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Penguin Group
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THE DEVIL'S LARDER is a cumulative novel in sixty-four parts, all on the subject of food. Crace's readers might learn that little is to be trusted about food from these hilarious, delightful and subversive ingredients, but they will encounter a startling and touching patchwork portrait of a community where meals are served with lashings of passion and recipes come spiced with unexpected challenges and hopes. |
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With old loyalties tested by new and unlikely alliances, Miss Temple, Doctor Svenson, and Cardinal Chang must call on every reserve of courage to face a new and desperate struggle — after all, the integrity of their very minds is at risk. From palace intrigue and a city in turmoil to wolf-haunted mountains, underground tunnels and a suspicious hidden factory, they must overcome war and heartache to battle old enemies and a host of new villains, all hoping to seize for themselves the power of the blue glass books. Now one glass book in particular drives them all, its deadly contents the key to controlling the secrets of the blue glass, or destroying it forever. Praise for The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters: A page-turner, a rollicking ride. As stupendous as it is stupefying — Giles Foden, Guardian. Fantastic... I was in seventh heaven... Somewhere between Dickens, Sherlock Holmes and Rider Haggard — Kate Mosse, author of Labyrinth. |
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Abbie Devereaux wakes in the dark. She is hooded and bound, with no idea where she is or how she got there. Kept alive by a man she never sees, his only promise is that eventually he will kill her — like the others. But Abbie has spirit and bloody-mindedness on her side. She counts the seconds spent alone and plots her survival. Above all she dreams of returning to normal, careless, everyday life — the land of the living. Grasping at memories, Abbie recalls snatches of her identity, her career, and her disintegrating relationship with her boyfriend. Is there a connection between her real life and the voice in the darkness? And how can she survive in a place where fear becomes madness and the effort to survive seems too much to bear? |
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Jemima Jones is overweight. About seven stone overweight. Treated like a slave by her thin and bitchy flatmates, lorded over at the Kilburn Herald by the beautiful Geraldine (less talented, better paid), her only consolation is food. That and a passion for her charming, sexy colleague Ben. Her life needs to change and soon. But can Jemima reinvent herself? Should she? This is a novel about attraction, obsession and the meaning of true love. |
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Ellie and Dan are living proof that opposites attract. He always follows instructions and she throws the manual away. He loves sports whereas Ellie's allergic to any form of exercise. Ellie doesn't have a mother. And Dan does — a mother who wants to take over EVERYTHING. At first Ellie is thrilled to have Linda as her adopted mother and to be a part of the close, loving Cooper family. But when she and Dan decide to get married and wedding plans progress, she starts to wonder: is it normal for Linda and Dan to speak on the phone twice a day? How on earth do they come to be having a reception with Chilean bloody seabass and humongous bloody white ribbons tied everywhere when all she wanted was a quiet registry office? In fact, is she marrying Dan OR HIS MOTHER? And Ellie's problems have just begun. When she discovers she's pregnant she realises that Linda's only been rehearsing for the real takeover. She seems to want to live her life through Ellie and in the words of the immortal Princess Diana, there are three of them in the marriage. |
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In the past: a man crawls desperately through a claustrophobic escape tunnel beneath a POW camp in the Cambridgeshire Fens. Above, a shadow passes across the moon, while ahead only death awaits him. In the present: Philip Dryden is reporting on an archaeological dig at the old POW camp, when a body is uncovered. But there is something odd: the man appears to have been shot in the head, and the position indicates that he was trying to get into the camp, not escape it. It's a puzzle which excites Dryden far more than the archaeologists or the police. That is, until a second, more recent, body is discovered... |
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The naked body of a young woman is found hanging from a tree on a London roadside. Scrawled across her back, the words Dirty Girl. Detective Sergeant Stella Mooney and the AMIP 5 squad are faced with a murder as baffling as it is chilling. With no means to identify the victim and no apparent motive, the case is blocked, until... A man is found on a bench by the river, his throat cut back to the vertebrae. And, as before, the killer has left a trademark comment: Filthy Coward. Stella and her team can see there's a connection: but what? One victim is a young girl — maybe one of the hookers who work the Strip; the other a researcher for a prominent and controversial MP. More evidence is needed. And soon enough, it comes: another death; another message... |
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The Victoria System is Eric Reinhardt's novel of sex, power, capitalism and deception. It is shortlisted for The Prix Renaudot, The Prix Goncourt and The Grand Prix Du Roman De L'Academie Francaise. David Kolski is in charge of the construction of a huge Paris tower block, and the pressure is crushing him. But then he meets Victoria — a high-powered and ruthless executive by day and insatiable sensualist by night. David's hard-headed new lover gives him a new sense of purpose and renewed energy, but when she offers to use her position to help him in his career, a shadow falls over their affair. Is she capable of helping anyone other than herself? And who are the men in the Audi he keeps seeing, always a few cars behind him? Bold, arresting, accomplished, complex, sensual, sexual, intriguing, heady. (Le Monde). An ambitious and tragic novel which weaves together sex, power games and imagination. An ultracontemporary anti-fairy tale. (Les Inrocktibles). Finally, a sexy book by someone who appears to have actually had sex. (Dazed and Confused). Born in 1965, Eric Reinhardt is the is the author of four previous novels and a freelance publisher of art books. He lives and works in Paris. The Victoria System is his first novel to be translated into English. Sam Taylor is the English-language translator of HHhH, by Laurent Binet. He lives in France and the United States. |
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Dense woodland — twisting paths — it's easy to lose your way in the wilderness... The rugged Rocky Mountains are a place some go to hide inside, some to escape into and others to hunt in. Dr Matt Seleckis has never been one for the woods: he remembers his childhood vacations there with his mother and father — and the looming threat of an unexplained death... Now Matt lives in the mountains' shadow, in Utah with his wife and young son. Yet the prospect of a hunting trip alone with his father is bringing back dark, unwelcome memories — of a certain vacation, of his beloved parents. And of a hushed-up tragedy that he's sure concerns him. But with the arrival of these unsettling memories comes the creeping realisation that in nature, death for the unwary lies around every corner. And in the woods, it's easy to take a wrong turn. |
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In a great courtroom drama, Maigret has to explain why he does not believe that Gaston Meurant was capable of slitting his aunt's throat for money and smothering a small child. But in saving him from the gallows, Maigret must expose some dark secrets about Meurant's life. This is a painful story of an oppressive domestic tragedy and the compassionate insight of a remarkable detective. A truly wonderful writer... marvellously readable — lucid, simple, absolutely in tune with that world he creates of run-down hotels, cold, dark barges, quayside canal-taverns, lurking prostitutes, pot-bellied burghers, taciturn youths, slippery barmen — Muriel Spark, Sunday Times. |
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It is 1993 and Thomas Penmarsh has lived in Finisterre, the house by the sea, all his life, sleeping each night in the room with the barred window. He's only 48 but has been an old man since one evening in 1967 when he lost everything he valued... However now his controlling mother has died and he is master of the house. When Esmond, his cousin and childhood confidante, comes to live with him Thomas is overjoyed — Esmond always looks after him... But is Esmond all that he seems? And why is he so concerned that Alice wants to come home too? Darling Alice, whom neither have seen since that fateful night twenty-six years ago... |
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Back in 1964, Peter Redburn and his best friend Richard had spent a golden summer holiday playing out their special game — a private world of secret rituals and oaths of loyalty sworn for eternity. It was all very innocent — until James and Kate joined in... And then, one night, their childish game turned to tragedy... Now an adult, Peter has never been able to escape his own feelings of guilt about the events that summer. So when he stumbles across a hoard of childhood memories, he knows he must search out the truth. And with a funeral bringing all participants together again, bitter rivalries and sordid secrets are about to be unearthed. |
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Jenny's marriage is loveless, and she is having an affair. She works at an old people's home, where she is especially fond of Stella, a woman dying of cancer — whose own secrets parallel Jenny's — with the difference that she may have been involved in murdering her lover's husband. |
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Francis Saxover and Diana Brackley, two scientists investigating a rare lichen, discover it has a remarkable property: it retards the aging process. Francis, realising the implications for the world of an ever-youthful, wealthy elite, wants to keep it secret, but Diana sees an opportunity to overturn the male status quo by using the lichen to inspire a feminist revolution. As each scientist wrestles with the implications and practicalities of exploiting the discovery, the world comes ever closer to learning the truth. Trouble With Lichen is a scintillating story of the power wielded by science in our lives and asks how much trust should we place in those we appoint to be its guardians? |
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Katie Drake was an affluent single mother living in Queen's Park — until someone cut her throat and tore out her tongue. Worse still, the killer has abducted her fourteen-year-old daughter, Naomi. Detective Chief Inspector Grant Foster quickly sees chilling parallels with the disappearance of teenager Leonie Stamey three years earlier. With hopes fading of finding Naomi alive, he calls on genealogist Nigel Barnes to piece together the links between the families of the two girls. The trail leads Nigel back to 1890, when a young couple arrived in the UK. A husband and wife fleeing a terrible crime in their past, and harbouring a secret that's now having bloody repercussions in the present. |
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In the sleepy English village of Midwich, a mysterious silver object appears and all the inhabitants fall unconscious. A day later the object is gone and everyone awakens unharmed — except that all the women in the village are discovered to be pregnant. The resultant children of Midwich do not belong to their parents: all are blonde, all are golden eyed. They grow up too fast and their minds exhibit frightening abilities that give them control over others and brings them into conflict with the villagers just as a chilling realisation dawns on the world outside. The Midwich Cuckoos is the classic tale of aliens in our midst, exploring how we respond when confronted by those who are innately superior to us in every conceivable way. |
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You can run from a guilty conscience, but you can't hide... James wasn't much more than a child when he had an affair with Lily. And now, twenty-four years later, Lily confesses to James that their affair led to a daughter, Kate. And Kate desperately needs her father's help: she's wanted for murder. But there is no room for murder in James' life. He has a wife, a good job, a nice house in the country... As Kate comes crashing into his world, so she lights the fuse under his ordered life. Because James has also been keeping a secret — a very dark and deadly one... |
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At dawn on March 2, 2002, the first major battle of the 21st Century began. Over 200 soldiers of the 101st Airborne and 10th Mountain Divisions flew into Afghanistan's Shahikot valley and into the mouth of a buzz-saw. They were about to pay a bloody price for strategic, higher-level miscalculations that underestimated the enemy's strength and willingness to fight. After the attacks of September 11, 2001, Coalition forces quickly toppled the Taliban regime from the seat of government. But, believing the war to be all but over, the Pentagon and US Central Command refused to commit the forces required to achieve total victory in Afghanistan. Instead, they delegated responsibility for fighting the war's biggest battle to a tangle of untested units thrown together at the last moment. Then the world watched as Anaconda seemed to unravel. Denied the extra infantry, artillery and close air support with which they trained to go to war, the soldiers of this airborne assault fought for survival in brutal high-altitude combat. Backed up by a small, but crucial, team of special forces, they were all that stood between the Coalition and a military disaster. Now, award-winning journalist Sean Naylor, an eyewitness to the action, vividly portrays the fight for Afghanistan's most hostile battleground and details the failures of military intelligence and planning that left victory hanging by a thread. |
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For a second she thinks she is dead. Then she opens her eyes and wishes she was. The press call him the Black River Killer and his stats are shocking: 16 murders; not captured in 20 years; the FBI's best profiler — Jack King — burned out and beaten, his career shattered. Jack and his wife now run a hotel in Tuscany. And though he still gets nightmares, rural Italy is a whole world away from BRK's brutal crime scenes in Southern Carolina. Or so Jack thought... As Italian cops discover the body of a young woman — her remains mutilated like BRK's victims — a gruesome package arrives at the FBI, twin events that conspire to lure the profiler back into the hunt. But this time, who is the spider and who is the fly? |
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How does our brain generate a conscious thought? And why does so much of our knowledge remain unconscious? Thanks to clever psychological and brain-imaging experiments, scientists are closer to cracking this mystery than ever before. In this lively book, Stanislas Dehaene describes the pioneering work his lab and the labs of other cognitive neuroscientists worldwide have accomplished in defining, testing, and explaining the brain events behind a conscious state. We can now pin down the neurons that fire when a person reports becoming aware of a piece of information and understand the crucial role unconscious computations play in how we make decisions. The emerging theory enables a test of consciousness in animals, babies, and those with severe brain injuries. A joyous exploration of the mind and its thrilling complexities, Consciousness and the Brain will excite anyone interested in cutting-edge science and technology and the vast philosophical, personal, and ethical implications of finally quantifying consciousness. |
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