Penguin Group

Moscow Rules

Daniel Silva, 2009

The violent death of a journalist leads secret agent Gabriel Allon to Russia. Not to the grim Moscow of Soviet times, but a modern Moscow awash with oil wealth and in thrall to a new generation of rich Stalinists plotting to challenge an old enemy: the United States. One such man is Ivan Kharkov, a former KGB colonel, whose global empire is built on a lucrative and deadly business. Kharkov is an arms dealer – and he's about to sell Russia's most dangerous weapon to al-Qaeda. Unless Allon can learn the time and place of the delivery, the world will suffer its deadliest terror attacks since 9/11. The countdown to Armageddon has begun... Подробнее

A Fraction of the Whole (shortlisted for Booker'08)

Steve Toltz, 2008

At the heart of this sprawling, dizzying debut from a quirky, assured Australian writer are two men: Jasper Dean, a judgmental but forgiving son, and Martin, his brilliant but dysfunctional father. Jasper, in an Australian prison in his early 20s, scribbles out the story of their picaresque adventures, noting cryptically early on that [m]y father's body will never be found. As he tells it, Jasper has been uneasily bonded to his father through thick and thin, which includes Martin's stint managing a squalid strip club during Jasper's adolescence; an Australian outback home literally hidden within impenetrable mazes; Martin's ill-fated scheme to make every Australian a millionaire; and a feverish odyssey through Thailand's menacing jungles. Toltz's exuberant, looping narrative—thick with his characters' outsized longings and with their crazy arguments—sometimes blows past plot entirely, but comic drive and Toltz's far-out imagination carry the epic story, which puts the two (and Martin's own nemesis, his outlaw brother, Terry) on an irreverent roller-coaster ride from obscurity to infamy. Comparisons to Special Topics in Calamity Physics are likely, but this nutty tour de force has a more tender, more worldly spin. Подробнее

The Minotaur

Barbara Vine, 2009

Kerstin Kvist enters crumbling Lydstep Old Hall to live with the Cosways and to act as nurse to John: a grown man fed drugs by his family to control his lunatic episodes. But John's strangeness is grotesquely mirrored in that of his four sisters who roam the dark, mazy Essex country house under the strict gaze of eighty-year-old Mrs Cosway. Despite being treated as an outsider, Kerstin is nevertheless determined to help John. But she soon discovers that there are others in the family who are equally as determined that John remain isolated, for sinister reasons of their own… Подробнее

Lucky Jim

Kingsley Amis, 2000

Jim Dixon has accidentally fallen into a job at one of Britain's new red brick universities. A moderately successful future in the History Department beckons. As long as Jim can survive a madrigal-singing weekend at Professor Welch's, deliver a lecture on 'Merrie England' and resist Christine, the hopelessly desirable girlfriend of Welch's awful son Bertrand. Подробнее

Animal Farm: A Fairy Story

George Orwell, 2000

'It is the history of a revolution that went wrong — and of the excellent excuses that were forthcoming at every step for the perversion of the original doctrine', wrote Orwell for the first edition of «Animal Farm» in 1945. Orwell wrote it at the end of 1943, but it almost remained unpublished. Its savage attack on Stalin, at that time Britain's ally, led to it being refused by publisher after publisher. Orwell's simple, tragic fable, telling what happens when the animals drive out Mr Jones and attempt to run the farm themselves, has since become a world-famous classic. Подробнее

Put Out More Flags

Evelyn Waugh, 2000

'Basil needed a war. He's not meant for peace '... Upper-class scoundrel Basil Seal, mad, bad and dangerous to know, creates havoc wherever he goes, much to the despair of the three women in his life — his sister, mother and mistress. And when Neville Chamberlain declares war on Germany, it seems the perfect opportunity for more action and adventure. So Basil follows the call to arms and goes forth to have his finest hour — as a war hero. His instincts for self-preservation come to the fore in such spheres of opportunity as the Ministry of Information and a little-known section of Military Security. But, with Europe frozen in the 'phoney war', when will Basil's big chance to fight finally arrive? Based on Evelyn Waugh's own time as a soldier, «Put Out More Flags» is a painfully funny satire on the military establishment. Подробнее

Down and Out in Paris and London

George Orwell, 2001

George Orwell's first published work, «Down and Out in Paris and London», is a vivid, sensitive account of the time he lived as one of the poor in the late twenties. In a bug-infested hotel, surviving only between the pawnbroker and a little teaching and writing, Orwell shocked the middle-class establishment with his observation of the misery, the hopelessness and the despair of the poor of a previously unexplored Paris and London. Подробнее

Work Suspended and Other Stories

Evelyn Waugh, 2000

In his elegant, malicious prose, Evelyn Waugh satirizes British society as he saw it over three decades. From «Work Suspended», where Plant, a writer of detective fiction, puts his incomplete novel in a drawer until such time as he can finish it (that is to say after the war), to Basil Seal Rides Again, in which the hero of Black Mischief defeats the children of the Sixties, these stories encompass much of the social milieu of the twentieth century. The volume also includes the fragment Charles Ryder's Schooldays, which sketches the background to the narrator of Brideshead Revisited. Подробнее

Officers and Gentlemen

Evelyn Waugh, 2008

Guy Crouchback is now attached to a commando unit undergoing training on the Hebridean isle of Mugg, where the whisky flows freely and HM forces have to show respect for the laird. But the comedy of Mugg is followed by the bitterness of Crete. Подробнее

The Grapes of Wrath

John Steinbeck, 2006

'I've done my damndest to rip a reader's nerves to rags, I don't want him satisfied'. Shocking and controversial when it was first published in 1939, Steinbeck's Pulitzer prize-winning epic, The Grapes of Wrath, remains his undisputed masterpiece. Set against the background of Dust Bowl Oklahoma and Californian migrant life, it tells of the Joad family, who, like thousands of others, are forced to travel west in search of the promised land. Their story is one of false hopes, thwarted desires and broken dreams, yet out of their suffering Steinbeck created a drama that is intensely human, yet majestic in its scale and moral vision; an eloquent tribute to the endurance and dignity of the human spirit. Подробнее

The Autobiography of Alice B: Toklas

Gertrude Stein, 2001

For Gertrude Stein and her companion Alice B. Toklas, life in Paris was based upon the rue de Fleurus and the Saturday evenings and ‘it was like a kaleidoscope slowly turning’. Picasso was there with ‘his high whinnying spanish giggle’, as were Cezanne and Matisse, Hemingway and Fitzgerald. As Toklas put it – ‘The geniuses came and talked to Gertrude Stein and the wives sat with me’. A light-hearted entertainment, this is in fact Gertrude Stein’s own autobiography and a roll-call of all the extraordinary painters and writers she met between 1903 and 1932. Audacious, sardonic and characteristically self-confident, this is a definitive account by the American in Paris. Подробнее

Men at Arms

Evelyn Waugh, 2001

Guy Crouchback, determined to get into the war, takes a commission in the Royal Corps of Halberdiers. His spirits high, he sees all the trimmings but none of the action. And his first campaign, an abortive affair on the West African coastline, ends with an escapade which seriously blots his Halberdier copybook. «Men at Arms» is the first book in Waugh’s brilliant trilogy, «Sword of Honour», which chronicles the fortunes of Guy Crouchback. The second and third volumes, «Officers and Gentlemen» and «Unconditional Surrender», are also published in Penguin. «Sword of Honour» has recently been made into a television drama series, with screenplay by William Boyd. Подробнее

Nineteen Eighty-Four

George Orwell, 2007

Hidden away in the Record Department of the sprawling Ministry of Truth, Winston Smith skilfully rewrites the past to suit the needs of the Party. Yet he inwardly rebels against the totalitarian world he lives in, which demands absolute obedience and controls him through the all-seeing telescreens and the watchful eye of Big Brother, symbolic head of the Party. In his longing for truth and liberty, Smith begins a secret love affair with a fellow-worker Julia, but soon discovers the true price of freedom is betrayal Подробнее

The Driver's Seat

Muriel Spark, 2006

Lise has been driven to distraction by working in the same accountants' office for sixteen years. So she leaves everything behind her, transforms herself into a laughing, garishly-dressed temptress and flies abroad on the holiday of a lifetime. But her search for adventure, sex and the obsessional experience takes on a far darker significance as she heads on a journey of self-destruction. Infinity and eternity attend Lise's last terrible day in an unnamed southern city, as she meets her fate. Подробнее

The Ballad of Peckham Rye

Muriel Spark, 2008

A man of devilish charm and enterprising spirit, Dougal Douglas is employed to revitalize the ailing firm of Meadows, Meade & Grindley. He succeeds, but not quite in the way his employer intended. Strange things begin to happen as Dougal exerts an uncanny influence on the inhabitants of Peckham Rye and brings lies, tears, blackmail and even murder into the lives of all he meets, from Miss Merle Coverdale, head of the typing pool, to Beauty, the resident femme fatale, and even Mr Druce, the unsuspecting Managing Director himself. Подробнее

The Man with the Golden Gun

Ian Fleming, 2006

A brainwashed James Bond has tried — and failed — to assassinate M, his boss. Now Bond has to prove he is back on form and can be trusted again. All 007 has to do is kill one of the most deadly freelance hit men in the world: Paco «Pistols» Scaramanga, the Man with the Golden Gun. But despite his license to kill, 007 is no assassin, and on finding Scaramanga in the sultry heat of Jamaica, he decides to infiltrate the killer’s criminal cooperative — and realizes that he will have to take him out as swiftly as possible. Otherwise 007 might just be the next on a long list of British Secret Service numbers retired by the Man with the Golden Gun... Подробнее

Toward the End of Time

John Updike, 2006

Ben Turnbull is a 66 year-old retired investment consultant living north of Boston in the year 2020. A recent war between the United States and China has thinned the population and brought social chaos. Nevertheless, Ben's life, traced by his journal entries over the course of the year, retains much of its accustomed comforts. Something of a science buff, he finds his personal history cuaght up in the dysjunctions and vagaries of the 'many universes'; his identity branches into variants extending back through history and ahead in the evolution of the universe, as both it and his own mortal, nature-shrouded existence move toward the end of time... Подробнее

The Witches of Eastwick

John Updike, 2007

The air of Eastwick breeds witches — women whose powerful longings can stir up thunderstorms and fracture domestic peace. Jane, Alexandra and Sukie, divorced and dangerous, have formed a coven. Into the void of Eastwick breezes Darryl Van Horne, a charismatic magus of a man who entrances the trio, luring them to his mansions... Подробнее

Couples

John Updike, 2008

An intoxicating yet sensitive novel about the sexual experiences of ten couples from Tarbox, New England. Well-to-do, sociable, articulate but dangerously unfulfilled; they play word games in the evening and adultery all year round. Подробнее

A Month of Sundays

John Updike, 2007

Updike's seventh novel concerns a month of seven days, a month of enforced rest and recreation as experienced by the Reverend Tom Marshfield, sent west from his Midwestern church in disgrace. Подробнее

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