Fiction

The sixth Culture book from the awesome imagination of Iain M. Banks, a modern master of science fiction. In the winter palace, the King's new physician has more enemies than she at first realises. But then she also has more remedies to hand than those who wish her ill can know about.In another palace across the mountains, in the service of the regicidal Protector General, the chief bodyguard, too, has his enemies. But his enemies strike more swiftly, and his means of combating them are more traditional.Spiralling round a central core of secrecy, deceit, love and betrayal, INVERSIONS is a spectacular work of science fiction, brilliantly told and wildly imaginative, from an author who has set genre fiction alight.Praise for the Culture series:'Epic in scope, ambitious in its ideas and absorbing in its execution' Independent on Sunday'Banks has created one of the most enduring and endearing visions of the future' Guardian'Jam-packed with extraordinary invention' Scotsman'Compulsive reading' Sunday Telegraph The Culture series:Consider PhlebasThe Player of GamesUse of WeaponsThe State of the ArtExcessionInversionsLook to WindwardMatterSurface DetailThe Hydrogen SonataOther books by Iain M. Banks:Against a Dark BackgroundFeersum EndjinnThe Algebraist

The fifth Culture book from the awesome imagination of Iain M. Banks, a modern master of science fiction. Two and a half millennia ago, the artifact appeared in a remote corner of space, beside a trillion-year-old dying sun from a different universe. It was a perfect black-body sphere, and it did nothing. Then it disappeared. Now it is back.Praise for the Culture series:'Epic in scope, ambitious in its ideas and absorbing in its execution' Independent on Sunday'Banks has created one of the most enduring and endearing visions of the future' Guardian'Jam-packed with extraordinary invention' Scotsman'Compulsive reading' Sunday Telegraph The Culture series:Consider PhlebasThe Player of GamesUse of WeaponsThe State of the ArtExcessionInversionsLook to WindwardMatterSurface DetailThe Hydrogen SonataOther books by Iain M. Banks:Against a Dark BackgroundFeersum EndjinnThe Algebraist

Thomas Ligotti is often cited as the most curious and remarkable figure in horror literature since H. P. Lovecraft. His work is noted by critics for its display of an exceptionally grotesque imagination and accomplished prose style. In his stories, Ligotti has followed a literary tradition that began with Edgar Allan Poe, portraying characters that are outside of anything that might be called normal life, depicting strange locales far off the beaten track, and rendering a grim vision of human existence as a perpetual nightmare. The horror stories collected in Teatro Grottesco feature tormented individuals who play out their doom in various odd little towns, as well as in dark sectors frequented by sinister and often blackly comical eccentrics. The cycle of narratives introduce readers to a freakish community of artists who encounter demonic perils that ultimately engulf their lives.

The Christmas Surprise is the final novel in Jenny Colgan's Rosie Hopkins trilogy.Includes mouth-watering recipesRosie Hopkins, newly engaged, is looking forward to an exciting year in the little sweetshop she owns and runs. But when fate strikes Rosie and her boyfriend, Stephen, a terrible blow, threatening everything they hold dear, it's going to take all their strength and the support of their families and their Lipton friends to hold them together. After all, don't they say it takes a village to raise a child?

Penguin presents the unabridged, downloadable, audiobook edition of Here I Am by Jonathan Safran Foer, read by Ari Fliakos. THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER From the bestselling author of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, Everything is Illuminated and We are the Weather - a rich and moving novel about modern family lives and the ties that bind Towering and glorious: a tale of social, familial and marital breakdown and the End of the World. The funniest literary novel I have ever read The Times A rich, beautifully written, ambitious and grandly moving novel, which looks both at the world at large and at the deepest concerns of individual lives Evening Standard Lays bare the interior of a marriage with such intelligence and deep feeling and pitiless clarity, its impossible to read it and not re-examine your own family Time Astonishing. So sad and so funny and so wry Scotland on Sunday Jacob and Julia Bloch are about to be tested . . . By Jacobs grandfather, who wont go quietly into a retirement home. By the family reunion, that everyone is dreading. By their sons heroic attempts to get expelled. And by the sexting affair that will rock their marriage. A typical modern American family, the Blochs cling together even as they are torn apart. Which is when catastrophe decides to strike . . . Confronting the enduring question of what it means to be human with inventiveness, playfulness and compassion, Here I Am is a great American family novel for our times, an unmissable read for fans of Jonathan Franzen and Michael Chabon, a masterpiece about how we live now.

With an essay by J. I. M. Stewart.'Every night as I gazed up at the window I said softly to myself the word paralysis. It had always sounded strangely in my ears ... But now it sounded to me like the name of some maleficent and sinful being. It filled me with fear, and yet I longed to be nearer to it and to look upon its deadly work'From a child grappling with the death of a fallen priest, to a young woman's dilemma over whether to elope to Argentina with her lover, to the dance party at which a man discovers just how little he really knows about his wife, these fifteen stories bring the gritty realism of existence in Joyce's native Dublin to life. With Dubliners, James Joyce reinvented the art of fiction, using a scrupulous, deadpan realism to convey truths that were at once blasphemous and sacramental.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.

'A work of glorious intelligence and literary devices . . . Nonsense becomes a form of higher sense' Malcolm Bradbury'I had sent my heroine straight down a rabbit-hole . . . without the least idea what was to happen afterwards,' wrote Lewis Carroll, describing how Alice was conjured up one 'golden afternoon' to entertain a young girl. His dream worlds of nonsensical Wonderland and the back-to-front Looking-Glass kingdom depict order turned upside-down: a baby turns into a pig, time is abandoned at a disordered tea-party and a seven-year-old girl is made Queen. But amongst the anarchic humour and sparkling word play, puzzles and riddles, are poignant moments of nostalgia for lost childhood. Edited with an Introduction and notes by Hugh Haughton

From bestselling author Bernard Cornwell, comes a brilliant retelling of the Arthurian legend, combining myth, history, and thrilling battlefield action. In the Dark Ages, a legendary warrior arises to unite a divided land . . .Uther, the High King of Britain, is dead. His only heir is the infant Mordred. Yet each of the country's lesser kings seek to claim the crown for themselves. While they squabble and spoil for war, a host of Saxon armies gather, preparing for invasion.But no one has counted on the fearsome warlord Arthur. Handed power by Merlin and pursuing a doomed romance with the beautiful Guinevere, Arthur knows he will struggle to unite the country - let alone hold back the Saxon enemy at the gates. Yet destiny awaits him . . .Fans of Game of Thrones, The Last Kingdom, Conn Iggulden and Merlin will be captivated by this gripping historical novel. ___________'Of all the books I have written these are my favourites' Bernard Cornwell'Spellbinding realism' The Times

The novel tells the story of a middle-class UNESCO engineer called Walter Faber, who believes in rational, calculated world. Strange events undermine his security - an emergency landing in a Mexican desert against all odds, his friend Joachim hangs himself in the Mexican jungle, and he falls in love with a woman who dies of a concussion, he has an incestuous affair. Finally Faber becomes ill with stomach cancer, but it is too late for him to change his life.

From the MAN BOOKER PRIZE- and WOMEN'S PRIZE-SHORTLISTED author of Swing Time, On Beauty and Grand Union'BELIEVE THE HYPE' The Times'The almost preposterous talent was clear from the first pages' Julian Barnes, Guardian'Street-smart and learned, sassy and philosophical all at the same time' New York Times'Outstanding' Sunday Telegraph The international bestseller and modern classic of multicultural Britain - an unforgettable portrait of LondonOne of the most talked about debut novels of all time, White Teeth is a funny, generous, big-hearted novel, adored by critics and readers alike. Dealing - among many other things - with friendship, love, war, three cultures and three families over three generations, one brown mouse, and the tricky way the past has of coming back and biting you on the ankle, it is a life-affirming, riotous must-read of a book.

NICK HORNBY'S HILARIOUS INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER IS NOW A MAJOR FILM'A comic delight' Evening Standard _____________Annie's put fifteen years into safe, slightly obsessive Duncan, and now she'd like her money back, please. It's time to move on. But she lives in Gooleness, the north's answer to a question nobody asked. Is she really going to find real, proper, feel-it-deep-down-in-your-boots love on a damp and windy seafront? Or perhaps she should follow her heart and pursue Tucker, the reclusive American rock star, who keeps emailing her his smart advice.But between Annie and her second chance lie a few obstacles. There's Malcolm, the world's most judgemental therapist, and Barnesy, the north's most extrovert dancer. There's what men and women will do and won't do for love. And, of course, there's Tucker. . . Hilarious and tender, this bestselling novel will move you in ways both profound and surprising. It's Nick Hornby at his brilliant best. If you like David Nicholls, David Sedaris and Jonathan Coe you will love this book. _________________'Hornby's best novel to date' Spectator'Sharply funny, touching' Daily Telegraph'Pitch-perfect' Observer

Romantics, adventurers, sensualists, melancholics and dreamers inhabit the bizarre and exotic world conjured up in these seven intricately interwoven tales, whose settings range from Tuscany and Elsinore, to a dhow on its way from Lamu to Zanzibar.Proclaimed a masterpiece on its publication in 1934, this collection is shot through with themes of love and desire - from the maiden lady who now believes herself to have been the grand courtesan of her time, to the Count whose wife is so jealous that she cannot bear him to admire her jewels, and Lincoln Forsner, an Englishman whose search for a woman he met in a brothel leads him into many strange adventures.

Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) is often regarded as the unofficial Laureate of the British Empire. Yet his writing reveals a ferociously independent figure at times violently opposed to the dominant political and literary tendencies of his age. Arranged in chronological order, this diverse selection of his poetry shows the development of Kipling's talent, his deepening maturity and the growing sombreness of his poetic vision. Ranging from early, exhilarating celebrations of British expansion overseas, including 'Mandalay' and 'Gunga Din', to the dignified and inspirational 'If -' and the later, deeply moving 'Epitaphs of the War' - inspired by the death of Kipling's only son - it clearly illustrates the scope and originality of his work. It also offers a compelling insight into the Empire both at its peak and during its decline in the early years of the twentieth century.

'The power of Dickens is so amazing, that the reader at once becomes his captive' WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAYThe story of the orphan Oliver, who runs away from the workhouse to be taken in by a den of thieves, shocked readers with its depiction of a dark criminal underworld peopled by vivid and memorable characters - the arch-villain Fagin, the artful Dodger, the menacing Bill Sikes and the prostitute Nancy. Combining elements of Gothic romance, the Newgate novel and popular melodrama, Oliver Twist created an entirely new kind of fiction, scathing in its indictment of a cruel society and pervaded by an unforgettable sense of threat and mystery.Edited with an Introduction and notes by PHILIP HORNE

'Jane Austen is a genius, and Northanger Abbey is hugely underrated' Martin AmisWith its irrepressible heroine and playful literary games, Northanger Abbey is the most youthful and optimistic of Jane Austen's novels. It tells the story of young, impressionable Catherine Morland, whose first experience of fashionable society introduces her to the thrills of Gothic romances, and to the sophisticated Tilneys, who invite her to their family home, Northanger Abbey. But there, influenced by novels of horror and intrigue, Catherine begins to think that terrible crimes are being committed, and her imagination threatens to run away with her.Edited with an Introduction by MARILYN BUTLER

WINNER OF THE ORANGE PRIZE FOR FICTIONSHORTLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZEFrom the acclaimed author of Swing Time, White Teeth and Grand Union, discover a brilliantly funny and deeply mving story about love and family'I didn't want to finish, I was enjoying it so much' Evening Standard'Thrums with intellectual sass and know-how' Literary Review'Filled with humour, generosity and contemporary sparkle' Daily Telegraph 'Satirical, wise and sexy' Washington PostWhy do we fall in love with the people we do? Why do we visit our mistakes on our children? What makes life truly beautiful?Set between New England and London, On Beauty concerns a pair of feuding families - the Belseys and the Kipps - and a clutch of doomed affairs. It puts low morals among high ideals and asks some searching questions about what life does to love. For the Belseys and the Kipps, the confusions - both personal and political - of our uncertain age are about to be brought close to home: right to the heart of family.

The portrayal of Stephen Dedalus's Dublin childhood and youth, his quest for identity through art and his gradual emancipation from the claims of family, religion and Ireland itself, is also an oblique self-portrait of the young James Joyce and a universal testament to the artist's 'eternal imagination'.

Charles Darnay and Sydney Carton are alike in appearance, different in character and in love with the same woman. In the midst of the French Revolution, Darnay, who has fled to London to escape the cruelty of the French nobility, must return to Paris to rescue his servant from death. But he endangers his own life and is captured. Carton may be able to help, but will his resemblance be enough to save Darnay's life?With an enticing introduction by bestselling author, Roddy Doyle.

In January 1850 Dostoyevsky was sent to a remote Siberian prison camp for his part in a political conspiracy. The four years he spent there, startlingly re-created in The House of the Dead, were the most agonizing of his life. In this fictionalized account he recounts his soul-destroying incarceration through the cool, detached tones of his narrator, Aleksandr Petrovich Goryanchikov: the daily battle for survival, the wooden plank beds, the cabbage soup swimming with cockroaches, his strange family of boastful, ugly, cruel convicts. Yet The House of the Dead is far more than a work of documentary realism: it is also a powerful novel of redemption, describing one man s spiritual and moral death and the miracle of his gradual reawakening.

'One of the greatest elegies in the English language, a book which transcends time' Margaret DrabbleTo the Lighthouse is at once a vivid impressionistic depiction of a family, the Ramseys, whose annual summer holiday in Scotland falls under the shadow of war, and a meditation on marriage, on parenthood and childhood, on grief, tyranny and bitterness. The novel's use of stream of consciousness, reminiscence and shifting perspectives gives it an intimate, poetic essence, and at the time of publication in 1927 it represented an utter rejection of all that had gone before.Edited by Stella McNichol with an Introduction and Notes by Hermione Lee

Boisterous, ribald, and ultimately shattering, Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is the seminal novel of the 1960s that has left an indelible mark on the literature of our time. Here is the unforgettable story of a mental ward and its inhabitants, especially the tyrannical Big Nurse Ratched and Randle Patrick McMurphy, the brawling, fun-loving new inmate who resolves to oppose her. We see the struggle through the eyes of Chief Bromden, the seemingly mute half-Indian patient who witnesses and understands McMurphy's heroic attempt to do battle with the awesome powers that keep them all imprisoned.

When this volume of Shakespeare's poems first appeared in 1609, he had already written most of the great plays that made him famous. The 154 sonnets - all but two of which are addressed to a beautiful young man or a treacherous 'dark lady' - contain some of the most exquisite and haunting poetry ever written, and deal with eternal subjects such as love and infidelity, memory and mortality, and the destruction wreaked by Time. Also included is A Lover's Complaint, originally published with the sonnets, in which a young woman is overheard lamenting her betrayal by a heartless seducer.

Between the First World War and the Wall Street Crash the French Riviera was the stylish place for wealthy Americans to visit. Among the most fashionable are the Divers, Dick and Nicole who hold court at their villa. Into their circle comes Rosemary Hoyt, a film star, who is instantly attracted to them, but understands little of the dark secrets and hidden corruption that hold them together. As Dick draws closer to Rosemary, he fractures the delicate structure of his marriage and sets both Nicole and himself on to a dangerous path where only the strongest can survive. In this exquisite, lyrical novel, Fitzgerald has poured much of the essence of his own life; he has also depicted the age of materialism, shattered idealism and broken dreams.

The Subterraneans haunt the bars and clubs of San Francisco, surviving on a diet of booze and benzedrine, Proust and Verlaine. Living amongst them is Leo, an aspiring writer, and Mardou, half-Indian, half-Negro, beautiful and neurotic. Their bitter-sweet and ill-starred love affair sees Kerouac at his most evocative. Many regard this as being Kerouac's most touching and tender book.

In Berlin there lived a man called Albinus. He was rich, respectable and happy but one day he abandoned his wife for the sake of a youthful mistress he loved. He was not loved in return, however, and his life ended in disaster. The original Russian text of this novel was published in 1933.

Written in mischievous and magically flowing prose, this is Nabokov's 'other' great love story; with some of Lolita's perversity and much more playfulness. Romance follows Ada and Van from their first childhood meeting through eight years of rapture, in a book which is regarded by many to be Nabokov's richest and most ambitious.

In the early 1500s five men and five women find themselves trapped by floods and compelled to take refuge in an abbey high in the Pyrenees. When told they must wait days for a bridge to be repaired, they are inspired - by recalling Boccaccio's Decameron - to pass the time in a cultured manner by each telling a story every day. The stories, however, soon degenerate into a verbal battle between the sexes, as the characters weave tales of corrupt friars, adulterous noblemen and deceitful wives. From the cynical Saffredent to the young idealist Dagoucin or the moderate Parlamente - believed to express De Navarre's own views - The Heptameron provides a fascinating insight into the minds and passions of the nobility of sixteenth century France.

Marian Keyes' Sushi for Beginners is the blissfully funny, smart tale of three women who discover that the line between success and failure, happiness and sadness, sanity and madness is finer than they ever thought . . . 'Dammit,' she realized. 'I think I'm having a nervous breakdown.' Hot-shot magazine editor Lisa Edwards' career is destined for high-rise New York, when suddenly she's blown off-course into the delights of low-rise Dublin. But what on earth can she do about it? Ashling Kennedy, Lisa's super-organized assistant, is good at worrying. Too good. She's even terrified of a little bit of raw fish . . . Clodagh Kelly is Ashling's best friend and has done everything right: beautiful kids and a husband come prince - everything in fact that Ashling has ever wanted. She should be - yet, she's not - happy. Three women on the verge of happiness and even closer to a complete breakdown. Which way will they fall? 'Keyes has given romantic comedy a much-needed face-lift. Chatty and warmhearted, Keyes's talent is to tell it how it is' Independent 'Laden with plots twists, jokey asides and nicely turned bits of zeitgeisty observational humour ... her energetic, well-constructed prose delivers life and people in satisfyingly various shades of grey' Guardian 'The voice of a generation' Daily Mirror

In this nightmare vision of a not-too-distant future, fifteen-year-old Alex and his three friends rob, rape, torture and murder - for fun. Alex is jailed for his vicious crimes and the State undertakes to reform him - but how and at what cost?

Ry nosuke Akutagawa (1892-1927) is one of Japan s foremost stylists - a modernist master whose short stories are marked by highly original imagery, cynicism, beauty and wild humour. Rash mon and In a Bamboo Grove inspired Kurosawa s magnificent film and depict a past in which morality is turned upside down, while tales such as The Nose , O-Gin and Loyalty paint a rich and imaginative picture of a medieval Japan peopled by Shoguns and priests, vagrants and peasants. And in later works such as Death Register , The Life of a Stupid Man and Spinning Gears , Akutagawa drew from his own life to devastating effect, revealing his intense melancholy and terror of madness in exquisitely moving impressionistic stories.