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Books in the Penguin Essentials series

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  • by Joe Dunthorne
    £7.99 - 8.99

    Meet Oliver Tate, 15. Convinced that his father is depressed ("e;Depression comes in bouts. Like boxing. Dad is in the blue corner"e;) and his mother is having an affair with her capoeira teacher, "e;a hippy-looking twonk"e;, he embarks on a hilariously misguided campaign to bring the family back together. Meanwhile, he is also trying to lose his virginity - before he turns sixteeen - to his pyromaniac girlfriend Jordana. Will Oliver succeed in either aim? Submerge yourself in Submarine and find out...

  • by Deborah Levy
    £7.99

    Swallowing Geography is a stunning early novel by the Man Booker-shortlisted Deborah Levy. Embedded in this beautifully written novel is Deborah Levy's gift for blending fairytale with biting satire. Through the voice of the irreverent and ironic narrator J.K., Swallowing Geography interrogates the yearning of discontented children, imagined homes and strangers and histories at the turbulent close of the 20th century.'A stunningly original writer' Kirsty Gunn'One of the few British writers comfortable on a world stage' New Statesman'Levy's strength is her originality of thought and expression' Jeanette WintersonDeborah Levy writes fiction, plays and poetry. Her work has been staged by the Royal Shakespeare Company, and she is the author of highly praised books including The Unloved, Things I Don't Want to Know, Beautiful Mutants and Billy and Girl. Her novel Swimming Home was shortlisted for the 2012 Man Booker Prize, 2012 Specsavers National Book Awards (UK Author of the Year) and 2013 Jewish Quarterly Wingate Prize, while the title story of her most recent work of fiction, Black Vodka, was shortlisted for the 2012 BBC International Short Story Award.

  • by Arthur Conan Doyle
    £7.99

    'Mr. Holmes, they were the footprints of a gigantic hound!'The death, quite suddenly, of Sir Charles Baskerville in mysterious circumstances is the trigger for one of the most extraordinary cases ever to challenge the brilliant analytical mind of Sherlock Holmes. As rumours of a legendary hound said to haunt the Baskerville family circulate, Holmes and Watson are asked to ensure the protection of Sir Charles' only heir, Sir Henry - who has travelled all the way from America to reside at Baskerville Hall in Devon. And it is there, in an isolated mansion surrounded by mile after mile of wild moor, that Holmes and Watson come face to face with a terrifying evil that reaches out from centuries past . . .

  • by J. L. Carr
    £7.99 - 8.99

    In the summer of 1920 two men, both war survivors meet in the quiet English countryside. One is living in the church, intent upon uncovering and restoring an historical wall painting while the other camps in the next field in search of a lost grave.

  • by Paul Theroux
    £7.99 - 8.99

    The Mosquito Coast - winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize - is a breathtaking novel about fanaticism and a futile search for utopia from bestseller Paul Theroux. Allie Fox is going to re-create the world. Abominating the cops, crooks, junkies and scavengers of modern America, he abandons civilisation and takes the family to live in the Honduran jungle. There his tortured, messianic genius keeps them alive, his hoarse tirades harrying them through a diseased and dirty Eden towards unimaginable darkness.'Stunning. . . exciting, intelligent, meticulously realised, artful' Victoria Glendinning, Sunday Times'An epic of paranoid obsession that swirls the reader headlong to deposit him on a black mudbank of horror' Christopher Wordsworth, Guardian'Magnificently stimulating and exciting' Anthony BurgessAmerican travel writer Paul Theroux is known for the rich descriptions of people and places that is often streaked with his distinctive sense of irony; his novels and collected short stories, My Other Life, The Collected Stories, My Secret History, The Lower River, The Stranger at the Palazzo d'Oro, A Dead Hand, Millroy the Magician, The Elephanta Suite, Saint Jack, The Consul's File, The Family Arsenal, and his works of non-fiction, including the iconic The Great Railway Bazaar are available from Penguin.

  • by Nicole Krauss
    £7.99

    Shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction 2006 and winner of the 2006 Prix du Meilleur Livre tranger, The History of Love by bestselling author Nicole Krauss explores the lasting power of the written word and the lasting power of love. 'When I was born my mother named me after every girl in a book my father gave her called The History of Love. . . 'Fourteen-year-old Alma Singer is trying to find a cure for her mother's loneliness. Believing she might discover it in an old book her mother is lovingly translating, she sets out in search of its author.Across New York an old man called Leo Gursky is trying to survive a little bit longer. He spends his days dreaming of the love lost that sixty years ago in Poland inspired him to write a book. And although he doesn't know it yet, that book also survived: crossing oceans and generations, and changing lives. . . 'Wonderfully affecting...brilliant, touching and remarkably poised' Sunday Telegraph'A tender tribute to human valiance. Who could be unmoved by a cast of characters whose daily battles are etched on out mind in such diamond-cut prose?' Independent on Sunday'Devastating...one of the most passionate vindications of the written word in recent fiction. It takes one's breath away' Spectator Nicole Krauss is an American bestselling author who has received international critical acclaim for her first three novels: Great House (shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction 2011), The History of Love and Man Walks into a Room (shortlisted for the LA Times Book Award), all of which are available in Penguin paperback.

  • by E. M. Forster
    £8.99

    When Adela Quested and her elderly companion Mrs Moore arrive in the Indian town of Chandrapore, they quickly feel trapped by its insular and prejudiced 'Anglo-Indian' community. Determined to escape the parochial English enclave and explore the 'real India', they seek the guidance of the charming and mercurial Dr Aziz, a cultivated Indian Muslim.

  • by Pat Barker
    £7.99 - 8.99

    The devastating modern classic of contemporary war fiction from Women's Prize-shortlisted author of The Silence of the GirlsRegeneration is the first novel in Pat Barker's Booker Prize-winning Regeneration trilogy - a powerfully moving portrait of the deep legacy of human trauma in the First World War'Brilliant, intense and subtle' Peter Kemp, Sunday Times'One of the strongest and most interesting novelists of her generation' Guardian 'Unforgettable' Sunday TelegraphCraiglockhart War Hospital, Scotland, 1917, and army psychiatrist William Rivers is treating shell-shocked soldiers. Under his care are the poets Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen, as well as mute Billy Prior, who is only able to communicate by means of pencil and paper. Rivers's job is to make the men in his charge healthy enough to fight. Yet the closer he gets to mending his patients' minds the harder becomes every decision to send them back to the horrors of the front. Pat Barker's Regeneration is the classic exploration of how the traumas of war brutalised a generation of young men.The Regeneration trilogy:RegenerationThe Eye in the DoorThe Ghost Road

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