Alone in a new country, wealthy Sara Crewe tries to make friends at boarding school and settle in.But when she learns that she'll never see her beloved father again, her life is turned upside down. Transformed from princess to pauper, she must swap dancing lessons and luxury for drudgery and a room in the attic. Will she find that kindness and generosity are all the riches she truly needs?With deeply poignant introduction written by bestselling author of Chinese Cinderella, A Little Princess is one of the twelve wonderful classic stories being relaunched in Puffin Classics in March 2008.
A world of magic, adventure and cute puppy antics from the bestselling author of the Magic Kitten series.Freya and her family have moved to be nearer her grandma and Freya is really missing her friends. Even new neighbour Isaac and his naughty puppy, Teddy, can't cheer her up. But when Old English sheepdog puppy Storm arrives, Freya's world becomes filled with magical fun!
'A breath of fresh cold air . . . a dangerous edge to gladden fans of Lisbeth Salander' Boyd TonkinFrom the million-book bestselling author comes another nail-biting thriller, for fans of Stieg Larsson, The Bridge and The Killing TV series.The murder of a female priest sends shockwaves through the isolated community of Kiruna. A crime that has terrifying echoes of another. Lawyer Rebecka Martinsson returns to Kiruna to help the police, and is soon drawn into the dead woman's world. A world of hurt and healing, sin and sexuality, and above all, of lethal sacrifice.Can Rebecka find the truth before she is consumed by it?'Among the current batch of Nordic writers, Larsson is one to be followed with the most minute attention' Barry Forshaw, Independent'A superior example of Scandinavian noir' Julia Handford, Sunday Telegraph'Larsson's laid-back style makes her unflinching probing of the icy depths of the human heart all the more chilling' Jake Kerridge, TelegraphAsa Larsson has sold over a million and a half books worldwide. Her first novel, The Savage Altar, won the award for Sweden's best first crime novel. This is her second novel starring Rebecka Martinsson.
Two girls went travelling in search of adventure, in search of 'real life'. Only one came back ...A chilling, gripping novel about the backpacking holiday of a lifetime with utterly devastating and unexpected consequences, this is a dazzling andassured first novel destined to become an instant classic.
Skeleton Coast is Clive Cussler's fourth Oregon Files adventure, featuring captain Juan Cabrillo.1896: HMS Rove vanishes in a shocking storm off the African coast. Aboard is a fortune in stolen diamonds...Present day: Juan Cabrillo and the crew of the covert super-ship Oregon have just escaped a double-cross on the Congo River when they come to the aid of Sloane Macintyre - looking for some long lost treasure. Sloane's story is strange and when Juan checks it out, he finds that there's much more than just diamonds at stake on the African coast. A deranged militant and his followers plan to unleash a devastating power that will kill millions and cause worldwide havoc. Soon the Oregon is steaming to the rescue - but some forces are so extreme that even a hero like Juan Cabrillo thinks twice before getting involved...The number-one bestseller Clive Cussler, author of the thrilling Dirk Pitt novels Crescent Dawn andAtlantis Found, and co-author Jack Du Brul tell a gripping story of treasure hunting and treachery in the fourth novel of the adventure series The Oregon Files. Skeleton Coast follows Sacred Stone and Dark Watch. Praise for Clive Cussler:'The guy I read' Tom ClancyBestselling author Clive Cussler has kept readers on the edges of their seats for four decades with his thrilling action novels. As well as the Oregon Files series there are also the NUMA Files, the Dirk Pitt stories (which started it all), the Isaac Bell adventures and the Fargo series. The other titles in the Oregon Files are: Golden Buddha, Sacred Stone, Dark Watch, Plague Ship, Corsair, The Silent Sea andThe Jungle and are all available in Penguin paperback.
Stevie Smith was one of the few modern poets to reach a wide general audience. Bizarre, witty, sad, sometimes caustic, her poems impart a zest for life, and reveal her unique eye for the marvels of the ordinary and her deep sensibility to the paradoxical nature of all human emotions.
Volumes have been dedicated to madness, but sanity is rarely mentioned. We can define the mad, but how do we classify the sane? In Going Sane, psychoanalyst and writer Adam Phillips delves deep into history, philosophy, literature and his own experiences to address questions that we rarely ask about ourselves, taking us on an engrossing journey in which we learn many things - including some of what it takes to be happy in the modern world.
The hit romance about the havoc an old flame can create, from the bestselling author of I Found You and Then She Was GoneThis blast from the past will knock them off their feet . . . Dig Ryan hasn't seen Delilah for twelve years, but when she bursts back into his life he can't help falling for his first love all over again.Nadine has been in love with Dig for fifteen years, so she can't help feeling cheated when her best friend has his head turned again by her old nemesis Delilah.But how low will Nadine stoop in order to make Delilah go away? And how can she make Dig realize who he really loves?'Will keep you up all night in a sweaty, addicted reading frenzy' The Times'Very entertaining and very funny' Heat'Jewell writes with invigorating zest and lashings of emotional intelligence' Independent'Wary, funny, realistic and immensely readable' Cosmopolitan
The Penguin Book of Card Games is the authoritative up-to-date compendium, describing an abundance of games to be played both for fun and by serious players.Auctions, trumpless hands, cross-ruffing and lurching: card players have a language all of their own. From games of high skill (Bridge) to games of high chance (Newmarket) to trick-taking (Whist) and banking (Pontoon), David Parlett, seasoned specialist in card games, takes us masterfully through the countless games to choose from.Not content to merely show us games with the conventional fifty-two card pack, Parlett covers many games played with other types of cards - are you brave enough to play with Tarot? With a 'working description' of each game, with the rules, variations and origins of each, as well as an appendix of games invented by the author himself, The Penguin Book of Card Games will delight, entertain and inform both the novice and the seasoned player.
C. P. Cavafy is one of the most singular and poignant voices of twentieth-century European poetry, conjuring a magical interior world through lyrical evocations of remembered passions, imagined monologues and dramatic retellings of his native Alexandria s ancient past. Figures from antiquity speak with telling interruptions from the author in such poems as Anna Comnena and You did not understand , while precise moments of history are seen with a sense of foreboding, as in Ides of March , The God Abandoning Antony and Nero s Deadline . And in poems that draw on his own life and surroundings, Cavafy recalls illicit trysts or glimpses of beautiful young men in One Night , I have gazed so much and The Caf Entrance , and creates exquisite miniatures of everyday life in An Old Man and Of the Shop .
One of the great English Romantic poets, William Blake (1757-1827) was an artist, poet, mystic and visionary. His work ranges from the deceptively simple and lyrical Songs of Innocence and their counterpoint Experience - which juxtapose poems such as 'The Lamb' and 'The Tyger', and 'The Blossom' and 'The Sick Rose' - to highly elaborate, apocalyptic works, such as The Four Zoas, Milton and Jerusalem. Throughout his life Blake drew on a rich heritage of philosophy, religion and myth, to create a poetic worlds illuminated by his spiritual and revolutionary beliefs that have fascinated, intrigued and enchanted readers for generations.
'I decided to run away. There simply wasn't anything else to do.'Here at last is Moominpappa's promised life story - from the days when he was abandoned in a newspaper parcel on the doorstep of a Moomin orphanage, to when he ran away to see the world and was lucky enough to meet Moominmamma.
Building on the crucial insight that jokes use many of the same mechanisms he had already discovered in dreams, Freud developed one of the richest and most comprehensive theories of humour that has ever been produced.Jokes, he argues, provide immense pleasure by allowing us to express many of our deepest sexual, aggressive and cynical thoughts and feelings which would otherwise remain repressed. In elaborating this central thesis, he brings together a dazzling set of puns, anecdotes, snappyone-liners, spoonerisms and beloved stories of Jewish beggars and marriage-brokers. Many remain highly amusing, while others throw a vivid light on the lost world of early twentieth-century Vienna.
This collection of writings is famous for giving us the phrase 'Freudian slip'. It also builds up a strong social history of Vienna and the middle-class social milieu of Freud and his patients. Through a series of case histories, some no longer than a few lines long, Freud explores how it is that normal people make slips of speech, writing, reading and remembering in their everyday life, and reveals what it is that they betray about the existence of a sub-text or subliminal motive to our conscious actions. As he explains, most of these slips tend of be of a relatively anodyne nature, but some are a little more sinister, particularly those where pride or thwarted love are concerned...
After the execution of Socrates in 399 BC, a number of his followers wrote dialogues featuring him as the protagonist and, in so doing, transformed the great philosopher into a legendary figure. Xenophon's portrait is the only one other than Plato's to survive, and while it offers a very personal interpretation of Socratic thought, it also reveals much about the man and his philosophical views. In 'Socrates' Defence' Xenophon defends his mentor against charges of arrogance made at his trial, while the 'Memoirs of Socrates' also starts with an impassioned plea for the rehabilitation of a wronged reputation. Along with 'The Estate-Manager', a practical economic treatise, and 'The Dinner-Party', a sparkling exploration of love, Xenophon's dialogues offer fascinating insights into the Socratic world and into the intellectual atmosphere and daily life of ancient Greece.
Lucretius' poem On the Nature of Things combines a scientific and philosophical treatise with some of the greatest poetry ever written. With intense moral fervour he demonstrates to humanity that in death there is nothing to fear since the soul is mortal, and the world and everything in it is governed by the mechanical laws of nature and not by gods; and that by believing this men can live in peace of mind and happiness. He bases this on the atomic theory expounded by the Greek philosopher Epicurus, and continues with an examination of sensation, sex, cosmology, meteorology, and geology, all of these subjects made more attractive by the poetry with which he illustrates them.
Emile Durkheim's On Suicide (1897) was a groundbreaking book in the field of sociology. Traditionally, suicide was thought to be a matter of purely individual despair but Durkheim recognized that the phenomenon had a social dimension. He believed that if anything can explain how individuals relate to society, then it is suicide: Why does it happen? What goes wrong? Why do certain social, religious or racial groups have higher incidences of suicide than others? As Durkheim explored these questions he became convinced that abnormally high or low levels of social integration lead to an increased likelihood of suicide. On Suicide was the result of his extensive research. Divided into three parts - individual reasons for suicide, social forms of suicide and the relation of suicide to society as a whole - Durkheim's revelations have fascinated, challenged and informed readers for over a century.
Both a fast-paced story of social unrest and strike, and the tale of one young man's struggle for identity, IN DUBIOUS BATTLE is a novel about the apocalyptic violence that breaks out when the masses become the mob. Set in California apple country, a strike by migrant workers spirals out of control, as principled defiance turns into blind fanaticism. Caught in this upheaval is Jim Nolan, a once aimless man who finds himself briefly becoming the leader of the strike before being crushed in its service. IN DUBIOUS BATTLE explores and dramatises many of the ideas and themes key to Steinbeck's writing.
This classic collection of short stories serves as the ideal introduction to Steinbeck's work. Set in the idyllic Salinas Valley in California, where simple people farm the land and struggle to find a place for themeselves in the world, these stories reflect many of the concerns key to Steinbeck as a writer; the tensions between town and city, labourers and owners, past and present. Included here are the celebrated tales, THE MURDERER and THE CHRYSANTHEMUMS.
From the Man Booker Prize-shortlisted, Baileys Women's Prize-winning author of How to be both and the critically acclaimed Seasonal quartet'Brilliant and engaging, frequently hilarious. . . Smith makes one look at the world afresh' Sunday Telegraph 'A beguiling page-turner... To read The Accidental is to be excited from first to last' Independent'Joyous' The TimesThe Accidental pans in on the Norfolk holiday home of the Smart family one hot summer. There a beguiling stranger called Amber appears at the door bearing all sorts of unexpected gifts, trampling over family boundaries and sending each of the Smarts scurrying from the dark into the light.A novel about the ways that seemingly chance encounters irrevocably transform our understanding of ourselves, The Accidental explores the nature of truth, the role of fate and the power of storytelling.
A book full of richness, unexpected enticements, short sharp shocks and breathtaking writing Guardian Welcome to the real, unauthorised London: the disappeared, the unapproved, the unvoiced, the mythical and the all-but forgotten. The perfect companion to the city. Exhilarating, truly wonderful, a cavalcade of eloquent writing. London demands an anthology like this to remind us of the irascible quirkiness of its residents, and we have Sinclair to thank for marshalling such a perverse and ultimately pleasurable exercise Independent on Sunday
In Golden Buddha Clive Cussler introduces a new hero: Juan Cabrillo. Clive Cussler is back with a new action hero for the high seas: Juan Cabrillo, captain of the Oregon, a state-of-the-art vessel disguised as a rusting heap of junk...When Cabrillo and his ship are hired by the US government to find an ancient statue known as the Golden Buddha, stolen from the Dalai Lama in 1959, the stakes couldn't be higher. Success of failure will determine the future of Tibet. Playing the Russians off against the Chinese while battling against mysterious forces who will do anything to stop them, the crew of the Oregon face a formidable foe. But like his extraordinary ship, the enigmatic Juan Cabrillo has more than a few aces up his sleeve...Packed with blazing action and daring exploits, Golden Buddha is a nerve-shredding thriller from the best in the business. The number-one bestseller Clive Cussler, author of the thrilling Dirk Pitt novels Crescent Dawn and Atlantis Found, and co-author Craig Dirgo tell the tale of a new hero - Juan Cabrillo - caught up in a plot of treasure hunting and international relations in,the first novel of the adventure series TheOregon Files, Golden Buddha. Praise for Clive Cussler: 'Cussler is hard to beat' Daily Mail'The guy I read' Tom Clancy
Conspiracies and intrigue are rife in the court of Henry VIII as a Duke is executed for treason, having been tricked by the Cardinal. And when the King falls in love with Anne Bullen and decides to divorce his wife, he causes an irrevocable rift with the Catholic Church. After the King's secret marriage to Anne courtiers fall in and out of favour and deaths abound, with far-reaching consequences.
NEW STATESMAN BOOKS OF THE YEAR 2015 Strauss's Radetzky March, signature tune of one of Europe's most powerful regimes, presides over Joseph Roth's account of three generations of the Trotta family in the years preceding the Austro-Hungarian collapse in 1918. Grandfather, son and grandson are equally dependent on the empire: the first for his enoblement; the second for the civil virtues that make him a meticulous servant of an administration whose failure he can neither comprehend nor survive; the third for the family standards of conduct which he cannot attain but against which he is too enfeebled to rebel.
The stories of Exile and the Kingdom explore the dilemma of being an outsider - even in one's own country - and of allegiance. With intense power and lyricism, Camus evokes beautiful but harsh landscapes, whether the shimmering deserts of his native Algeria or the wild, mysterious jungles of Brazil.Here a Frenchwoman is gradually seduced by the sheer difference of North Africa, a mutilated renegade is driven mad by the cruelty of his own people, and a barrel-maker watches the slow decline of his craft. A kindly teacher must choose between the law and a life, while a modest painter is out of his depth in the hypocrisy of the art world, and a French engineer discovers a new sense of belonging in a distant land.
The Book of Chuang Tzu draws together the stories, tales, jokes and anecdotes that have gathered around the figure of Chuang Tzu. One of the great founders of Taoism, Chaung Tzu lived in the fourth century BC and is among the most enjoyable and intriguing personalities in the whole of Chinese philosophy.
A man at his desk is interrupted by the appearance of a woodland elf in his room; the piano maestro Bachmann ends his career; a barber shaves the face of a man who once tortured him; a shy dreamer makes a deal with the Devil. In these sixty-five stories of magic and melancholy, Nabokov displays an astonishing range of inventiveness, with dazzling sleight of hand, fantastical fairy tales, intellectual games and enchanting glimpses into lives of ambiguity and loss.This landmark new collection brings together the best of the short stories of Vladimir Nabokov, one of the twentieth century's greatest writers and author of Lolita and Pale Fire. Part of a major new series of Vladimir Nabokov's work in Penguin Classics.
Bellow evokes all the rich colour and exotic customs of a highly imaginary Africa in this comic novel about a middle-aged American millionaire who, seeking a new, more rewarding life, descends upon an African tribe. Henderson's awesome feats of strength and his unbridled passion for life earns him the admiration of the tribe - but it is his gift for making rain that turns him from mere hero into messiah. A hilarious, often ribald story, HENDERSON THE RAIN KING is also a profound look at the forces that drive a man through life.
Bataille s first novel, published under the pseudonym Lord Auch , is still his most notorious work. In this explicit pornographic fantasy, the young male narrator and his lovers Simone and Marcelle embark on a sexual quest involving sadism, torture, orgies, madness and defilement, culminating in a final act of transgression. Shocking and sacreligious, Story of the Eye is the fullest expression of Bataille s obsession with the closeness of sex, violence and death. Yet it is also hallucinogenic in its power, and is one of the erotic classics of the twentieth century.
The Wayward Bus travelled the backroads through the lush California countryside. Its driver was a man of the land - lusty, hot-blooded and uninhibited. On the bus was a girl who danced at stag parties, a travelling salesman strictly out for fun, a boy coming into manhood and a college girl pursuing her secret, passionate quest. This is a story of crisis and passion, of love and longing. In many ways it is one of Steinbeck's most powerful novels, not least because it shows just how profound his knowledge of human beings and their emotions is.
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