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Penguin Group
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New York Times-bestselling author Nick Hornby mines the hearts and psyches of four lost souls who connect just when they've reached the end of the line. A LONG WAY DOWN is now a major motion picture from Magnolia Pictures starring Pierce Brosnan, Toni Collette, Aaron Paul, and Imogen Poots. Meet Martin, JJ, Jess, and Maureen. Four people who come together on New Year's Eve: a former TV talk show host, a musician, a teenage girl, and a mother. Three are British, one is American. They encounter one another on the roof of Topper's House, a London destination famous as the last stop for those ready to end their lives. In four distinct and riveting first-person voices, Nick Hornby tells a story of four individuals confronting the limits of choice, circumstance, and their own mortality. This is a tale of connections made and missed, punishing regrets, and the grace of second chances. Intense, hilarious, provocative, and moving, A LONG WAY DOWN is a novel about suicide that is, surprisingly, full of life. |
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This selection of Kafka's shorter prose writings includes one of the few works published during his lifetime: the harrowing story of Gregor Samsa's overnight transformation into a verminous insect, his record of the effect of this sudden metamorphosis on himself and the reaction of his family. It conveys with an unsettling mixture of subjective involvement and objective detachment the complex feelings of guilt, affection, responsibility and self-doubt that characterise Kafka's perception of intimate emotional relationships — themes that are continued in the quasi-fictional story The Judgement and the quasi-autobiographical Letter to his Father. Issues of guilt, punishment and penance are also treated with startling brutality in the story set in a tropical penal colony that describes in horrific detail a machine designed to inflict an ingenious and barbaric form of execution on victims of a summary and arbitrary justice — a machine, however, that in this instance destroys not its intended victim, but its zealous operator and, simultaneously, itself. Kafka's enigmatic fables deal, often in dark and quirkily humorous terms, with the insoluble dilemmas of a world in which there appears to be no reassurance, no reliable guidance to resolving our existential and emotional uncertainties and anxieties. |
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Nick Hornby's second bestselling novel is about sex, manliness and fatherhood. Will is thirty-six, comfortable and child-free. And he's discovered a brilliant new way of meeting women — through single-parent groups. Marcus is twelve and a little bitnerdish: he's got the kind of mother who made him listen to Joni Mitchell rather than Nirvana. Perhaps they can help each other out a little bit, and both can start to act their age. |
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Have you ever lost someone who meant more to you than your own soul? Ford Newcombe has. For years he loved his wife, Pat, more than anyone — and anything — in the world. She came into his life when he was just an inexperienced college student with big dreams of becoming a published author. With love and humour, she guided him down the path that would eventually lead him to more success than he ever dreamed possible. Since Pat's death six years ago, Ford has lived a life of solitude, barely able to put pen to paper, and rumours are flying that it was Pat who actually created the books the world so loved. If there's one thing that Ford needs it's inspiration, and it finally comes in the guise of Jackie Maxwell — a smart, sassy university researcher with just enough attitude to match Ford's sharp intellect. But it's her intimate knowledge of the story of a young woman's friendship with the devil — and what the townspeople did to her — that persuades Ford to hire Jackie as his assistant and to move to Cole Creek, North Carolina, where the story is said to have taken place. They soon learn that even though the inhabitants of Cole Creek try to deny it, they are still plagued by the consequences of the otherworldly tale of passion and death. As Ford and Jackie work to unravel the truth, they discover a connection between their lives and the past, a connection that not only helps them solve a long-ago crime but offers the promise of new love. |
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Downloads, CDs and DVD mean it is possible to listen to hundreds of thousands of classical recordings today — but how do you pick your way through the vast array of music now on offer? The Penguin Guide to the 1000 Finest Classical Recordings brings together the experience and enthusiasm of four of classical music's greatest experts, Ivan March, Edward Greenfield, Robert Layton and Paul Czajkowski, to create an essential guide to the best recordings. With clear, simple, easy-to-use A to Z listings of composers and performers, the pick of the latest CD releases, as well as established landmark recordings, short guides to ballet, opera and the history of recording, and indications of budget and mid-range price CDs, this guide offers a treasury of outstanding music, whether you are just starting to build a collection or tracking down a particular favourite. |
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One hundred postcards of all Doctor Who's iconic characters, terrifying monsters and incredible places the Doctor has visited in a stylish keepsake box. Send them to your friends, stick them on your wall, or keep them as a classic collectable! |
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Over the past 500 years, the West achieved global dominance, but do Westerners necessarily have better ideas about how to raise children, care for the elderly, or simply live well? In this epic journey into our past, Jared Diamond reveals that traditional societies around the world offer an extraordinary window into how our ancestors lived for the majority of human history — until virtually yesterday, in evolutionary terms. Drawing on decades of his own fieldwork, Diamond explores how tribal people approach essential human problems, from health and diet to conflict resolution and language, and discovers they have much to teach us. |
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Forget everything you think you know about global warming. It's not about carbon — it's about capitalism. The good news is that we can seize this crisis to transform our failed economic system and build something radically better. In her most provocative book yet, Naomi Klein, author of the global bestsellers The Shock Doctrine and No Logo, exposes the myths that are clouding climate debate. You have been told the market will save us, when in fact the addiction to profit and growth is digging us in deeper every day. You have been told it's impossible to get off fossil fuels when in fact we know exactly how to do it — it just requires breaking every rule in the 'free-market' playbook. You have also been told that humanity is too greedy and selfish to rise to this challenge. In fact, all around the world, the fight back is already succeeding in ways both surprising and inspiring. It's about changing the world, before the world changes so drastically that no one is safe. Either we leap — or we sink. This Changes Everything is a book that will redefine our era. |
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Sendhil Mullainathan, the 'most interesting young economist in the world', and Eldar Shafir, the 'most brilliant psychologist' of his generation, explain the hidden problem behind everything with Scarcity. Why can we never seem to keep on top of our workload, social diary or chores? Why does poverty persist around the world? Why do successful people do things at the last minute in a sudden rush of energy? Here, economist Sendhil Mullainathan and psychologist Eldar Shafir reveal that the hidden side behind all these problems is that they're all about scarcity. Using the new science of scarcity, they explain why obesity is rampant; why people find it difficult to sleep when most sleep deprived; and why the lonely find it so hard to make friends. Scarcity will change the way you think about both the little everyday tasks and the big issues of global urgency. Stars in their respective disciplines, and the combination is greater than the sum of its parts. Their project has a unique feel to it: it is the finest combination of heart and head that I have seen in our field. (Daniel Kahneman, author of Thinking, Fast and Slow). Scarcity is a captivating book, overflowing with new ideas, fantastic stories, and simple suggestions that just might change the way you live. (Steven D. Levitt, coauthor of Freakonomics). An ultimately humane and very welcome book. (Oliver Burkeman, Guardian). Sendhil Mullainathan is a Professor of Economics at Harvard, and a recipient of a MacArthur Foundation genius grant. He conducts research on development economics, behavioural economics, and corporate finance. He is Executive Director of Ideas 42, Institute of Quantitative Social Science, Harvard University. Eldar Shafir is William Stewart Tod Professor of Psychology and Public Affairs at Princeton University. Most of his work focuses on descriptive analyses of inference, judgment, and decision making, and on issues related to behavioural economics. |
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This is a gripping narrative of the most critical years in modern Ireland's history — from Charles Townshend, author of Easter 1916. The protracted, terrible fight for independence pitted the Irish against the British and the Irish against other Irish. It was both a physical battle of shocking violence against a regime increasingly seen as alien and unacceptable and an intellectual battle for a new sort of country. The damage done, the betrayals and grim compromises put the new nation into a state of trauma for at least a generation, but at a nearly unacceptable cost the struggle ended: a new republic was born. Charles Townshend's Easter 1916 opened up the astonishing events around the Rising for a new generation and in The Republic he deals, with the same unflinchingly wish to get to the truth behind the legend, with the most critical years in Ireland's history. There has been a great temptation to view these years through the prisms of martyrology and good-and-evil. The picture painted by Townshend is far more nuanced and sceptical — but also never loses sight of the ordinary forms of heroism performed by Irish men and women trapped in extraordinary times. 'The author has devoted his life to the study of Irish history and this huge work is the pinnacle of his labours' John Banville on Easter 1916. |
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Power Systems is the latest collection of searing insights from intellectual superstar Noam Chomsky. In this new collection of conversations, conducted from 2010 to 2012, Noam Chomsky explores the most immediate and urgent concerns: the future of democracy in the Arab world, the implications of the Fukushima nuclear disaster, the 'class war' fought by U.S. business interests against working people and the poor, the breakdown of mainstream political institutions and the rise of the far right. The latest volume from a long-established, trusted partnership, this collection shows once again that no interlocutor engages with Chomsky more effectively than David Barsamian. These interviews will inspire a new generation of readers, as well as longtime Chomsky fans eager for his latest thinking on the many crises we now confront, both at home and abroad. They confirm that Chomsky is an unparalleled resource for anyone seeking to understand our world today. Praise for Noam Chomsky: One of the finest minds of the twentieth century. (New Yorker). Noam Chomsky is a global phenomenon... he may be the most widely read American voice on foreign policy on the planet today. (New York Times Book Review). Will there ever again be a public intellectual who commands the attention of so many across the planet? (New Statesman). The west's most prominent critic of US imperialism... the closest thing in the English-speaking world to an intellectual superstar. (Guardian). Noam Chomsky is the author of numerous bestselling political books, including Hegemony or Survival, Failed States, Interventions, What We Say Goes, Hopes and Prospects and, most recently, Occupy, all of which are published by Hamish Hamilton/Penguin. He is a professor in the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy at MIT, and is widely credited with having revolutionized modern linguistics. David Barsamian is the award-winning founder and director of Alternative Radio. He has authored several books of interviews with leading political thinkers. |
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On Anarchism is an essential introduction to the Noam Chomsky's political theory. On Anarchism sheds a much needed light on the foundations of Chomsky's thought, specifically his constant questioning of the legitimacy of entrenched power. The book gathers his essays and interviews to provide a short, accessible introduction to his distinctively optimistic brand of anarchism. Refuting the notion of anarchism as a fixed idea, and disputing the traditional fault lines between anarchism and socialism, this is a book sure to challenge, provoke and inspire. Profoundly relevant to our times, it is a touchstone for political activists and anyone interested in deepening their understanding of anarchism, or of Chomsky's thought. Arguably the most important intellectual alive. (New York Times). Noam Chomsky is the author of numerous bestselling and influential political books, including Hegemony or Survival, Failed States, Interventions, What We Say Goes, Hopes and Prospects, Gaza in Crisis, Making the Future and Occupy. Nathan Schneider is the author of Thank You, Anarchy: Notes from the Occupy Apocalypse and God in Proof: The Story of a Search from the Ancients to the Internet. |
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'She was a brazen hussy. She wasn't. And she was pretty, wasn't she? I didn't look... And tell your girls, my son, that when they're running after you, they're not to come and ask your mother for you — tell them that — brazen baggages you meet at dancing classes'. The marriage of Gertrude and Walter Morel has become a battleground. Repelled by her uneducated and sometimes violent husband, delicate Gertrude devotes her life to her children, especially to her sons, William and Paul — determined they will not follow their father into working down the coal mines. But conflict is evitable when Paul seeks to escape his mother's suffocating grasp through relationships with women his own age. Set in Lawrence's native Nottinghamshire, Sons and Lovers is a highly autobiographical and compelling portrayal of childhood, adolescence and the clash of generations. The Penguin English Library — 100 editions of the best fiction in English, from the eighteenth century and the very first novels to the beginning of the First World War. |
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'She looked so like herself that I knew not how to bear it'. Gilbert Markham is deeply intrigued by Helen Graham, a beautiful and secretive young woman who has moved into nearby Wildfell Hall with her young son. He is quick to offer Helen his friendship, but when her reclusive behaviour becomes the subject of local gossip and speculation, Gilbert begins to wonder whether his trust in her has been misplaced. It is only when she allows Gilbert to read her diary that the truth is revealed and the shocking details of the disastrous marriage she has left behind emerge. |
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'Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers, — stern and wild ones, — and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss'. Set in the harsh Puritan community of seventeenth-century Boston, this tale of an adulterous entanglement that results in an illegitimate birth reveals Nathaniel Hawthorne's concerns with the tension between the public and the private selves. Publicly disgraced and ostracized, Hester Prynne draws on her inner strength and certainty of spirit to emerge as the first true heroine of American fiction. Arthur Dimmesdale stands as a classic study of a self divided; trapped by the rules of society, he suppresses his passion and disavows his lover, Hester, and their daughter, Pearl. |
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'I walk'd about on the shore, lifting up my hands, and my whole being, as I may say, wrapt up in the contemplation of my deliverance... reflecting upon all my comrades that were drown'd, and that there should not be one soul sav'd but my self...' Who has not dreamed of life on an exotic isle, far away from civilization? Here is the novel which has inspired countless imitations by lesser writers, none of which equal the power and originality of Defoe's famous book. Robinson Crusoe, set ashore on an island after a terrible storm at sea, is forced to make do with only a knife, some tobacco, and a pipe. He learns how to build a canoe, make bread, and endure endless solitude. That is, until, twenty-four years later, when he confronts another human being. First published in 1719, Robinson Crusoe has been praised by such writers as James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, and Samuel Johnson as one of the greatest novels in the English language. The Penguin English Library — 100 editions of the best fiction in English, from the eighteenth century and the very first novels to the beginning of the First World War. |
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«This is the «Penguin English Library Edition» of «The Moonstone» by Wilkie Collins. 'Here was our quiet English house suddenly invaded by a devilish Indian Diamond — bringing after it a conspiracy of living rogues, set loose on us by the vengeance of a dead man'. When Rachel Verinder's birthday present — the Moonstone, a large Indian diamond — is stolen at her party, suspicion and the diamond's mysterious curse seem set to ruin everyone and everything she loves. Only Sergeant Cuff's famous detective skills offer any hope of peace and a future for them all. The intricate plot and modern technique of multiple narrators made Wilkie Collin's 1868 work a huge success in the Victorian sensation genre. With a reconstruction of the crime, red herrings and a 'locked-room' puzzle, «The Moonstone» was also a major precursor of the modern mystery novel. «The Penguin English Library» — 100 editions of the best fiction in English, from the eighteenth century and the very first novels to the beginning of the First World War.» |
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The Pearl is Steinbeck's flawless parable about wealth and the evil it can bring. When Kino, an Indian pearl-diver, finds 'the Pearl of the world' he believes that his life will be magically transformed. He will marry Juana in church and their little boy, Coyotito, will be able to attend school. Obsessed by his dreams, Kino is blind to the greed, fear and even violence the pearl arouses in him and his neighbours. Written with haunting simplicty and lyrical simplicity, The Pearl sets the values of the civilized world against those of the primitive and finds them tragically inadequate. |
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In 1997, Steve Jobs returned to Apple with the unenviable task of turning around the company he had founded. One night Jobs discovered a scruffy British designer toiling away in a studio at Apple and instantly realized he had found a talent who could reverse the company's long decline. That young designer was Jony Ive. Ive's collaboration with Jobs would produce some of the world's most iconic products, including the iMac, iPod, iPad and iPhone. These designs have overturned entire industries and created the world's most powerful brand. This book offers a detailed portrait of a creative genius, based on interviews with Ive's former colleagues and extensive research. From his early interest in industrial design through his education at Newcastle Polytechnic and meteoric rise at Apple, we discover the principles and practices that led Ive to become the designer of his generation. |
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From Liane Moriarty, million copy selling author of The Husband's Secret, comes The Last Anniversary, a captivating story laced with mystery. 'This is your last chance to change your mind, Rose. After today we can't go back. Ever.' Seventy-three years have passed since sisters Rose and Connie found an abandoned baby in the only other house on their little island, Scribbly Gum. With both parents vanished without a trace, Rose and Connie made the decision to take the baby in as their own. And since then the 'Munro Baby Mystery' has brought them fame and fortune. But now, with Connie dead and outsider Sophie Honeywell inheriting her home, Rose begins to wonder if they made the right decision all those years ago. With the anniversary looming, and people still trying to solve the mystery, how much longer can they cover up the lie that has sustained their little community for four generations? And what other secrets are about to be revealed? Praise for Liane Moriarty: Highly addictive. (She). Gripping, acutely observed, thought-provoking and funny. (Marie Claire). The writing is beautiful: sometimes funny, sometimes sad but always compelling'. (Good Housekeeping). The Husband's Secret is a staggeringly brilliant novel. It is literally unputdownable. (Sophie Hannah). Liane Moriarty is the author of six novels including Three Wishes, The Last Anniversary, What Alice Forgot, The Hypnotist's Love Story and The Husband's Secret, which was a million copy bestseller and won the most popular Richard and Judy book club title for the autumn 2013 book club. Liane lives in Sydney with her husband, son and daughter. |
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