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Penguin Group
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In 1960 Jack Kerouac was near breaking point. Driven mad by constant press attention in the wake of the publication of On the Road, he needed to 'get away to solitude again or die', so he withdrew to a cabin in Big Sur on the Californian coast. The resulting novel, in which his autobiographical hero Jack Duluoz wrestles with doubt, alcohol dependency and his urge towards self-destruction, is one of Kerouac's most personal and searingly honest works. Ending with the poem 'Sea: Sounds of the Pacific Ocean at Big Sur', it shows a man coming down from his hedonistic youth and trying to come to terms with fame, the world and himself. |
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Desolation Angels is the wild and soulful story of the legendary road trip that Jack Kerouac took before the publication of On the Road, told through the persona of Jack Duluoz and accompanied by his thinly-disguised Beat cohorts Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso and William Burroughs. As they hitch, hop freight trains, walk and talk their way across the world, from California to Mexico, London to Paris and on to opium-ridden Tangiers, Kerouac chronicles their poetry, partying, mountain vigils and spiritual contemplation with unsurpassable energy and humanity. |
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Jack Kerouac called Doctor Sax, the enigmatic figure who haunted his boyhood imagination, 'my ghost, personal angel, private shadow, secret lover'. In this extraordinary autobiographical account of growing up in Lowell, Massachussetts, told through his fictional alter ego Jack Duluoz, he mingles real people and events with fantastical figures to capture the accents, scents, sights and texture of his childhood: playing among the river weeds and railroad tracks, going to church, witnessing life and death on the street corners. Written when he was staying with William Burroughs in Mexico in 1952, Doctor Sax was Kerouac's favourite of all his books: a dark, vivid and magical evocation of a boy's vibrant inner life. |
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Spurred on by admiration for his novelist half-brother and irritation at the biography written about him by Mr Goodman ('his slapdash and very misleading book'), the narrator, V, sets out to record Sebastian Knight's life as he understands it. But buried amid the extensive quoting, digressions, seeming explanations and digs, Sebastian's erratic and troubled persona remains as elusive as ever. Nabokov's first novel written in English, The Real Life of Sebastian Knight is a nuanced, enigmatic potrayal of the conflict between the real and the unreal, and the futile quest for human truth. |
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Harmony, Texas, librarian Emily has started a writing group. But Emily suddenly has other things on her mind when a friend from her past shows up in Harmony's library. Now she must deal with a secret she's kept for 15 years Na secret that changed her life and threatens to shatter her future. |
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The master of wit and irony Published here alongside their evocative original illustrations, these fairy tales, as Oscar Wilde himself explained, were written partly for children, and partly for those who have kept the childlike faculties of wonder and joy. |
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Small-time circus magician Oscar Diggs' life suddenly changes when he's hurled away in a hot air balloon from uneventful Kansas into the enchanting Land of Oz. The inhabitants there see Oscar as the Great Wizard, and they shower him with the fame and fortune he has always imagined would be his. That is, until three very powerful witches start to question Oscar's abilities. Drawn into an increasingly dangerous world, Oscar must quickly figure out who is good and who is evil in order to combat the wicked forces at large. Putting his limited magical arts to use through illusion, ingenuity — and even a bit of wizardry — Oscar transforms himself not only into the great and powerful Wizard of Oz but into a better man as well. |
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Four years ago, Jocelyn left her tragic past behind in the States and started over in Scotland, burying her grief, ignoring her demons, and forging ahead without attachments. Her solitary life is working well — until she moves into a new apartment on Dublin Street, where she meets a man who shakes her carefully guarded world to its core. |
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In these dark, dreamlike love stories with a twist, Ludmilla Petrushevskaya tells of strange encounters in claustrophobic communal apartments, ill-fated holiday romances, office trysts, schoolgirl crushes, tentative courtships, rampant infidelity, tender devotion and terrifying madness. By turns sly and sweet, earthy and sublime, these fables of flawed love blend black humour and macabre spectacle with transformative moments of grace. |
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Eric Arthur Blair (1903-1950), better known by his pen-name, George Orwell, was born in India, where his father worked for the Civil Service. An author and journalist, Orwell was one of the most prominent and influential figures in twentieth-century literature. In this title, he documents his time living among the desperately poor and destitute. |
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We lose everything because everything remains except us. In this book, the author recalls the strange events and people that shaped his past, including ghostly literary figures, a pilot, an adventurer, a brother who died as a child and the king of an island in the Caribbean, we begin to question the nature of time, memory and reality itself. |
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When Midlands housewife Coventry Dakin kills her neighbour in a wild bid to prevent him from strangling his wife, she goes on the run. Finding herself alone and friendless in London she tries to lose herself in the city's maze of streets. There, she meets a bewildering cast of eccentric characters. |
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It is 1867 and winter in Ryazan, a city on the banks of the Oka River in Central Russia. Konstantin is ten years old. His days are full of dreams of flight — to Moscow, even to the silent stars. But then, one day, he catches cold in the freezing woods near his home and his own world becomes silent. Left deaf by scarlet fever, his outlook is desperate. Only his fascination with a newly mechanised age and his astonishing visions of humanity's future seem to offer him any sort of hope. As vivid and evocative as Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall and David Mitchell's The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, Konstantin, Tom Bullough's brilliant, inspirational novel, tells the extraordinary story, based on a real-life character, of the first man to reveal how travel into space might be possible. It is a story of man, nature, and the limitless power of the imagination. Tom Bullough was born in 1975 and is the author of two previous novels. He lives in Breconshire, in mid-Wales, with his wife and young son. |
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1880, South Africa. Frances Irvine, left penniless after her father's sudden death, is forced to emigrate to the Cape. In this barren country, she meets two very different men — one driven by ambition, the other by ideals. |
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Beginning in the pioneering Victorian age, the author charts the evolution of architecture, branding, typeface, map design, interior and textile styles, posters, signage and graphic design and how these came together to shape the Underground's identity, and the character of London itself. |
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When Janine and Dougie fell in love they thought it would be forever. Fifteen years later their relationship is well and truly over, their daughter Stevie their one remaining connection. Stevie is on the cusp of adulthood. At sixteen, she's not quite a child, but not quite grown up: a dangerous age. |
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This is the essential edition of the essential book of modern times, 1984, now annotated for students with an introduction by D. J. Taylor. Ever since its publication in 1949, George Orwell's terrifying vision of a totalitarian regime where Big Brother controls its citizens like 'a boot stamping on a human face' has become a touchstone for human freedom, and one of the most widely-read books in the world. In this new annotated edition Orwell's biographer D. J. Taylor elucidates the full meaning of this timeless satire, explaining contemporary references in the novel, placing it in the context of Orwell's life, elaborating on his extraordinary use of language and explaining the terms such as Newspeak, Doublethink and Room 101 that have become familiar phrases today. |
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In Ethan Wate's hometown there lies the darkest of secrets... There is a girl. Slowly, she pulled the hood from her head. Green eyes, black hair. Lena Duchannes. There is a curse. On the Sixteenth Moon , the Sixteenth Year, the book will take what it's been promised. And no one can stop it. In the end, there is a grave. Lena and Ethan become bound together by a deep, powerful love. But Lena is cursed and on her sixteenth birthday, her fate will be decided. Ethan never even saw it coming. |
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The Cold War is over. The rules of the spying game have changed. But to train new spies for this uncertain future, one must first show them the past. Enter the man called Ned, the loyal and shrewd veteran of the Circus. With the inspiration of his inscrutable mentor George Smiley, Ned thrills all as he recounts forty exhilarating years of Cold War espionage across Europe and the Far East. |
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One of the most extraordinary history bestsellers on the Penguin list, John Roberts' book has now been updated by Odd Arne Westad to make sure it keeps its amazing appeal to a new generation of readers. A stupendous achievement... the unrivalled World History for our day. It extends over all ages and all continents. It covers the forgotten experiences of ordinary people as well as chronicling the acts of those in power. It is unbelievably accurate in its facts and almost incontestable in its judgements — A. J. P. Taylor, Observer. |
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