Book Series
Penguin Celebrations
The Secret History
A misfit at an exclusive New England college, Richard finds kindred spirits in the five eccentric students of his ancient Greek class. But his new friends have a horrific secret. When blackmail and violence threaten to blow their privileged lives apart, they drag Richard into the nightmare that engulfs them. And soon they enter a terrifying heart of darkness from which they may never return ...
English Passengers
Matthew Kneale's English Passengers tells the story of an 1857 expedition to Tasmania, in search of the Garden of Eden, whose members - including a vicar and a sinister racial theorist - don't realise they are actually aboard a manx smuggling ship. Told by a score of different characters and packed with drama, comedy and punch, English Passengers is a major work of the imagination.
A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian
For years, Nadezhda and Vera, two Ukrainian sisters, raised in England by their refugee parents, have had as little as possible to do with each other - and they have their reasons. But now, they find they'd better learn how to get along, because since their mother's death their aging father has been sliding into his second childhood, and an alarming new woman has just entered his life. Valentina, a bosomy young synthetic blonde from the Ukraine, seems to think their father is much richer than he is, and she is keen that he leave this world with as little money to his name as possible. If Nadazhda and Vera don't stop her, no one will. But separating their addled and annoyingly lecherous dad from his new love will prove to be no easy feat - Valentina is a ruthless pro and the two sisters swiftly realize that they are mere amateurs when it comes to ruthlessness.As Hurricane Valentina turns the family house upside down, old secrets come falling out, including the most deeply buried one of them all, from the War, the one that explains much about why Nadazhda and Vera are so different. In the meantime, oblivious to it all, their father carries on with the great work of his dotage, a grand history of the tractor.
Rumpole and the Penge Bungalow Murders
Rumpole and the Penge Bungalow Murders - a classic story starring John Mortimer's most iconic character 'Rumpole, like Jeeves and Sherlock Holmes, is immortal' P. D James, Mail on Sunday 'I thank heaven for small mercies. The first of these is Rumpole' Clive James, Observer Horace Rumpole - cigar-smoking, claret-drinking, Wordsworth-spouting defender of some unlikely clients - often speaks of the great murder trial which revealed his talents as an advocate and made his reputation down at the Bailey when he was still a young man. Now, for the first time, the sensational story of the Penge Bungalow Murders case is told in full: how, shortly after the war, Rumpole took on the seemingly impossible task of defending young Simon Jerold, accused of murdering his father and his father's friend with a German officer's gun. And how the inexperienced young brief was left alone to pursue the path of justice, in a case that was to echo through the Bailey for years to come. John Mortimer's hilarious Rumpole, which fans of Sherlock Holmes and P.G. Wodehouse will love, sees the magician of the Old Bailey at his unpredictable and brilliant best. Sir John Mortimer was a barrister, playwright and novelist. His fictional political trilogy of Paradise Postponed, Titmuss Regained and The Sound of Trumpets has recently been republished in Penguin Classics, together with Clinging to the Wreckage and his play A Voyage round My Father. His most famous creation was the barrister Horace Rumpole, who featured in four novels and around eighty short stories. His books in Penguin include: The Anti-social Behaviour of Horace Rumpole; The Collected Stories of Rumpole; The First Rumpole Omnibus; Rumpole and the Angel of Death; Rumpole and the Penge Bungalow Murders; Rumpole and the Primrose Path; Rumpole and the Reign of Terror; Rumpole and the Younger Generation; Rumpole at Christmas; Rumpole Rests His Case; The Second Rumpole Omnibus; Forever Rumpole; In Other Words; Quite Honestly and Summer's Lease.
The World According to Clarkson
Jeremy Clarkson finds the world a perplexing place. So much so, in fact, that he wrote a book about it. But despite the appearance of the bestselling The World According To Clarkson, things don't seem to have changed much. And so Jeremy's having another go. In And Another Thing, our exasperated hero discovers that: * He inadvertently dropped a bomb on North Carolina * We're all going to explode at the age of 62 * Russians look bad in Speedos. But not as bad as Brits * No one should have to worry about being Bill Oddie's long lost sister * Cooking a Sunday Roast is one thing. Gravy is quite another * He should probably be nicer about David Beckham But while these things play on his mind, the world remains Jeremy's favourite place to be. On the whole, it's brilliant. It's just the idiots, meddlers and do-gooders who spoil it for the rest of us. Laugh-out-loud funny and as straight-talking as ever, Clarkson bursts their pointless little bubble, while celebrating the special things that we should hold dear. Sit back and enjoy as Jeremy puts the world to rights ...
Regeneration
When Siegfried Sassoon publicly proclaims that the war is being needlessly prolonged, the authorities declare him mentally unsound and send him to Doctor Rivers at Craiglockhart war hospital, where he is charged with making Sassoon 'see sense and return to the front'. Whilst in his care Sassoon meets a young and timid poet, Wilfred Owen, and a working class officer named Prior who, through shock or possibly choice, has lost the ability to speak.
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