flakes falling on the road are immediately arrested; and, argues that washing a car is a waste of time. Funny, globe-trotting, irreverent and sometimes downright rude, Round the Bend is packed with curious and fascinating but otherwise hopelessly useless stories and facts about everything under the sun (and just occasionally cars). It's Jeremy Clarkson at his brilliant best. |
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The rotting, naked corpse of a man is found amidst swarms of flies in the living room of a confused woman. Who is he? Why is Michelle Doyce trying to serve him afternoon tea? And how did the dead body find its way into her flat? DCI Karlsson needs an expert to delve inside Michelle's mind for answers and turns to former colleague, psychiatrist Frieda Klein. Eventually Michelle's ramblings lead to a vital clue that in turn leads to a possible identity. Robert Poole. Jack of all trades and master conman. The deeper Frieda and Karlsson dig, the more of Poole's victims they encounter... and the more motives they uncover for his murder. But is anyone telling them the truth except for poor, confused Michelle? And when the past returns to haunt Frieda, she finds herself in danger. Whoever set out to destroy Poole also seems determined to destroy Frieda Klein. |
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Ellie Faulkner's world has been destroyed. Her husband Greg died in a car crash — and he wasn't alone. In the passenger seat was the body of Milena Livingstone — a woman Ellie's never heard of. But Ellie refuses to leap to the obvious conclusion, despite the whispers and suspicions of those around her. Maybe it's the grief, but Ellie has to find out who this woman was — and prove Greg wasn't having an affair. And soon she is chillingly certain their deaths were no accident. Are Ellie's accusations of murder her way of avoiding the truth about her marriage? Or does an even more sinister discovery await her? |
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In 1926, de Saint-Exupery began flying for the pioneering airline Latecoere — later known as Aeropostale — opening up the first mail routes across the Sahara and the Andes. Wind, Sand and Stars is drawn from this experience. Interweaving encounters with nomadic Arabs and other adventures into a richly textured autobiographical narrative which includes the extraordinary story of his crash in the Libyan Desert in 1936, and his miraculous survival. 'Self-discovery comes when a man measures himself against an obstacle', writes Saint-Exupery. In this book, he explores the transcendent perceptions that arise when life is tested to its limits. Both a gripping tale of adventure and a poetic meditation. |
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'For many years I had wanted to start a zoo... any reasonable person smitten with an ambition of this sort would have secured the zoo first and obtained the animals afterwards. but throughout my life I have rarely if ever achieved what I wanted by tackling it in a logical fashion'. A Zoo in My Luggage is Gerald Durrell's account of his attempt to set up his own zoo, after years spent gathering animals for other zoos. Journeying to Cameroon, he and his wife collected numerous mammals, birds and reptiles, including Cholmondely the chimpanzee and Bug-eye the bush-baby. But their problems really began when they attempted to return with their exotic menagerie. Not only had they to get them safely home to Britain but they also had to find somewhere able and — most of all — willing to house them. Told with wit and a zest for all things furry and feathered, Gerald Durrell's A Zoo in My Luggage is a brilliant account of how a pioneer of wildlife preservation came to found a new type of zoo. |
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Even easier than Level 1 All Aboard Reading books, Picture Readers combine rebus pictures, super-simple vocabulary, and cut-out flash cards to develop and reinforce reading skills. In The Big Snowball, a little boy's runaway snowball causes village-wide calamity! Simple rhyming text and funny illustrations describe the snowball's path through the town, and the silly ending will leave kids giggling. |
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«Just after the iron curtain fell on Eastern Europe John Steinbeck and acclaimed war photographer, Robert Capa ventured into the Soviet Union to report for the «New York Herald Tribune». This rare opportunity took the famous travelers not only to Moscow and Stalingrad — now Volgograd — but through the countryside of the Ukraine and the Caucasus. A «Russian Journal» is the distillation of their journey and remains a remarkable memoir and unique historical document. Steinbeck and Capa recorded the grim realities of factory workers, government clerks, and peasants, as they emerged from the rubble of World War II. This is an intimate glimpses of two artists at the height of their powers, answering their need to document human struggle.» |
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«Written in Berlin in 1934, «Invitation to a Beheading» contains all the surprise, excitement and magical intensity of a work created in two brief weeks of sustained inspiration. It takes us into the fantastic prison-world of Cincinnatus, a man condemned to death and spending his last days in prison not quite knowing when the end will come. Nabokov described the book as 'a violin in a void. The worldling will deem it a trick. Old men will hurriedly turn from it to regional romances and the lives of public figures ...The evil-minded will perceive in little Emmie a sister of little Lolita ...But I know a few readers who will jump up, ruffling their hair'.» |
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«'Of all my novels this bright brute is the gayest', Nabokov wrote of «King, Queen, Knave». Comic, sensual and cerebral, it dramatizes an Oedipal love triangle, a tragi-comedy of husband, wife and lover, through Dreyer the rich businessman, his ripe-lipped ad mercenary wife Martha, and their bespectacled nephew Franz. 'If a resolute Freudian manages to slip in' — Nabokov darts a glance to the reader — 'he or she should be warned that a number of cruel traps have been set here and there'.» |
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Ken Follett follows his bestsellers Jackdaws and Code to Zero with an extraordinary novel of early days of World War II... It is June 1941 and the war is not going well for England. Across the North Sea, eighteen-year-old Harald Olufsen takes a shortcut on the German-occupied Danish island of Sande an discovers an astonishing sight that will change the momentum of the war. He must get word to England-except that he has no way to get there. He has only an old derelict Hornet Moth biplane rusting away in a ruined church: a plane so decrepit that it is unlikely ever to get off the ground...even if Harald knew how to fly it. |
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'To me' D. H. Lawerence once wrote to E. M. forster, 'you are the last Englishman.' Indeed, Forster's novels offer contemporary readers clear, vibrant portraits of life in Edwardian England. Published in 1908 to both critical and popular acclaim, A Room with a View is a whimsical comedy of manners that owes more to Jane Austen that perhaps any other of his works. The central character is a muddled young girl named Lucy Honeychurch, who runs away from the man who stirs her emotions, remaining engaged to a rich snob. Forster considered it his 'nicest' novel, and today it remains probably his most well liked. Its moral is utterly simple. Throw away your etiquette book and listen to your heart. But it was Forster's next book, Howards End, a story about who would inhabit a charming old country house (and who, in a larger sense, would inherit England), that earned him recognition as a major writer. Centered around the conflict between the wealthy, materialistic Wilcox family and the cultured, idealistic Schlegel sisters-and informed by Forester's famous dictum 'Only connect'-it is full of tenderness towards favorite characters. 'Howards End is a classic English novel... superb and wholly cherishable... one that admirers have no trouble reading over and over again' said Alfred Kazin. |
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«What makes his work great is that it can be felt and understood...by anybody» said Leo Tolstoy of Chekhov's plays, which express life through subtle construction, everyday dialogue, and an electrically charged atmosphere.» |
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