'Emily's face was stained with blood...' Beautiful young heiress Emily St. Aubert is frightened when she finds herself orphaned and in the hands of her cold and distant aunt, Madame Cheron. But her fe
The countryside is filled with beauty and wonder in these imaginative, idiosyncratic writings, but also cruelty and hardship. They describe the texture of an owl's feather, the colours of autumn and t
Francis Kilvert's diary shows a compassionate and thoughtful delight in the people and beautiful surroundings of the English countryside. With good cheer he records his loves (among them poetry and th
Features General Leopoldo Galtieri and Margaret Thatcher who are depicted as robotic caricatures with a pointless blood lust. In this title, the author takes on the Falklands War which is uncompromisi
The Penguin English Library Edition of Joseph Andrews by Henry Fielding 'Kissing, Joseph, is but a prologue to a Play. Can I believe a young fellow of your Age and Complexion will be content with Kiss
Professor Timofey Pnin, late of Tsarist Russia, is now precariously perched at the heart of an American campus. Battling with American life and language, Pnin must face great hazards in this new world
Follows Ada from her first childhood meeting with Van Veen on his uncle's country estate, in a 'dream-bright' America, through eighty years of rapture, as they cross continents, are continually parted
Part of a series, this final novel deals with the childhood advice given to the Russian born author by his aunt, who then emigrates to England, to Paris, to Germany and then to the US.
Featuring sixty-five stories of magic and melancholy, the author displays a range of inventiveness, with sleight of hand fairy tales, intellectual games, and glimpses into lives of ambiguity and loss.
Lev Ganin is a young officer sharing a boarding house in Berlin with a host of Russian emigres. Alone in his room, he dreams of his first love, Mary. Awash with memories of youth and idyllic scenes of
Morn, a masked king, rules over a realm to which he has restored order after a violent revolution. Secretly in love with Midia, the wife of a banished revolutionary, Morn finds himself facing renewed
'"I wish you a speedy recovery. I do not know what happened that night. Some foul play, somewhere. The rogue who brought me the Coca-Cola must have drugged the drink. I will deal with him yet.&qu
'...I stare at the coffee I poured myself, and I think: caffeine is a poison that stimulates the heart. There are plenty of instances of people killing themselves with coffee, hundreds and thousands o
Perceptive, sensitive and eloquent, this book is filled with brooding atmosphere and gorgeous description that tell of genteel eccentrics, evocative childhood memories and a malevolent nocturnal meeti
With one mad yell the mob, armed with stumps and bits torn from desks, surge away down the pasage, trampling the masters under foot. A buket of water fall on GRIMES and the term end in a series of wiz
Describing the silliness and 'feminine fatuity' of many popular books by lady novelists, George Eliot perfectly skewers the formulaic yet bestselling works that dominated her time, with their loveably
Andy Warhol carried a camera with him everywhere he went and, taken from ten years of extraordinary shots, his America aspires to the strange beauty and staggering contradictions of the country itself
'Only when one has lost all curiosity about the future has one reached the age to write an autobiography'. Waugh begins his story with heredity, writing of the energetic, literary and sometimes eccent
Edmund Campion (1540-1581) was a Jesuit priest who, in the turbulent years before the Spanish Armada, was charged with treason and executed. This book offers homage to this man whom the author revered
Humbert Humbert, a scholar, an aesthete and a romantic, has fallen completely and utterly in love with Lolita Haze, his landlady's gum-snapping, silky skinned twelve-year-old daughter. Reluctantly agr
A man is dead and Inspector Ghote knows exactly who killed him. Now if he can just keep it a secret... H.R.F. Keating's Under a Monsoon Cloud: An Inspector Ghote Mystery is published with an introduct
A body without organs and Inspector Ghote with a mission - but no clues. H.R.F. Keating's Inspector Ghote Breaks an Egg is published with an introduction by Alexander McCall Smith, author of The No. 1
The colossus of crime leaned over to the little rustic priest with a sort of sudden interest. 'You have heard of it?' he asked. 'Where have you heard of it?' 'Well, I mustn't tell you his name, of cou
The wryly ironic story of Martin Edelweiss, a 22 year-old Russian emigre of no account, who is in love with a girl who refuses to marry him. Hoping to impress his love, he embarks upon a 'perilous, da
Self-satisfied, delighting in the many fascinating quirks of his own personality, Hermann Hermann is perhaps not to be taken too seriously. But then a chance meeting with a man he believes to be his d
Humbert Humbert - scholar, aesthete and romantic - has fallen completely and utterly in love with Lolita Haze, his landlady's gum-snapping, silky skinned twelve-year-old daughter. Reluctantly agreeing
The American poet John Shade is dead; murdered. His last poem, "Pale Fire", is put into a book, together with a preface, a lengthy commentary and notes by Shade's editor, Charles Kinbote. Known on cam
The Bridges are an unremarkable and conservative couple who live in Kansas City with their three children. Mrs Bridge spends her time shopping, going to bridge parties and bringing up her children to
During the years when all seemed well with the Irish economy, a scandal bloomed in front of our faces but went mostly unnoticed: the scandal of public waste. Vast overspending on infrastructure (inclu
The 122nd edition of Pears', Britain's favourite encyclopaedia The quintessentially British bookshelf essential, Pears' Cyclopaedia continues to inform and intrigue generations of readers with its uni
There is the guard who delivers blows with no visible traces. The fraudster stitched up by the police for murder. The man who refuses to lie for a packet of cigarettes. The abandoned teenager, the dow
Young children love to be with you! But as parents, grandparents or carers, most of us struggle at least a little to get down to their level and engage with them and their world.What do we say?How do
Ramsay is a man twice born, a man who has returned from the hell of the battle-grave at Passchendaele in World War I decorated with the Victoria Cross and destined to be caught in a no man's land wher
The author was an unlikely Jihadist. A 6'1" red-haired Dane, he spent his teens with a biker gang or in jail. This book looks inside the world's most powerful spy agencies, including their tradecraft,
Beginning with early American portraits and landscapes, and moving on to two 19th century masters, Winslow Homer and Thomas Eakins, this book considers the eccentric pre-modern James McNeill Whistler,
Poetry by Heart - based on the hugely successful nationwide schools competition, 200 magical poems to learn by heart 'The poems we learn stay with us for the rest of our lives. They become personal an
Featuring a long-form interview with a notable book fanatic, this title explores one classic work of literature from an array of surprising and invigorating angles.
Colonel Wyvern, stationed with the army in Madras during the height of British imperial rule, opened a cookery school upon his return to England and was a passionate enthusiast for both European and I
Explores the simplest of dishes in the most delicious of ways, with fresh, sustainable ingredients a must, encouraging cooks to plant their own garden. From orange and olive salad to lemon curd and gi
