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Penguin Group
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«This is reissued, with a new foreword, for the 70th Anniversary. Antony Beevor's D-Day: The Battle for Normandy is the closest you will ever get to war — the taste, the smell, the noise and the fear. 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. 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). «No writer can surpass Beevor in making sense of a crowded battlefield and in balancing the explanation of tactical manoeuvres with poignant flashes of human detail». (Christopher Silvester, Daily Express). Antony Beevor is the renowned author of Stalingrad, which won the Samuel Johnson Prize, the Wolfson Prize for History and the Hawthornden Prize for Literature, and Berlin, which received the first Longman-History Today Trustees' Award. His books have sold nearly four million copies.» |
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This novel in verse, said to be the parent of all Russian novels, is a tragic story of innocence, love and friendship. Eugene Onegin, an aristocrat, much like Pushkin and his peers in his attitude and habits, is bored. He visits the countryside where the young and passionate Tatyana falls in love with him. In a touching letter she confesses her love but is cruelly rejected. Years later, it is Onegin's turn to be rejected by Tatyana. |
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The novel (1915) chronicles the lives of three generations of the Brangwen family over a period of more than 60 years, setting them against the emergence of modern England. The central figure of ursula becomes the focus of Lawrence's examination of relationships and the conflicts they bring, and the inextricable mingling of the physical and the spiritual. Suffused with biblical imagery, The Rainbow addresses searching human issues in a setting of precise and vivid detail. |
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After her parents' bitter divorce, young Maisie Farange finds herself shuttled between her selfish mother and vain father, who value her only as a means for provoking each other. Maisie — solitary, observant and wise beyond her years — is drawn into an increasingly entangled adult world of intrigue and sexual betrayal, until she is finally compelled to choose her own future. What Maisie Knew is a subtle yet devastating portrayal of an innocent adrift in a corrupt society. It is part of a relaunch of three James titles. |
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The three plays collected in this volume depict the faults, errors and foibles of ordinary people with exuberant humour, savage satire and acute observations. Volpone portrays a rich Venetian who pretends to be dying so that his despised acquaintances will flock to his bedside with extravagant gifts in hope of an inheritance. The Alchemist also deals with greed and gullibility, as a rascally trio of confidence tricksters, claiming to have the legendary Philosopher's Stone, fool a series of victims who are hoping to make some easy money. And in a wonderfully energetic portrait of Jacobean life, Bartholomew Fair shows a diverse group of Londoners sampling the delights and temptations of the Fair — and the traders, prostitutes and cutpurses who set out to exploit them. |
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Wrongly accused of theft and exiled from a religious community many years before, the embittered weaver Silas Marner lives alone in Raveloe, living only for work and his precious hoard of money. But when his money is stolen and an orphaned child finds her way into his house, Silas is given the chance to transform his life. His fate, and that of the little girl he adopts, is entwined with Godfrey Cass, son of the village Squire, who, like Silas, is trapped by his past. Silas Marner, George Eliot's favourite of her novels, combines humour, rich symbolism and pointed social criticism to create an unsentimental but affectionate portrait of rural life. |
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When a Victorian scientist propels himself into the year 802,701 AD, he is initially delighted to find that suffering has been replaced by beauty, contentment and peace. Entranced at first by the Eloi, an elfin species descended from man, he soon realises that this beautiful people are simply remnants of a once-great culture now weak and childishly afraid of the dark. They have every reason to be afraid: in deep tunnels beneath their paradise lurks another race descended from humanity the sinister Morlocks. And when the scientist's time machine vanishes, it becomes clear he must search these tunnels, if he is ever to return to his own era. |
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This is the very best of James Thurber's hilarious short stories and essays, to tie-in with the major new film starring Ben Stiller and Kristen Wiig. Walter Mitty is an ordinary man living an ordinary life. But he has dreams — vivid, extraordinary day dreams — in which the life he leads is one of excitement and even adventure, in which he — a weary, put upon middle-aged man — is the hero of his own story. A man can dream, can't he? The Secret Life of Walter Mitty is just one of the brilliant humorous and witty stories written by James Thurber and collected here. James Thurber was born in 1894 at Columbus, Ohio, where, as he once said, so many awful things happened to him. After university (Ohio State) he worked at the American Embassy in Paris from 1918 to 1920, and then turned to journalism. From 1927 onwards he was on the staff of the New Yorker, and first published much of his work in it. He died in New York in 1961, and is today recognised as one of America's greatest twentieth-century humourists. |
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Mary Barton, the daughter of disillusioned trade unionist, rejects her working-class lover Jem Wilson in the hope of marrying Henry Carson, the mill owner's son, and making a better life for herself and her father. But when Henry is shot down in the street and Jem becomes the main suspect, Mary finds herself painfully torn between the two men. Through Mary's dilemma, and the moving portrayal of her father, the embittered and courageous activist John Barton, Mary Barton (1848) powerfully dramatizes the class divides of the 'hungry forties' as personal tragedy. In its social and political setting, it looks towards Elizabeth Gaskell's great novels of the industrial revolution, in particular North and South. |
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This is the story of Bathsheba Everdene, who inherits her uncle's farm, then surprises the villagers of Weatherbury by deciding to run it herself rather than hire a manager. Three men vie for the affections of this independent young woman. |
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In this classically simple tale of the disastrous impact of outside life on a secluded community in Dorset, now in a new edition, Hardy narrates the rivalry for the hand of Grace Melbury between a simple and loyal woodlander and an exotic and sophisticated outsider. Betrayal, adultery, disillusion, and moral compromise are all worked out in a setting evoked as both beautiful and treacherous. The Woodlanders, with its thematic portrayal of the role of social class, gender, and evolutionary survival, as well as its insights into the capacities and limitations of language, exhibits Hardy's acute awareness of his era's most troubling dilemmas. |
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Plantaganet Palliser, Prime Minister of England — a man of power and prestige, with all the breeding and inherited wealth that goes with it — is appalled at the inexorable rise of Ferdinand Lopez. An exotic impostor, seemingly from nowhere, Lopez has society at his feet, while well-connected ladies vie with each other to exert influence on his behalf — even Palliser's own wife, Lady Glencora. But when the interloper makes a socially advantageous marriage, Palliser must decide whether to stand by his wife's support for Lopez in a by-election or leave him to face exposure as a fortune-hunting adventurer. A novel of social, sexual and domestic politics, The Prime Minister raises one of the most enduring questions in government — whether a morally scrupulous gentleman can make an effective leader. |
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In this classic, the world's expert on language and mind lucidly explains everything you always wanted to know about language: how it works, how children learn it, how it changes, how the brain computes it, and how it evolved. With deft use of examples of humor and wordplay, Steven Pinker weaves our vast knowledge of language into a compelling story: language is a human instinct, wired into our brains by evolution. The Language Instinct received the William James Book Prize from the American Psychological Association and the Public Interest Award from the Linguistics Society of America. This edition includes an update on advances in the science of language since The Language Instinct was first published. |
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The Lottery, one of the most terrifying stories written in the twentieth century, created a sensation when it was published in 1948. Today it is considered a classic work of short fiction, remarkable for its combination of subtle suspense and pitch-perfect descriptions of both the chilling and the mundane. This collection, the only one to appear during Shirley Jackson's lifetime, unites The Lottery with twenty-four equally unusual stories. Together they demonstrate Jackson's remarkable range — encompassing the hilarious and the horrible, the unsettling and the ominous — as well as her power as a storyteller. |
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Four seekers have arrived at the rambling old pile known as Hill House: Dr. Montague, an occult scholar looking for solid evidence of psychic phenomena; Theodora, his lovely and lighthearted assistant; Luke, the adventurous future inheritor of the estate; and Eleanor, a friendless, fragile young woman with a dark past. As they begin to cope with chilling, even horrifying occurrences beyond their control or understanding, they cannot possibly know what lies ahead. For Hill House is gathering its powers — and soon it will choose one of them to make its own. |
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Spot is on the move in this fantastic finger puppet book. Wiggle your finger to help Spot drive a car, a train, a boat, a tractor, a bus and even a plane — what a busy puppy! This is the perfect book for your little Spot fan. There are lots of fun and educational Spot books available including: Spot's Dressing-Up Fun, Spot's Snowy Day, Spot Says Please and many more. |
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Poignant, fascinating, entertaining and informative... reminds us exactly how much did happen in that time span and of how many tantalising hints he left behind. (Financial Times). Brilliantly captures Kennedy's entire life through the prism of his final months... the hero, like the devil, is in the detail. (Mark Mason, Spectator, Books of the Year). Wonderfully vivid. (Dominic Sandbrook, Sunday Times). A vivid portrait of Kennedy as an immensely complex human being: by turns detached and charismatic, a hard-nosed politician and a closet romantic, cautious in his decision making but reckless in his womanizing. (Michicko Kakutani, New York Times). A superb piece of writing — richly detailed and, considering that the end is all too well known, surprisingly enthralling. (Frank Gannon, Wall Street Journal). The great merit of Clarke's account is that it encompasses both sides of Kennedy: the statesman and the chancer; the moralist and the opportunist. (David Runciman, New Statesman). A superb book... has the ominousness of a Shakespearean tragedy. (Roger Lewis, Daily Mail). |
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The Keeper of Lost Causes (originally published in the UK as Mercy) is the nail-biting first book in the internationally bestselling Department Q series. It is now a major movie, released in the UK in August 2014. At first the prisoner scratches at the walls until her fingers bleed. But there is no escaping the room. With no way of measuring time, her days, weeks, months go unrecorded. She vows not to go mad. She will not give her captors the satisfaction. She will die first. Copenhagen detective Carl Morck has been taken off homicide to run a newly created department for unsolved crimes. His first case concerns Merete Lynggaard, who vanished five years ago. Everyone says she's dead. Everyone says it's a waste of time. He thinks they're right. The voice in the dark is distorted, harsh and without mercy. It says the prisoner's torture will only end when she answers one simple question. It is one she has asked herself a million times: Why is this happening? Praise for Jussi Adler-Olsen: Gripping storytelling. (Guardian). Engrossing. (Sunday Express). As impressive as it is unnerving. (Independent). Jussi Adler-Olsen has sold over 10 million books worldwide. He is the internationally bestselling author of the Department Q series, featuring Carl Morck. The Keeper of Lost Causes was originally published in the UK as Mercy, and is now a major Danish language movie. |
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On the marriage of Julius von Felden and Melanie Merz, the fortunes of two families are somewhat fatally entwined. In A Legacy, Sybille Bedford depicts their vastly different worlds the wealthy bourgeois life of the Merzes in Berlin and the aristocratic eccentricity of the von Felden dynasty in rural Baden. Portrayed with exquisite wit and acute observation, their personal upheavals and tragedies are set against the menacing backdrop of a newly unified Germany combined with Prussian militarism in the decades before the First World War. |
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A third of teachers leave within their first term on the job. This one wouldn't quit for all the world. Meet Furious — sixteen, handsome and completely out of control. Nothing frightens him and no one can get through to him. Now meet Munchkin — a sweet kid with glasses who's an easy target and needs protecting. Then there's Seething and Deranged, two girls who are brimming with bad attitude; Fifty and Cent, who act like gangsters but are afraid of getting beaten up; and Stoic, a brilliant young mind struggling to survive. In the midst of them all, there is a bodyguard and bouncer, a counsellor and confidante, a young woman whose job it is to motivate and inspire them and somehow keep them out of trouble: their teacher. None will make it through the year unscathed. Some may not even make it at all... Spanning a year of shocking truths and hard-won victories, of fights and phone-thefts, teenage pregnancies and the dreaded OFSTED report, this is the remarkable diary of an inner-city school teacher. Revealing the extraordinary chaos, mismanagement and wrong-thinking that plague our education system, it is a funny, surprising and sometimes heartbreaking journey from the frontlines of the classroom to the heart of modern Britain. |
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