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Penguin Group
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Audacious, controversial and hilarious, The Monkey Wrench Gang is Edward Abbey's masterpiece — a big, boisterous and unforgettable novel about freedom and commitment that ignited the flames of environmental activism. Throughout the vast American West, nature is being vicitimized by a Big Government / Big Business conspiracy of bridges, dams and concrete. But a motley gang of individuals has decided that enough is enough, A burnt-out veteran, a mad doctor and a polygamist join forces in a noble cause: to dismantle the machinery of progress through peaceful means, or otherwise. |
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In a revamped, refreshed and expanded edition, Motorworld appears in paperback for the first time. From Iceland to Australia, Clarkson travels the world exploring car culture. This is comic travel writing at its laugh-out-loud funniest. |
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The second picture book from Madonna with beautiful artwork by American artist Loren Long. Tommy Tittlebottom sees Mr Peabody taking an apple from Mr Funkadeli's fruit market and is very surprised that he doesn't pay. Then Tommy sees it happen again and decides that Mr Peabody is a thief. Word spreads quickly around the town. When Mr Peabody arrives at the baseball ground, ready for the usual Saturday game, only Billy Little turns up and he soon explains what has happened. It is then up to Mr Peabody to teach Tommy about the importance of truth and the power of words. |
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Rachel Johnson's hilarious take on life as a yummy mummy in West London and on Exmoor has been making her newspaper readers chortle for the last couple of years: now they are seamlessly turned into a diary of her year, from the dog's birthday party in January (games of Paws-the-Parcel) to the June sports days (where the mummies turn up at the school sports day in sports bras and running shorts with little back packs containing high energy drinks — and that's just for them) to summer on Exmoor hosting demanding visiting ponies. |
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At the centre of Music for Chameleons is Handcarved Coffins, a ‘nonfiction novel’ based on the brutal crimes of a real-life murderer. Taking place in a small Midwestern town in America, it offers chilling insights into the mind of a killer and the obsession of the man bringing him to justice. Also in this volume are six short stories and seven ‘conversational portraits’ including a touching one of Marilyn Monroe, the ‘beautiful child’ and a hilarious one of a dope-smoking cleaning lady doing her rounds in New York. |
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Olga Chekhova was a stunning Russian beauty and a famous Nazi-era film actress who was closely associated with Hitler; she was also the niece of playwright Anton Chekhov. After fleeing Bolshevik Moscow for Berlin in 1920, she was recruited by her composer brother Lev, to work for Soviet intelligence. In return, her family were allowed to join her. The extraordinary story of how the whole family survived the Russian Revolution, the civil war, the rise of Hitler, the Stalinist Terror, and the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union becomes, in Antony Beevor's hands, a breathtaking tale of compromise and survival in a merciless age. |
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Orlando Figes’s enthralling, richly evocative history has been heralded as a literary masterpiece on Russia, the lives of those who have shaped its culture, and the enduring spirit of a people. |
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Behind the doors of the most famous address in the country, all is not well. Five years ago, Edward Clare was voted in to Number Ten after a landslide election result. But things are starting to go wrong. The love has gone. The people are turning. Leaving behind his superwoman wife Adele, Prime Minister Clare enlists the help of Jack Sprat, a policeman on the door of Number Ten, and sets out to discover what the country really thinks of him. Sneaking out of the back door incognito, they venture into the great unknown: the mean streets of Great Britain. For the first time in years, the Prime Minister experiences everything life in his country has to offer — an English cream tea, Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? and the kindness of strangers, as well as having to wait for trains and undergo treatment in a hospital — and remembers some of the things he'd forgotten he used to really care about ... |
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Ilya Ilyich Oblomov is a member of Russia's dying aristocracy a man so lazy that he has given up his job in the Civil Service, neglected his books, insulted his friends and found himself in debt. Too apathetic to do anything about his problems, he lives in a grubby, crumbling apartment, waited on by Zakhar, his equally idle servant. Terrified by the bustle and activity necessary to participate in the real world, Oblomov manages to avoid work, postpone change and finally risks losing the love of his life. Written with sympathetic humour and compassion, Oblomov made Goncharov famous throughout Russia on its publication in 1859, as readers saw in this story of a man whose defining characteristic is indolence, the portrait of an entire class in decline. |
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Olga Yunter was born in July 1900 in a remote frontier post in southern Siberia. A girlhood played out against the backdrop of the China trade changed forever, when, at seventeen, Olga joined her brothers in their fight against the Bolsheviks. Death and retribution followed. Olga was forced to flee to China, rubies sewn into her petticoats. Twice more Olga would be forced to leave everything behind — first to escape Mao's Communists, and again when Japan invaded China during World War II. From the comfort of her family to the terror of revolution, war and exile, Olga's Story is the heartbreaking tale of the author's grandmother. |
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On the Road swings to the rhythms of 1950s underground America, jazz, sex, generosity, chill dawns and drugs, with Sal Paradise and his hero Dean Moriarty, traveller and mystic, the living epitome of Beat. Now recognized as a modern classic, its American Dream is nearer that of Walt Whitman than Scott Fitzgerald, and it goes racing towards the sunset with unforgettable exuberance, poignancy and autobiographical passion. |
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This brutal, shattering glimpse of the fate of millions of Russians under Stalin shook Russia and shocked the world when it first appeared. Discover the importance of a piece of bread or an extra bowl of soup, the incredible luxury of a book, the ingenious possibilities of a nail, a piece of string or a single match in a world where survival is all. Here safety, warmth and food are the first objectives. Reading it, you enter a world of incarceration, brutality, hard manual labour and freezing cold — and participate in the struggle of men to survive both the terrible rigours of nature and the inhumanity of the system that defines their conditions of life. |
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Boisterous, ribald, and ultimately shattering, Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is the seminal novel of the 1960s that has left an indelible mark on the literature of our time. Here is the unforgettable story of a mental ward and its inhabitants, especially the tyrannical Big Nurse Ratched and Randle Patrick McMurphy, the brawling, fun-loving new inmate who resolves to oppose her. We see the struggle through the eyes of Chief Bromden, the seemingly mute half-Indian patient who witnesses and understands McMurphy's heroic attempt to do battle with the awesome powers that keep them all imprisoned. |
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Famously associated with the term ‘magical realism’, Marquez is probably South America’s most famous literary export. Equally tragic, joyful and comical, One Hundred Years of Solitude inhabits a strange dream-like space where very little makes real sense, but everything is mysteriously and vividly alive nonetheless. Blending fantasy and reality seamlessly, the characters struggle hopelessly against a merciless backdrop of madness, corruption and death…all measured out equally with farce and fatality; as profound a statement on the human condition as possible. In every sense, this is literature on the grandest of scales. An acknowledged masterpiece, this is the story of seven generations of the Buendía family and of Macondo, the town they have built. Though little more than a settlement surrounded by mountains, Macondo has its wars and disasters, even its wonders and miracles. A microcosm of Columbian life, its secrets lie hidden, encoded in a book and only Aureliano Buendía can fathom its mysteries and reveal its shrouded destiny. Blending political reality with magic realism, fantasy with comic invention, One Hundred Years of Solitude is one of the most daringly original works of the twentieth century. |
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From the moment Karen Blixen arrived in Kenya in 1914 to manage a coffee plantation, her heart belonged to Africa. Drawn to the intense colours and ravishing landscapes, Karen Blixen spent her happiest years on the farm and her experiences and friendships with the people around her are vividly recalled in these memoirs. Out of Africa is the story of a remarkable and unconventional woman and of a way of life that has vanished for ever. |
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Can it really be true that 'golf' stands for 'Gentlemen Only Ladies Forbidden'? Or that 'rule of thumb' comes from an archaic legal principle that a man may chastise his wife, but only with a rod no thicker than his thumb? These and hundreds of other stories are commonly told and retold whenever people meet. They grow up in part because expressions are often genuinely mysterious. Why, for example, are satisfying meals 'square' rather than any other shape? And how did anyone ever come up with the idea that if you're competent at something you can 'cut the mustard'? Michael Quinion here retells many of the more bizarre tales, and explains their real origins where they're known. This is a fascinating treasure-trove of fiction and fact for anyone interested in language. |
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The Roald Dahl Treasury is a wonderful collection by and about Roald Dahl, the great storytelling genius. Four themed sections — Animals; Magic; Family, Friends and Foes; and Matters of Importance — introduce some of Dahl's best-loved characters, from Willy Wonka to the BFG, from the Witches to the Twits, from James to Matilda. In each you will find complete stories, poems, memoirs and letters, as well as some unpublished poetry and letters. The Roald Dahl Treasury is beautifully illustrated in full colour by Quentin Blake, as well as by leading artists such as Raymond Briggs, Babette Cole, Posy Simmonds and Ralph Steadman. 'Those who don't believe in magic will never find it,' Roald Dahl told his readers. you will find a touch of magic on every page of this sumptuous book. It is the perfect gift for all lovers of Roald Dahl, and for all those who have yet to discover his magic. |
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One rainy night in New York City, outstanding law student Chloe Larson wakes from a terrible nightmare. But it's not a nightmare — it's real. Not only is she savagely violated in her own bedroom, Chloe then has to deal with the horror of nobody being brought to justice. Twelve years later a very different Chloe is forging a formidable reputation in the Miami Dade State Attorney's Office, as a vicious serial killer nicknamed Cupid terrorises Florida — tearing out his tortured victim's hearts while they're still conscious. When the police stop a driver on the McArthur Causeway and a mutilated corpse is found in his trunk, it seems the hunt for Cupid is finally over. But as Chloe begins the task of prosecuting the suspect, she soon realises that this case will be anything but easy. Because her past is about to force itself on her present — and the terror is only just beginning. Sometimes there's a price to be paid for justice. And sometimes that price is awful. Revenge could cost Chloe her sanity. The truth could cost her her life. THE PAST. THE PRESENT. THE TERROR. |
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Newly revised for this edition, Richard Pipes's highly acclaimed study analyses the evolution of the Russian state from the ninth century to the 1880s and its unique role in managing Russian society. The harsh geographical conditions and sheer size of the country prevented the creation of participatory government, and a 'patrimonial' state emerged in which Russia was transformed into a gigantic royal domain. Richard Pipes traces these developments and goes on to analyse the political behaviour of the principal social groupings — peasantry, nobility, middle-class and clergy — and their failure to stand up to the increasing absolutism of the tsar. In order to strengthen his powers legal and institutional bases were set up that led to the creation of a bureaucratic police state under the Communists. |
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