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PEEPO! has become a classic for babies and toddlers. It follows a baby through the day in a style full of wit, charm and ingenuity. A series of holes peeping through to the next page leads the child on to the next stage in the day, giving a hint of what is to come. An original books that has long delighted young children - and their parents! 'The best book ever published for babies' - Books for Your Children 'Surely no one - baby, child or adult - could fail to enjoy Peepo!' - Sunday Telegraph 'A book to last a lifetime . . . this is a perfect book for sharing' - Nursery World

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Hairy Maclary' and Zachary Quack is a hilarious rhyming story by Lynley Dodd.Zachary Quack, a small and determined duckling, sets out to play with a rather reluctant Hairy Maclary. A 'cat and mouse' chase follows, with the two characters ending up peacefully snuggled together after Zachary Quack has saved a soggy Hairy Maclary from the river.Lynley Dodd is an award-winning author/illustrator who lives in New Zealand. She is enormously popular for her rhyming stories of the unforgettable HAIRY MACLARY and his friends. She worked as a teacher before beginning to write her own books in 1974.Read all the Hairy Maclary and Friends books by Lynley Dodd!Hairy Maclary's Bone; Hairy Maclary Scattercat; Hairy Maclary's Caterwaul Caper; Hairy Maclary's Rumpus at the Vet; Slinky Malinki; Hairy Maclary's Showbusiness; Slinky Malinki, Open the Door; Sniff-Snuff-Snap!; Schnitzel Von Krumm Forget-Me-Not; Slinky Malinki Catflaps; Slinky Malinki's Christmas Crackers; Hairy Maclary's Hat Tricks; Scarface Claw; Schnitzel Von Krumm, Dog's Never Climb Tress; Hairy Maclary, Sit; Hairy Maclary and Zachary Quack; Magnet Fun with Hairy Maclary; Hairy Maclary, Shoo; Hairy Maclary and Friends Little Library; Slinky Malinki, Open the Door; Slinky Malinki Early Bird; Where is Hairy Maclary?; Sticker Fun with Hairy Maclary; My Cat Likes to Hide in Boxes

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Hairy Maclary, Sit is a hilarious rhyming story by Lynley Dodd.Hairy Maclary causes trouble again when he is simply not in the mood for the Kennel Club's Obedience Class. He feels mischievous and mad and not only does he scamper away but all his friends - Bottomley Potts, Muffin McLay, Hercules Morse, Schnitzel von Krumm and the rest follow "Galloping here, galloping there, rollicking, frolicking everywhere"!Lynley Dodd is an award-winning author/illustrator who lives in New Zealand. She is enormously popular for her rhyming stories of the unforgettable HAIRY MACLARY and his friends. She worked as a teacher before beginning to write her own books in 1974.Read all the Hairy Maclary and Friends books by Lynley Dodd!Hairy Maclary's Bone; Hairy Maclary Scattercat; Hairy Maclary's Caterwaul Caper; Hairy Maclary's Rumpus at the Vet; Slinky Malinki; Hairy Maclary's Showbusiness; Slinky Malinki, Open the Door; Sniff-Snuff-Snap!; Schnitzel Von Krumm Forget-Me-Not; Slinky Malinki Catflaps; Slinky Malinki's Christmas Crackers; Hairy Maclary's Hat Tricks; Scarface Claw; Schnitzel Von Krumm, Dog's Never Climb Tress; Hairy Maclary, Sit; Hairy Maclary and Zachary Quack; Magnet Fun with Hairy Maclary; Hairy Maclary, Shoo; Hairy Maclary and Friends Little Library; Slinky Malinki, Open the Door; Slinky Malinki Early Bird; Where is Hairy Maclary?; Sticker Fun with Hairy Maclary; My Cat Likes to Hide in Boxes

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The Demigod Files: the perfect companion to Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson series.The perfect companion to this megaselling series - essential reading for all young demigods!In these top-secret files, Rick Riordan, Camp Half-Blood's senior scribe, gives you an inside look at the world of demigods that NO regular human child is allowed to see.These highly classified archives include three of Percy Jackson's most perilous adventures, a Spotter's Guide to Monsters, a Who's Who in Greek mythology, Percy's Summer Camp report and much more.So, if you're armed with this book, you'll have everything you need to know to keep you alive in your training. Your own adventures have just begun . . .Rick Riordan has now sold an incredible 55 million copies of his books worldwidePraise for the Percy Jackson series:'Witty and inspired. Gripping, touching and deliciously satirical...This is most likely to succeed Rowling. Puffin is on to a winner' - Amanda Craig, The Times'Puns, jokes and subtle wit, alongside a gripping storyline' - Telegraph'Perfectly paced, with electrifying moments chasing each other like heartbeats' - New York TimesThe Percy Jackson series:The Lightning Thief; The Sea of Monsters; The Battle of the Labyrinth; The Titan's Curse; The Last Olympian Heroes of Olympus:The Lost Hero; The Son of Neptune; The Mark of AthenaThe Kane Chronicles:The Red Pyramid; The Throne of Fire; The Serpent's Shadow

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The Penguin English Library Edition of Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen'No sooner had he made it clear to himself and his friends that she had hardly a good feature in her face, than he began to find it was rendered uncommonly intelligent by the beautiful expression of her dark eyes ...'When Elizabeth Bennet first meets eligible bachelor Fitzwilliam Darcy, she thinks him arrogant and conceited; he is indifferent to her good looks and lively mind. When she later discovers that Darcy has involved himself in the troubled relationship between his friend Bingley and her beloved sister Jane, she is determined to dislike him more than ever. In the sparkling comedy of manners that follows, Jane Austen shows the folly of judging by first impressions and superbly evokes the friendships, gossip and snobberies of provincial middle-class life.The Penguin English Library - 100 editions of the best fiction in English, from the eighteenth century and the very first novels to the beginning of the First World War.

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Stella Rode has twice disturbed the ancient cloisters of Carne School: firstly by being the wrong sort, with her doilies and china ducks, and secondly by being murdered. George Smiley, who has his own connection with the school, is asked by an old Service friend to investigate. Smiley knows that Stella feared her husband would murder her, but as he probes further beneath Carne's respectable veneer, he uncovers far more than a simple crime of passion. In his second novel, le Carré moves outside the world of espionage to reveal the secrets at the heart of another particularly English institution. The result is a pitch-perfect murder mystery, with George Smiley as master detective.THE SECOND GEORGE SMILEY NOVEL'Beautifully intelligent, satiric and witty' Daily Telegraph

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Part of Penguin's beautiful hardback Clothbound Classics series, designed by the award-winning Coralie Bickford-Smith, these delectable and collectible editions are bound in high-quality colourful, tactile cloth with foil stamped into the design.In Herman Melville's Moby-Dick, Captain Ahab is an eerily compelling madman who focuses his distilled hatred and suffering (and that of generations before him) into the pursuit of a creature as vast, dangerous and unknowable as the sea itself. More than just a novel of adventure, this is a haunting social commentary populated with some of the most enduring characters in literature. Written with wonderfully redemptive humour, Moby Dick is a profound and timeless inquiry into character, faith and the nature of perception.

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The Penguin English Library Edition of Far From the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy'I cannot allow any man to - to criticise my private conduct!' she exclaimed. 'Nor will I for a minute'Hardy's powerful novel of swift sexual passion and slow-burning loyalty centres on Bathsheba Everdene, a proud working woman whose life is complicated by three different men - respectable farmer Boldwood, seductive Sergeant Troy and devoted Gabriel - making her the object of scandal and betrayal. Vividly portraying the superstitions and traditions of a small rural community, Far from the Madding Crowd shows the precarious position of a woman in a man's world.The Penguin English Library - 100 editions of the best fiction in English, from the eighteenth century and the very first novels to the beginning of the First World War.

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The companion book to Beyond Good and Evil, the three essays included here offer vital insights into Nietzsche's theories of morality and human psychology.Nietzsche claimed that the purpose of The Genealogy of Morals was to call attention to his previous writings. But in fact the book does much more than that, elucidating and expanding on the cryptic aphorisms of Beyond Good and Evil and signalling a return to the essay form. In these three essays, Nietzsche considers the development of ideas of 'good' and 'evil'; explores notions of guilt and bad consience; and discusses ascetic ideals and the purpose of the philosopher. Together, they form a coherent and complex discussion of morality in a work that is more accessible than some of Nietzsche's previous writings.Friedrich Nietzsche was born near Leipzig in 1844. When he was only twenty-four he was appointed to the chair of classical philology at Basel University. From 1880, however, he divorced himself from everyday life and lived mainly abroad. Works published in the 1880s include The Gay Science, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Beyond Good and Evil, On the Genealogy of Morals, Twilight of the Idols and The Antichrist. In January 1889, Nietzsche collapsed on a street in Turin and was subsequently institutionalized, spending the rest of his life in a condition of mental and physical paralysis. Works published after his death in 1900 include Will to Power, based on his notebooks, and Ecce Homo, his autobiography.Michael A. Scarpitti is an independent scholar of philosophy whose principal interests include English and German thought of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, as well as exegesis and translation theory.Robert C. Holub is currently Ohio Eminent Scholar and Professor of German at the Ohio State University. Among his published works are monographs on Heinrich Heine, German realism, Friedrich Nietzsche, literary and aesthetic theory, and Jürgen Habermas.

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The Divided Self, R.D. Laing's groundbreaking exploration of the nature of madness, illuminated the nature of mental illness and made the mysteries of the mind comprehensible to a wide audience. First published in 1960, this watershed work aimed to make madness comprehensible, and in doing so revolutionized the way we perceive mental illness. Using case studies of patients he had worked with, psychiatrist R. D. Laing argued that psychosis is not a medical condition, but an outcome of the 'divided self', or the tension between the two personas within us: one our authentic, private identity, and the other the false, 'sane' self that we present to the world. Laing's radical approach to insanity offered a rich existential analysis of personal alienation and made him a cult figure in the 1960s, yet his work was most significant for its humane attitude, which put the patient back at the centre of treatment.Includes an introduction by Professor Anthony S. David.'One of the twentieth century's most influential psychotherapists' Guardian'Laing challenged the psychiatric orthodoxy of his time ... an icon of the 1960s counter-culture' The Times

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Harry White is the man other men want to be: admired by his peers, talented, rich, and desired by countless women. His steady rise to a position of unprecedented influence in a New York investment firm seems inevitable to those who know him, and on the way he acquires a beautiful wife and children. But with every achievement the desire to destroy what is his grows stronger. A demon within drives him to sexual excess, petty crime and eventually murder.The Demon explores the dark side of a man's ambitions with unflinching determination. Harry White's story is a gripping twentieth-century tragedy.

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A modernist work of profound wisdom that continues to enthral readers with its subtle blend of Eastern mysticism and Western culture, the Penguin Modern Classics edition of Hermann Hesse's Steppenwolf is revised by Walter Sorell from the original translation by Basil Creighton.At first sight Harry Haller seems a respectable, educated man. In reality he is the Steppenwolf: wild, strange, alienated from society and repulsed by the modern age. But as he is drawn into a series of dreamlike and sometimes savage encounters - accompanied by, among others, Mozart, Goethe and the bewitching Hermione - the misanthropic Haller discovers a higher truth, and the possibility of happiness. This blistering portrayal of a man who feels himself to be half-human and half-wolf was the bible of the 1960s counterculture, capturing the mood of a disaffected generation, and remains a haunting story of estrangement and redemption.Herman Hesse (1877 - 1962) suffered from depression and weathered series of personal crises which led him to undergo psychoanalysis with J. B. Lang; a process which resulted in Demian (1919), a novel whose main character is torn between the orderliness of bourgeois existence and the turbulent and enticing world of sensual experience. This dichotomy is prominent in Hesse's subsequent novels, including Siddhartha (1922), Steppenwolf (1927), Narcissus and Goldmund (1930) and his magnum opus, The Glass Bead Game (1943). Hesse was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1946.If you enjoyed Steppenwolf, you might like Hesse's Siddhartha, also available in Penguin Classics.'A savage indictment of bourgeois society ... the gripping and fascinating story of disease in a man's soul'The New York Times

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A towering philosophical novel that is the summation of her Objectivist philosophy, Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged is the saga of the enigmatic John Galt, and his ambitious plan to 'stop the motor of the world', published in Penguin Modern Classics.Opening with the enigmatic question 'Who is John Galt?', Atlas Shrugged envisions a world where the 'men of talent' - the great innovators, producers and creators - have mysteriously disappeared. With the US economy now faltering, businesswoman Dagny Taggart is struggling to get the transcontinental railroad up and running. For her John Galt is the enemy, but as she will learn, nothing in this situation is quite as it seems. Hugely influential and grand in scope, this story of a man who stopped the motor of the world expounds Rand's controversial philosophy of Objectivism, which champions competition, creativity and human greatness. Ayn Rand (1905-82), born Alisa Rosenbaum in St. Petersburg, Russia, emigrated to America with her family in January 1926, never to return to her native land. Her novel The Fountainhead was published in 1943 and eventually became a bestseller. Still occasionally working as a screenwriter, Rand moved to New York City in 1951 and published Atlas Shrugged in 1957. Her novels espoused what came to be called Objectivism, a philosophy that champions capitalism and the pre-eminence of the individual. If you enjoyed Atlas Shrugged, you might like Rand's The Fountainhead, also available in Penguin Modern Classics.'A writer of great power ... she writes brilliantly, beautifully, bitterly'The New York Times'Atlas Shrugged ... is a celebration of life and happiness'Alan Greenspan

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Dazzlingly original, Kobo Abe's The Woman in the Dunes is one of the premier Japanese novels in the twentieth century, and this Penguin Classics edition contains a new introduction by David Mitchell, author of Cloud Atlas.Niki Jumpei, an amateur entomologist, searches the scorching desert for beetles. As night falls he is forced to seek shelter in an eerie village, half-buried by huge sand dunes. He awakes to the terrifying realisation that the villagers have imprisoned him with a young woman at the bottom of a vast sand pit. Tricked into slavery and threatened with starvation if he does not work, Jumpei's only chance is to shovel the ever-encroaching sand - or face an agonising death. Among the greatest Japanese novels of the twentieth century, The Woman in the Dunes combines the essence of myth, suspense, and the existential novel.Kobo Abe (1924-93) was born in Tokyo, grew up in Manchuria, and returned to Japan in his early twenties. During his life Abe was considered his country's foremost living novelist. His novels have earned many literary awards and prizes, and have all been bestsellers in Japan. They include The Woman in the Dunes, The Ark Sakura, The Face of Another, The Box Man, and The Ruined Map.If you liked The Woman in the Dunes, you might enjoy Albert Camus' The Plague, also available in Penguin Classics.'A haunting Kafkaesque nightmare'Time

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With his trademark dry wit, Kurt Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle is an inventive science fiction satire that preys on our deepest fears of witnessing Armageddon - and, worse still, surviving it. This Penguin Modern Classics edition includes an introduction by Benjamin Kunkel.Dr Felix Hoenikker, one of the founding 'fathers' of the atomic bomb, has left a deadly legacy to humanity. For he is the inventor of ice-nine, a lethal chemical capable of freezing the entire planet. Writer Jonah's search for his whereabouts leads him to Hoenikker's three eccentric children, to an island republic in the Caribbean where the absurd religion of Bokononism is practised, to love and to insanity. Told with deadpan humour and bitter irony, Kurt Vonnegut's cult tale of global destruction is a frightening and funny satire on the end of the world and the madness of mankind.Kurt Vonnegut (1922-2007) was born in Indianapolis. During the Second World War he was a prisoner in Germany and present at the bombing of Dresden, an experience he recounted in his famous novel Slaughterhouse Five (1969). His first novel, Player Piano, was published in 1951 and since then he has written many novels, including The Sirens of Titan, Jailbird, Deadeye Dick, Galapagos and Hocus Pocus. If you enjoyed Cat's Cradle, you might like Philip K. Dick's The Man in the High Castle, also available in Penguin Modern Classics.'One of the warmest, wisest, funniest voices to be found anywhere in fiction'Sam Leith, Daily Telegraph'A free-wheeling vehicle ... An unforgettable ride!'The New York Times'Vonnegut looked the world straight in the eye and never flinched'J.G. Ballard

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One of the BBC's '100 Novels That Shaped Our World''My favourite book of all time... it stays with you long after you have read it - for your whole life, in fact' Billy ConnollyA monument to sloth, rant and contempt, a behemoth of fat, flatulence and furious suspicion of anything modern - this is Ignatius J. Reilly of New Orleans, noble crusader against a world of dunces. The ordinary folk of New Orleans seem to think he is unhinged. Ignatius ignores them, heaving his vast bulk through the city's fleshpots in a noble crusade against vice, modernity and ignorance. But his momma has a nasty surprise in store for him: Ignatius must get a job. Undaunted, he uses his new-found employment to further his mission - and now he has a pirate costume and a hot-dog cart to do it with...Never published during his lifetime, John Kennedy Toole's hilarious satire, A Confederacy of Dunces is a Don Quixote for the modern age, and this Penguin Modern Classics edition includes a foreword by Walker Percy. 'A pungent work of slapstick, satire and intellectual incongruities ... it is nothing less than a grand comic fugue'The New York Times

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Drifters in search of work, George and his childlike friend Lennie, have nothing in the world except the clothes on their back - and a dream that one day they will have some land of their own. Eventually they find work on a ranch in California's Salinas Valley, but their hopes are dashed as Lennie - struggling against extreme cruelty, misunderstanding and feelings of jealousy - becomes a victim of his own strength. Tackling universal themes of friendship and shared vision, and giving a voice to America's lonely and dispossessed, Of Mice and Men remains Steinbeck's most popular work, achieving success as a novel, Broadway play and three acclaimed films.

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The summation of the existentialist philosophy threaded throughout all his writing, Albert Camus' The Myth of Sisyphus is translated by Justin O'Brien with an introduction by James Wood in Penguin Classics.In this profound and moving philosophical statement, Camus poses the fundamental question: is life worth living? If human existence holds no significance, what can keep us from suicide? As Camus argues, if there is no God to give meaning to our lives, humans must take on that purpose themselves. This is our 'absurd' task, like Sisyphus forever rolling his rock up a hill, as the inevitability of death constantly overshadows us. Written during the bleakest days of the Second World War, The Myth of Sisyphus (Le Mythe de Sisyphe) argues for an acceptance of reality that encompasses revolt, passion and, above all, liberty. This volume contains several other essays, including lyrical evocations of the sunlit cities of Algiers and Oran, the settings of his great novels The Outsider and The Plague.Albert Camus (1913-60) is the author of a number of best-selling and highly influential works, all of which are published by Penguin. They include The Fall, The Outsider and The First Man. Awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1957, Camus is remembered as one of the few writers to have shaped the intellectual climate of post-war France, but beyond that, his fame has been international.If you enjoyed The Myth of Sisyphus, you might like Camus' The Outsider, also available in Penguin Modern Classics.'Camus could never cease to be one of the principal forces in our domain, nor to represent, in his own way, the history of France and of this century'Jean-Paul Sartre

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'My first intimation of the possibilities of fiction' Zadie SmithMore than a love story, A Room with a View is a penetrating social comedy and a brilliant study of contrasts - in values, social class, and cultural perspectives - and the ingenuity of fate. Its heroine, Lucy Honeychurch, visits Italy with her prim cousin Charlotte as a chaperone, where she meets the unconventional, lower class Mr. Emerson and his son, George. Upon her return to England, Lucy becomes engaged to the supercilious Cecil Vyse, but finds herself increasingly torn between the expectations of the world in which she moves and the passionate yearnings of her heart.With an Introduction by Malcolm Bradbury

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Beautiful, bored and bourgeoise, Sabina leads a double life inspired by her relentless desire for brief encounters with near-strangers. Fired into faithlessness by a desperate longing for sexual fulfilment, she weaves a sensual web of deceit across New York. But when the secrecy of her affairs becomes too much to bear, Sabina makes a late night phone-call to a stranger from a bar, and begins a confession that captivates the unknown man and soon inspires him to seek her out...

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Arthur Miller's extraordinary masterpiece, Death of a Salesman changed the course of modern theatre, and has lost none of its power as an examination of American life. 'A man is not an orange. You can't eat the fruit and throw the peel away'Willy Loman is on his last legs. Failing at his job, dismayed at his the failure of his sons, Biff and Happy, to live up to his expectations, and tortured by his jealousy at the success and happiness of his neighbour Charley and his son Bernard, Willy spirals into a well of regret, reminiscence, and A scathing indictment of the ultimate failure of the American dream, and the empty pursuit of wealth and success, is a harrowing journey. In creating Willy Loman, his destructively insecure anti-hero, Miller defined his aim as being 'to set forth what happens when a man does not have a grip on the forces of life'.

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'Speak, memory', said Vladimir Nabokov. And immediately there came flooding back to him a host of enchanting recollections - of his comfortable childhood and adolescence, of his rich, liberal-minded father, his beautiful mother, an army of relations and family hangers-on and of grand old houses in St Petersburg and the surrounding countryside in pre-Revolutionary Russia. Young love, butterflies, tutors and a multitude of other themes thread together to weave an autobiography, which is itself a work of art.

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A pioneering work of modernist fiction, using her unique stream-of-consciousness technique to explore the inner lives of her characters, Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse is widely regarded as one of the greatest artistic achievements of the twentieth century. This Penguin Classics edition is edited by Stella McNichol, with an introduction and notes by Hermione Lee.To the Lighthouse is at once a vivid impressionistic depiction of a family holiday, and a meditation on marriage, on parenthood and childhood, on grief, tyranny and bitterness. For years now the Ramsays have spent every summer in their holiday home in Scotland, and they expect these summers will go on forever; but as the First World War looms, the integrity of family and society will be fatally challenged. With a psychologically introspective mode, the use of memory, reminiscence and shifting perspectives gives the novel an intimate, poetic essence, and at the time of publication in 1927 it represented an utter rejection of Victorian and Edwardian literary values. Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) is regarded as a major 20th century author and essayist, a key figure in literary history as a feminist and modernist, and the centre of 'The Bloomsbury Group', an informal collective of artists and writers that exerted a powerful influence over early twentieth-century British culture. Between 1925 and 1931 Virginia Woolf produced what are now regarded as her finest masterpieces, from Mrs Dalloway (1925) to the poetic and highly experimental novel The Waves (1931). She also maintained an astonishing output of literary criticism, short fiction, journalism and biography, including the playfully subversive Orlando (1928) and A Room of One's Own (1929) a passionate feminist essay.If you enjoyed To the Lighthouse, you might like James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, also available in Penguin Classics.'Bears endless re-reading ... the sea encircles the story in a brilliant ebb and flow'Rachel Billington

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Immortalised by Audrey Hepburn's sparkling performance in the 1961 film of the same name, Breakfast at Tiffany's is Truman Capote's timeless portrait of tragicomic cultural icon Holly Golightly, published in Penguin Modern Classics.It's New York in the 1940s, where the martinis flow from cocktail hour till breakfast at Tiffany's. And nice girls don't, except, of course, for Holly Golightly: glittering socialite traveller, generally upwards, sometimes sideways and once in a while - down. Pursued by to Salvatore 'Sally' Tomato, the Mafia sugar-daddy doing life in Sing Sing and 'Rusty' Trawler, the blue-chinned, cuff-shooting millionaire man about women about town, Holly is a fragile eyeful of tawny hair and turned-up nose, a heart-breaker, a perplexer, a traveller, a tease. She is irrepressibly 'top banana in the shock deparment', and one of the shining flowers of American fiction.This edition also contains three stories: 'House of Flowers', 'A Diamond Guitar' and 'A Christmas Memory'.Truman Capote (1924-84) was born in New Orleans. He left school when he was fifteen and subsequently worked for The New Yorker, which provided his first - and last - regular job. He wrote both fiction and non-fiction - short stories, novels and novellas, travel writing, profiles, reportage, memoirs, plays and films; his other works include In Cold Blood (1965), Music for Chameleons (1980) and Answered Prayers (1986), all of which are published in Penguin Modern Classics.If you enjoyed Breakfast at Tiffany's, you might like Capote's In Cold Blood, also available in Penguin Modern Classics.'One of the twentieth century's most gorgeously romantic fictions'Daily Telegraph'The most perfect writer of my generation ... I would not have changed two words of Breakfast at Tiffany's'Norman Mailer

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Since the original, prewar translation there has been no completely new rendering of the French original into English. This translation brings to the fore a more sharply engaged, comic and lucid Proust. IN SEARCH OF LOST TIME is one of the greatest, most entertaining reading experiences in any language. As the great story unfolds from its magical opening scenes to its devastating end, it is the Penguin Proust that makes Proust accessible to a new generation.Each book is translated by a different, superb translator working under the general editorship of Professor Christopher Prendergast, University of Cambridge.

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Part of Penguin's beautiful hardback Clothbound Classics series, designed by the award-winning Coralie Bickford-Smith, these delectable and collectible editions are bound in high-quality colourful, tactile cloth with foil stamped into the design. Marianne Dashwood wears her heart on her sleeve, and when she falls in love with the dashing but unsuitable John Willoughby she ignores her sister Elinor's warning that her impulsive behaviour leaves her open to gossip and innuendo. Meanwhile Elinor, always sensitive to social convention, is struggling to conceal her own romantic disappointment, even from those closest to her. Through their parallel experience of love - and its threatened loss - the sisters learn that sense must mix with sensibility if they are to find personal happiness in a society where status and money govern the rules of love.

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'Superb, wonderful, enjoyable' Guardian'Full of delights' The TimesEvery life is both ordinary and extraordinary, and Logan Mountstuart's - stretching across the twentieth century - is a rich tapestry of both. As a writer who finds inspiration with Hemingway in Paris and Virginia Woolf in London, as a spy recruited by Ian Fleming and betrayed in the war, and as an art-dealer in '60s New York, Logan mixes with the men and women who shape his times. But as a son, friend, lover and husband, he makes the same mistakes we all do in our search for happiness. Here, then, is the story of a life lived to the full - and a journey deep into a very human heart.'A work of astonishing ventriloquistic virtuosity... brilliant' Sunday Telegraph'Wise, profound and moving' William Sutcliffe, Independent on Sunday'A terrific journey through the 20th century. Thoroughly entertaining and enjoyable' Guardian'Astounding. One of Boyd's greatest achievements... A pleasure' Mail on Sunday'Generous, witty, sneakily profound' Evening Standard'The pleasures are endless... Supremely entertaining' Washington Post'A fabulous book all about life. I think of Any Human Heart often - the sign of a truly great book' Fi Glover, New Statesman

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Born into a Jewish ghetto in Hungary, as a child, Elie Wiesel was sent to the Nazi concentration camps at Auschwitz and Buchenwald. This is his account of that atrocity: the ever-increasing horrors he endured, the loss of his family and his struggle to survive in a world that stripped him of humanity, dignity and faith. Describing in simple terms the tragic murder of a people from a survivor’s perspective, Night is among the most personal, intimate and poignant of all accounts of the Holocaust. A compelling consideration of the darkest side of human nature and the enduring power of hope, it remains one of the most important works of the twentieth century.

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Colm Toibin's Brooklyn is a devastating story of love, loss and one woman's terrible choice between duty and personal freedom. The book that inspired the major motion picture starring Saoirse Ronan.It is Ireland in the early 1950s and for Eilis Lacey, as for so many young Irish girls, opportunities are scarce. So when her sister arranges for her to emigrate to New York, Eilis knows she must go, leaving behind her family and her home for the first time.Arriving in a crowded lodging house in Brooklyn, Eilis can only be reminded of what she has sacrificed. She is far from home - and homesick. And just as she takes tentative steps towards friendship, and perhaps something more, Eilis receives news which sends her back to Ireland. There she will be confronted by a terrible dilemma - a devastating choice between duty and one great love.***'With this elating and humane novel, Colm Tóibín has produced a masterwork' Sunday Times'Unforgettable' Spectator'The most compelling and moving portrait of a young woman I have read in a long time' Zoë Heller Guardian, Books of the Year'Magnificent' Sunday Telegraph'A work of such skill, understatement and sly jewelled merriment could haunt your life' Ali Smith TLS, Books of the YearWhen you are finished why not read the companion novel Nora Webster.

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The phenomenal international bestseller that shows us how to stop trying to predict everything - and take advantage of uncertaintyWhat have the invention of the wheel, Pompeii, the Wall Street Crash, Harry Potter and the internet got in common? Why are all forecasters con-artists? Why should you never run for a train or read a newspaper? This book is all about Black Swans: the random events that underlie our lives, from bestsellers to world disasters. Their impact is huge; they're impossible to predict; yet after they happen we always try to rationalize them. 'Taleb is a bouncy and even exhilarating guide ... I came to relish what he said, and even develop a sneaking affection for him as a person' Will Self, Independent on Sunday'He leaps like some superhero of the mind' Boyd Tonkin, Independent

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The international bestselling Freakquel to Levitt and Dubner's Freakonomics, this book sees them looking deeper, questioning harder and uncovering even more hidden truths about our world, from global cooling to patriotic prostitutes, drunk walking to why suicide bombers should buy life insurance.'Mind-blowing' Wall Street Journal'Page-turning, politically incorrect and ever-so-slightly intoxicating, like a large swig of tequila' The Times'Like Freakonomics but better ... you are guaranteed a good time' Financial Times'Great fun ... Levitt is a master at drawing counter-intuitive conclusions' Sunday Times'Studded with intriguing examples' Daily Telegraph

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The international million copy bestseller recounting the epic turning point of the second world war. It's a harrowing look at one of history's darkest moments.'A superb re-telling. Beevor combines a soldier's understanding of war's realities with the narrative techniques of a novelist . . . This is a book that lets the reader look into the face of battle' Orlando Figes, Sunday Telegraph'A brilliantly researched tour de force of military history' Sarah Bradford, The TimesIn October 1942, a panzer officer wrote 'Stalingrad is no longer a town... Animals flee this hell; the hardest stones cannot bear it for long; only men endure'.The battle for Stalingrad became the focus of Hitler and Stalin's determination to win the gruesome, vicious war on the eastern front. The citizens of Stalingrad endured unimaginable hardship; the battle, with fierce hand-to-hand fighting in each room of each building, was brutally destructive to both armies. But the eventual victory of the Red Army, and the failure of Hitler's Operation Barbarossa, was the first defeat of Hitler's territorial ambitions in Europe, and the start of his decline.An extraordinary story of tactical genius, civilian bravery, obsession, carnage and the nature of war itself, Stalingrad will act as a testament to the vital role of the soviet war effort.'Captivating . . . Jingoistic statues never pay a proper tribute to the dead, but honest books, like this one, certainly do' Vitali Vitaliev, Guardian'Antony Beevor gained access to the unplumbed records, and he reveals the full awfulness and human cost of the conflict with scholarly verve and deep sympathy. The pity of war has seldom been rendered so well' Ben Macintyre

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It's widely accepted in business that great companies grow their revenues and profits year after year - but bigger is not necessarily better. In Small Giants, journalist Bo Burlingham takes us deep inside fourteen remarkable privately held companies, from a brewery to a record label, that chose a different path to success. These organizations quietly rejected the pressure of endless growth, deciding to focus more on satisfying business goals - being the best at what they do, creating a stimulating place to work, providing perfect customer service and making important contributions to their communities.But what are the magic ingredients that make these companies unique? Why and how does their approach work in such widely varying industries? And what lessons can we learn from them? A fresh, inspirational guide to business strategy, Small Giants will help any entrepeneur consider new directions to make their company great.

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*The classic trilogy set in sun-soaked Corfu that inspired ITV's acclaimed TV series The Durrells*Three classic tales of childhood on an island paradise - My Family and Other Animals, Birds, Beasts and Relatives and The Garden of the Gods by Gerald Durrell - are available in a single edition for the first time in The Corfu Trilogy.Just before the Second World War the Durrell family decamped to the glorious, sun-soaked island of Corfu where the youngest of the four children, ten-year-old Gerald, discovered his passion for animals: toads and tortoises, bats and butterflies, scorpions and octopuses. Through glorious silver-green olive groves and across brilliant-white beaches Gerry pursued his obsession . . . causing hilarity and mayhem in his ever-tolerant family.'A delightful book full of simple, well-known things: cicadas in the olive groves, lamp fishing at night, the complexities of fish and animals - but, above all, childhood moulded by these things' New York Times

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The bestselling author of It's Not How Good You Are, It's How Good You Want To Be Paul Arden turns logic and common sense on its head in Whatever You Think, Think the Opposite and gives you the confidence to take bigger risks and enjoy your work more than you can imagine.Have you ever considered the extraordinary power of making bad decisions, being unreasonable, and taking dangerous, unadvisable risks?Has it ever occurred to you that nothing is more dangerous than playing it safe, or that the straight and narrow path may lead you right off a cliff?Paul Arden has become a global business guru on the strength of such radical insights. His first book, It's Not How Good You Are, It's How Good You Want to Be, became a word of mouth classic, selling more than half a million copies. Instead of the usual boring advice, he offered daring quips, aphorisms, and paradoxes - all seeking to revise what we habitually hold as our 'common sense'.Whatever You Think, Think the Opposite is an even more daring attack on the way we look at our work and our world. Whether you sell, manage, or buy, Arden will inspire you with his counterintuitive axioms, startling anecdotes, brilliant photographs, and offbeat quotations from artists, scientists, and philosophers.Whatever You Think, Think the Opposite will force you to rethink everything. And it will give you the confidence to take bigger risks and enjoy your work more than you can imagine.'Brilliant, bad, charming, irascible and totally off the wall, Paul Arden is an original with extraordinary drive and energy, blessed with a creative genius allied to a kind of common sense that just isn't, well, common' Roger Kennedy, Saatchi & Saatchi Paul Arden spent 14 years as the Executive Creative Director at Saatchi & Saatchi. He was responsible for some of the UK's most successful advertising campaigns - British Airways, Silk Cut, Anchor Butter, InterCity and Fuji. In 1993 he set up the film production company Arden Sutherland-Dodd. His first book sold over half a million copies. He has a weekly column in the Independent and recently opened a photographic gallery in his hometown, Petworth.

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THE SUNDAY TIMES TOP TEN BESTSELLERFrom one of our greatest voices in modern philosophy, author of The Course of Love, The Consolations of Philosophy, Religion for Atheists and The School of Life - Alain de Botton sets out to understand our universal fear of failure - and how we might change it'De Botton's gift is to prompt us to think about how we live and how we might change things' The Times We all worry about what others think of us. We all long to succeed and fear failure. We all suffer - to a greater or lesser degree, usually privately and with embarrassment - from status anxiety. Alain de Botton gives a name to this universal condition and sets out to investigate both its origins and possible solutions. He looks at history, philosophy, economics, art and politics - and reveals the many ingenious ways that great minds have overcome their worries. The result is a book that is not only entertaining and thought-provoking - but genuinely wise and helpful as well.'He analyses modern society with great charm, learning and humour. His remedies come as a welcome relief when most books offering solutions to the stresses of life recommend the lotus position' Daily Mail

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You're either a Purple Cow or you're not. You're either remarkable or invisible. Make your choice.What do Apple, Starbucks, Dyson and Pret a Manger have in common? How do they achieve spectacular growth, leaving behind former tried-and-true brands to gasp their last? The old checklist of P's used by marketers - Pricing, Promotion, Publicity - aren't working anymore. The golden age of advertising is over. It's time to add a new P - the Purple Cow.Purple Cow describes something phenomenal, something counterintuitive and exciting and flat-out unbelievable. In his new bestseller, Seth Godin urges you to put a Purple Cow into everything you build, and everything you do, to create something truly noticeable. It's a manifesto for anyone who wants to help create products and services that are worth marketing in the first place.If you enjoyed reading this, check out Seth Godin's business classic This is Marketing.

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This detailed and harrowing study of a single group of mostly middle-aged policemen from provincial Germany has achieved classic status among histories of the Holocaust. Far from being demonic and hate-filled sadists, most of the group had no history of anti-semitism or of far right politics. Browning explores the motivation of these men and the horribly familiar mechanisms of man-management and group solidarity that reduced a team of "ordinary men" into a bestial instrument of madness. It is a book that offers no comfort to those who seek to explain the Holocaust in terms of German exceptionalism, but it is a significant contribution to the history of World War II.

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This is a remarkable dictionary, exploring the vast and various symbols which abound in literature, religion, national identity and are found at the very heart of our dreams and sub-conscious. Compiled by an international team of experts, each entry is given its complete range of interpretations - sexual and spiritual, official and subversive, cultural and religious - to bring meaning and insight to the symbol.

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One of the most important philosophical works of all time, in a new Penguin Classics translation by Adam Beresford'Right and wrong is a human thing' What does it mean to be a good person? Aristotle's famous series of lectures on ethical topics ranges over fundamental questions about good and bad character; pleasure and self-control; moral wisdom and the foundations of right and wrong; friendship and love in all their forms - all set against a rich and humane conception of what makes for a flourishing life. Adam Beresford's freshly researched translation presents many of Aristotle's key terms and idioms in standard English for the first time, and faithfully preserves the unvarnished style of the original.

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The definitive translation of the world's oldest known epic, now updated with newly discovered materialMiraculously preserved on clay tablets dating back as far as four thousand years, the poem of Gilgamesh, King of Uruk, predates Homer by many centuries. The story tells of Gilgamesh's adventures with the wild man Enkidu, and of his arduous journey to the ends of the earth in quest of the Babylonian Noah and the secret of immortality. Alongside its themes of family, friendship and the duties of kings, the Epic of Gilgamesh is, above all, about mankind's eternal struggle with the fear of death. This new edition of Andrew George's translation has been extensively revised to include recently discovered fragments and new sources. Translated and revised with an introduction by Andrew George'Our first recognisable epic poem. What is exhilarating, the more we learn of it, is how directly it speaks to us' Literary Review

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'A book that you don't just read, you live' Simon Schama Tolstoy's magnificent epic novel of love, conflict, fate and human life in all its imperfection and grandeurWar and Peace begins at a glittering society party in St Petersburg in 1805, where conversations are dominated by the prospect of war. Terror swiftly engulfs the country as Napoleon's army marches on Russia, and the lives of three young people are changed forever. The stories of quixotic Pierre, cynical Andrey and impetuous Natasha interweave with a huge cast, from aristocrats and peasants to soldiers and Napoleon himself.Translated with an Introduction and Notes by Anthony Briggs with an Afterword by Orlando Figes

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Kant's profound and challenging investigation into the nature of human reason is the central text of modern philosophyIn his landmark work Kant argues that reason is the seat of certain concepts that precede experience and make it possible, but we are not therefore entitled to draw conclusions about the natural world from these concepts. The Critique of Pure Reason brings together two opposing schools of philosophy: rationalism, which grounds all our knowledge in reason, and empiricism, which traces all our knowledge to experience. Kant's transcendental idealism indicates a third way that goes far beyond these alternatives.Translated, Edited and with an Introduction by Marcus Weigelt Based on the Translation by Max Muller

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Aristotle's probing inquiry into some of the fundamental problems of philosophy, The Metaphysics is one of the classical Greek foundation-stones of western thought, translated from the with an introduction by Hugh Lawson-Tancred in Penguin Classics.The Metaphysics presents Aristotle's mature rejection of both the Platonic theory that what we perceive is just a pale reflection of reality and the hard-headed view that all processes are ultimately material. He argued instead that the reality or substance of things lies in their concrete forms, and in so doing he probed some of the deepest questions of philosophy: What is existence? How is change possible? And are there certain things that must exist for anything else to exist at all? The seminal notions discussed in The Metaphysics - of 'substance' and associated concepts of matter and form, essence and accident, potentiality and actuality - have had a profound and enduring influence, and laid the foundations for one of the central branches of Western philosophy.Hugh Lawson-Tancred's lucid translation is accompanied by a stimulating introduction in which he highlights the central themes of one of philosophy's supreme masterpieces.Aristotle (384-22 BC) studied at the Academy of Plato for 20 years and then established his own school and research institute, 'The Lyceum'. His writings, which were of extraordinary range, profoundly affected the whole course of ancient and medieval philosophy and are still eagerly studied and debated by philosophers today.If you enjoyed The Metaphysics, you might like Aristotle's The Nicomachean Ethics, also available in Penguin Classics.

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Villette is Charlotte Brontë's powerful autobiographical novel of one woman's search for true love, edited with an introduction by Helen M. Cooper in Penguin Classics.With neither friends nor family, Lucy Snowe sets sail from England to find employment in a girls' boarding school in the small town of Villette. There, she struggles to retain her self-possession in the face of unruly pupils, the hostility of headmistress Madame Beck, and her own complex feelings - first for the school's English doctor and then for the dictatorial professor Paul Emanuel. Drawing on her own deeply unhappy experiences as a governess in Brussels, Charlotte Brontë'sautobiographical novel, the last published during her lifetime, is a powerfully moving study of loneliness and isolation, and the pain of unrequited love, narrated by a heroine determined to preserve an independent spirit in the face of adverse circumstances. Helen M. Cooper's new introduction places the novel in the context of Brontë's life and career and argues for the importance of the novel as an exploration of imperialism.Charlotte Brontë (1816-55), eldest of the Brontë sisters, was born in Thornton, West Yorkshire. Jane Eyre was first published in 1847 under the pen-name Currer Bell, and was followed by Shirley (1848) and Vilette (1853). In 1854 Charlotte Brontë married her father's curate, Arthur Bell Nicholls. She died during her pregnancy on 31 March 1855 in Haworth, Yorkshire. The Professor was posthumously published in 1857.If you liked Villette, you may enjoy Elizabeth Gaskell's Cranford, also available in Penguin Classics.'I am only just returned to a sense of real wonder about me, for I have been reading Villette' George Eliot'Her finest novel'Virginia Woolf

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Peter Mayle and his wife did what most of us only image doing when they made their long-cherished dream of a life abroad a reality: throwing caution to the wind, they bought a glorious 200-year-old farmhouse in the Luberon and began a new life. In a year that begins with a marathon lunch and continues with a host of gastronomique delights, they also survive the unexpected and often hilarious curiosities of rural life. From mastering the local accent and enduring invasion by bumbling builders, to discovering the finer points of boules and goat-racing, all the earthly pleasures of provencal life are conjured up in this portrait.

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In his rich and nuanced portrait of the remarkable, elusive Rothschild family, Oxford scholar and bestselling author Niall Ferguson uncovers the secrets behind the family's phenomenal economic success. He reveals for the first time the details of the family's vast political network, which gave it access to and influence over many of the greatest statesmen of the age. And he tells a family saga, tracing the importance of unity and the profound role of Judaism in the lives of a dynasty that rose from the confines of the Frankfurt ghetto and later used its influence to assist oppressed Jews throughout Europe. A definitive work of impeccable scholarship with a thoroughly engaging narrative, 'The House of Rothschild' is a biography of the rarest kind, in which mysterious and fascinating historical figures finally spring to life.

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Charles Mason (1728 -1786) and Jeremiah Dixon (1733-1779) were the British Surveyors best remembered for running the boundary between Pennsylvania and Maryland that we know today as the Mason-Dixon Line. Here is their story as re-imagined by Thomas Pynchon, in an updated eighteenth-century novel featuring Native Americans and frontier folk, ripped bodices, naval warfare, conspiracies erotic and political and major caffeine abuse. We follow the mismatch'd pair - one rollicking, the other depressive; one Gothic, the other pre-Romantic - from their first journey together to the Cape of Good Hope, to pre-Revoluntionary America and back, through the stange yet redemptive turns of fortune in their later lives, on a grand tour of the Enlightenment's dark hemisphere, as they observe and participate in the many opportunities for insanity presented them by the Age of Reason.

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