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Penguin Group
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Leo Tolstoy began his trilogy, Childhood, Boyhood, Youth, in his early twenties. Although he would in his old age famously dismiss it as an 'awkward mixture of fact and fiction', generations of readers have not agreed, finding the novel to be a charming and insightful portrait of inner growth against the background of a world limned with extraordinary clarity, grace and colour. Evident too in its brilliant account of a young person's emerging awareness of the world and of his place within it are many of the stances, techniques and themes that would come to full flower in the immortal War and Peace and Anna Karenina, and in the other great works of Tolstoy's maturity. |
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What's your road, man — holyboy road, madman road, rainbow road, guppy road, any road. It's an anywhere road for anybody anyhow. Sal Paradise, young and innocent, joins the slightly crazed Dean Moriarty on a breathless, exuberant ride back and forth across the United States. Their hedonistic search for release or fulfilment through drink, sex, drugs and jazz becomes an exploration of personal freedom, a test of the limits of the American Dream. A brilliant blend of fiction and autobiography, Jack Kerouac's exhilarating novel defined the new Beat generation and became the bible of the counter culture. |
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When the plane carrying the President of Taiwan explodes during their watch, Brick Maxwell and his squadron of Roadrunners are forced to trust a mysterious defector whose true loyalties are unknown as they set out to hijack the Black Star, a high-tech killing machine. |
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From cordon bleu cuisine in Paris to rustic country dishes in the heart of Provence, this invaluable guide lists over 3,200 of the best places to eat and stay in France. Covering all 16 regions, and richly illustrated, this is a mouthwatering and fascinating celebration of the best of French food and wine. A must-have for foodies and Francophiles alike. |
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The Lost Estate is Robin Buss's translation of Henri Alain-Fournier's poignant study of lost love, Le Grand Meaulnes. This Penguin Classics edition also contains an introduction by Adam Gopnik. When Meaulnes first arrives at the local school in Sologne, everyone is captivated by his good looks, daring and charisma. But when Meaulnes disappears for several days, and returns with tales of a strange party at a mysterious house — and his love for the beautiful girl hidden within it, Yvonne de Galais — his life has been changed forever. In his restless search for his Lost Estate and the happiness he found there, Meaulnes, observed by his loyal friend Francois, may risk losing everything he ever had. Poised between youthful admiration and adult resignation, Alain-Fournier's compelling narrator carries the reader through this evocative and unbearably poignant portrayal of desperate friendship and vanished adolescence. Robin Buss's translation of Le Grand Meaulnes sensitively and accurately renders Alain-Fournier's poetically charged, expressive and deceptively simple style. In his introduction, New Yorker writer Adam Gopnik discusses the life of Alain-Fournier, who was killed in the First World War after writing this, his only novel. Henri Alban-Fournier (1886-1914), better known by the pseudonym Alain-Fournier, was born in La Chapelle d'Angillon, the son of a country school-master. He was educated at Brest and Paris, where he met the original Yvonne, who left a lasting impression on his life and work. Le Grand Meaulnes was published in 1912. Alan-Fournier joined the army as a Lieutenant in August 1914, and was killed in action on the Meuse less than a month later. Les Miracles, a volume of poems and essays, appeared posthumously in 1924. |
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In the summer of 1933 an amazing group of chancers, misfits and psychopaths took to the American road. Fuelled by the Depression, fast cars and cheap guns, these freelance gangsters terrorized a vast swathe of banks and drugstores across the Midwest. Bonnie and Clyde, Dillinger, Machine Gun Kelly, Baby Face Nelson, the Barker gang, Pretty Boy Floyd and others went on a crime spree that turned them into legends in their own — generally quite brief — lifetimes. As they tore across state lines, mocking the police and amassing fortunes, the gangsters had no idea that in Washington their nemesis was forming: J. Edgar Hoover's FBI. Public Enemies is the sensational story of the outlaws whose exploits became folklore, and the savage, myth-making response of those who hunted them down. |
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When wealthy Rowland Mallet first sees a sculpture by Roderick Hudson, he is astounded and pronounces it to be a work of genius, and is equally entranced by the sculptor's beauty, spirit and charisma. Wishing to give the impoverished artist the opportunity to develop his talent, he takes Roderick from America to Rome, where he becomes the talk of the city. But Roderick soon loses his inspiration and Rowland loses control of his protégé, while both fall in love with women they cannot ever have. Can Roderick be saved from the path to self-destruction he seems set on? One of Henry James's first novels, Roderick Hudson (1875) is a compelling depiction of the artistic temperament and of a young man who, like Icarus, flies too close to the sun. |
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THE MOTIVE, the latest installment in the excellent series of legal thrillers/police procedurals by John Lescroart, is an excellent sequel to the two previous stories in the series. THE FIRST LAW (review 2/9/2003) was a completely atypical story in the series — it involved an incident that would unavoidably alter the relationship of attorney Dismas (Diz) Hardy and Deputy Police Chief Abraham (Abe) Glitsky forever as well as create a significant inflection point in both of their lives and careers. THE SECOND CHAIR (review 4/22/2004) involves Hardy's initial attempts to regain his personal and professional balance in the wake of that incident. In that novel, Hardy agrees to act as second chair to one of his young associates who is tempted to engage in a plea bargain for her young client in view of the apparently overwhelming evidence which the SFPD has assembled. |
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In this first novel by CNN political correspondent Mitchell, a Washington, D.C. consultant lands herself in the middle of a high-profile scandal when a former flame is accused of selling military secrets to the Chinese. |
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Zoe Martinique has turned her unusual ability into a career. When she's traveling, she can't be seen which makes her an ideal professional snoop. Industrial espionage, surveillance, whatever. But one night things get out of hand while she's outof — body. She witnesses a murder and a soul stealing, and discovers she has unwelcome company: Trench — Coat, a ghostly killer who can see and hurt her. Teaming up with a blue-eyed police detective, she tries to solve the case and improve her love life. She also enlists the support of her psychic mother and the ghostly couple who haunt her house. And with murderers, kidnappers, and a desperate ex-porn star involved, Zoe needs all the help she can get. |
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You're a whirlwind — a success. You're living life on the edge. But who'll catch you when you fall? Holly Krauss is a city girl burning the candle at both ends. Despite a comfortable home life, a tough job and friends who admire her, she secretly enjoys taking reckless, dangerous walks on the wild side. But Holly can't keep those worlds separate forever. Soon enough her secret life bleeds into her safe one and everything spirals out of control. She's making mistakes at home and at work, owes money to the wrong people — and now it seems that someone's stalking her. Could it just be paranoia or is she in very real danger? And who can you trust when you can no longer trust yourself? |
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'I am an expert swordsman. And I am skilled in the business of death. I take no pleasure in my skill. Simply, I am good at it.' 1735 — London. Haytham Kenway has been taught to use a sword from the age he was able to hold one. When his family's house is attacked — his father murdered and his sister taken by armed men — Haytham defends his home the only way he can: he kills. With no family, he is taken in by a mysterious tutor who trains him to become a deadly killer. Consumed by his thirst for revenge Haytham begins a quest for retribution, trusting no one and questioning everything he has ever known. Conspiracy and betrayal surround him as he is drawn into the centuries old battle between the Assassins and the Templars. The world of the Assassin's has become far more lethal than ever before. Assassin's Creed: Forsaken is based on the phenomenally successful gaming series. Fans of the game will love these stories. |
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This is an all new version of the popular PARALLEL TEXT series, containing eight pieces of contemporary fiction in the original Italian and in English translation. Including stories by Calvino, Benni, Sciascia and Levi, this volume gives a fascinating insight into Italian culture and literature as well as providing an invaluable educational tool. |
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This is an all new version of the popular PARALLEL TEXT series, containing eight pieces of contemporary fiction in the original Spanish and in English translation. Including stories by Fuentes, Molinas, Marquez and Cortazar, this volume gives a fascinating insight into Spanish and Latin American culture and literature as well as providing an invaluable educational tool. |
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In 1913, publisher Condé Nast launched Vanity Fair, a magazine that would celebrate the culture, politics, lifestyle and humour of the world's 'smart set'. In the publication's mission statement, editor Frank Crowninshield clearly revelled in that world: 'Young men and young women, full of courage, originality, and genius, are everywhere to be met with.' The magazine discovered or lent invaluable support to such varied names as Dorothy Parker, E. E. Cummings, Noël Coward, Gertrude Stein, P. G. Wodehouse, Cecil Beaton and Man Ray, and frequently reproduced works by the likes of Matisse and Picasso long before anyone in the mainstream press would dare. Vanity Fair's famous philosophy of mixing up classes, races and sexes — as long as they were innovative, gorgeous or talented — was reflected in the dazzling and elegant magazine covers from such hugely influential designers as Paolo Garretto, William Cotton and Eduardo Garcia Benito. These covers are now a memorial to a world of glamour and excitement, gone — but not forgotten. |
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Part of Penguin's beautiful hardback Clothbound Classics series, designed by the award-winning Coralie Bickford-Smith, these delectable and collectible editions are bound in high-quality colourful, tactile cloth with foil stamped into the design. The Woman in White famously opens with Walter Hartright's eerie encounter on a moonlit London road. Engaged as a drawing master to the beautiful Laura Fairlie, Walter is drawn into the sinister intrigues of Sir Percival Glyde and his 'charming' friend Count Fosco, who has a taste for white mice, vanilla bonbons and poison. Pursuing questions of identity and insanity along the paths and corridors of English country houses and the madhouse, The Woman in White is the first and most influential of the Victorian genre that combined Gothic horror with psychological realism. |
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The Yellow House: Van Gogh, Gauguin and Nine Turbulent Weeks in Arles is art critic Martin Gayford's account of the tumultuous nine weeks in which the famous nineteenth century artists Vincent van Gogh and Paul Gauguin shared a house in the small French town of Arles. |
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Part of Penguin's beautiful hardback Clothbound Classics series, designed by the award-winning Coralie Bickford-Smith, these delectable and collectible editions are bound in high-quality colourful, tactile cloth with foil stamped into the design. The epic tale of Odysseus and his ten-year journey home after the Trojan War forms one of the earliest and greatest works of Western literature. Confronted by natural and supernatural threats — shipwrecks, battles, monsters and the implacable enmity of the sea-god Poseidon — Odysseus must use his wit and native cunning if he is to reach his homeland safely and overcome the obstacles that, even there, await him. |
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Soon China will rule the world. But in doing so, it will not become more 'Western'. Martin Jacques' groundbreaking book overturns conventional thinking about the ascendancy of China, showing how its impact will not just be economic, but cultural. As China's powerful civilization reasserts itself, it will signal the end of the global dominance of the Western nation-state, and the start of a future of 'contested modernity'. This profound, far-sighted book explains for the first time the deeper meaning of China's rise to power. |
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Lucy Kellaway is the FT's management columnist. She lives in London and is married with four children. Her second novel, In Office Hours, is available from Penguin now. |
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