Literature

Agatha Christie's most exotic murder mystery, reissued with a striking new cover designed to appeal to the latest generation of Agatha Christie fans and book lovers. The tranquillity of a cruise along the Nile is shattered by the discovery that Linnet Ridgeway has been shot through the head. She was young, stylish and beautiful, a girl who had everything - until she lost her life. Hercule Poirot recalls an earlier outburst by a fellow passenger: 'I'd like to put my dear little pistol against her head and just press the trigger.' Yet in this exotic setting nothing is ever quite what it seems...

An invaluable record of the creative output of one of the most inquisitive and analytical thinkers of the twentieth century at the height of her power, Debriefing collects all of Susan Sontag's shorter fiction, a form she turned to intermittently throughout her writing life.

Ranging from allegory to parable to autobiography, these stories show Sontag wrestling with problems beyond the essayistic form, her more customary mode. Here, she catches fragments of life on the fly, dramatizes her private griefs and fears, and lets characters take her where they will. The result is a collection of remarkable brilliance, versatility, and charm. Sontag's work has typically required time for people to catch up to it. These challenging works of literary art--made more urgent by the passage of years--await a new generation of readers.

With his distinctive dark wit, Evelyn Waugh's Decline and Fall is a masterful social satire sending up the social mores of 1920s England, edited with an introduction by David Bradshaw in Penguin Modern Classics. Expelled from Oxford for indecent behaviour, Paul Pennyfeather is oddly unsurprised to find himself qualifying for the position of schoolmaster at Llanabba Castle. Hi colleagues are an assortment of misfits, including Prendy (plagued by doubts) and captain Grimes, who is always in the soup (or just plain drunk). Then Sports Day arrives, and with it the delectable Margot Beste-Chetwynde, floating on a scented breeze. As the farce unfolds and the young run riot, no one is safe, least of all Paul. Taking its title from Edward Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Evelyn Waugh's first, funniest novel immediately caught the ear of the public with his account of an ingenu abroad in the decadent confusion of 1920s high society. 'The funniest book I have ever read' Julian Symons, The Times 'His first, most perfect novel ...a ruthlessly comic plot' John Mortimer, Guardian 'Concocted of cruelty, bigotry, pederasty, white slavery, violence, madness and murder, Decline and Fall is fundamentally playful and side-splittingly funny' David Bradshaw

The breath-taking and heart-pounding fifth instalment in the incredible New York Times and UK kindle bestselling SHATTER ME series. Perfect for fans of Sarah J. Maas, Victoria Aveyard and Leigh Bardugo. She was never meant for you. She was never meant for any of this. That girl was sentenced to death the moment I named her Juliette. Juliette Ferrars isn't who she thinks she is. Nothing in her world is what it seemed. She thought she'd defeated The Reestablishment. She thought she'd finally taken control of her life, her power, her pain. But a lifetime of lies unravelling before her has changed all that. Stronger, braver, and more resilient than ever, Juliette must fight for life and love. But first she has to survive the war being raged against her mind. She has to remember who she was. Tahereh Mafi is the New York Times bestselling author of the Shatter Me series which has been published in over 30 languages around the world. She is also the author of the ravely reviewed A Very Large Expanse of Sea. he was born in a small city somewhere in Connecticut and currently resides in Santa Monica, California, with her husband, Ransom Riggs, fellow bestselling author of Miss Peregrine's Home For Peculiar Children, and their young daughter. She can usually be found overcaffeinated and stuck in a book. You can find her online just about anywhere at @TaherehMafi. Praise for the Shatter Me series: "Dangerous, sexy, romantic, and intense. I dare you to stop reading." - Kami Garcia, #1 New York Times bestselling co-author of the Beautiful Creatures series "Addictive, intense, and oozing with romance. I'm envious. I couldn't put it down." - Lauren Kate, #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Fallen series "Tahereh Mafi's bold, inventive prose crackles with raw emotion. A thrilling, high-stakes saga of self-discovery and forbidden love, the Shatter Me series is a must-read for fans of dystopian young adult literature - or any literature!" -Ransom Riggs, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children Praise for A Very Large Expanse of Sea: 'This is a gorgeous book. It's tender and fierce, beautiful even as it depicts some ugly truths. The prose is passionate and honest, unsentimental and big-hearted. The very best books move you to reconsider the world around you and this is one of those. I truly loved it.' - Nicola Yoon, bestselling author of Everything, Everything 'A raw yet astoundingly elegant examination of identity, loneliness and family that is unflinching in its honesty and power. Tahereh Mafi holds nothing back - and the reader is better for it.' - Sabaa Tahir, New York Times bestselling author of Ember in the Ashes 'A Very Large Expanse of Sea reads like a beautiful heart - one that shines and aches and yearns, and above all else, one that loves fiercely against all odds. Years from now, you will remember exactly where you were and what you were doing when you experienced this. A transcendent story about truth, love and finding joy.' - Marie Lu, New York Times bestselling author of the Legend series.'

A young woman with nothing to live for is persuaded to embark on a suicide mission to find a missing scientist... When a number of leading scientists disappear without trace, concern grows within the international intelligence community. Are they being kidnapped? Blackmailed? Brainwashed? One woman appears to have the key to the mystery. Unfortunately, Olive Betteron now lies in a hospital bed, dying from injuries sustained in a Moroccan plane crash. Meanwhile, in a Casablanca hotel room, Hilary Craven prepares to take her own life. But her suicide attempt is about to be interrupted by a man who will offer her an altogether more thrilling way to die...

Ten years since it was first published, this volume of short stories by the cream of British crime writing talent celebrates 75 years of the quintessential Detection Club. The Detection Club represents the cream of British crime writing talent. Founded on the cusp of the 1930s, the Club’s first President was G.K. Chesterton, and since then the mantle of Presidency has passed to some of the most significant names inthe history of crime fiction, including Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers and Julian Symons. The Club meets three times a year - to dine, to plot, and to exchange ideas. This anthology includes eleven new stories by the Best of British: Robert Barnard, Lyndsey Davis, Colin Dexter, Clare Francis, Robert Goddard, John Harvey, Reginald Hill, P.D. James, H.R.F. Keating, Michael Ridpath and Margaret Yorke, and has been edited by the Club’s President, Simon Brett. Among the authors are a number of bestsellers, as well as winners of both Diamond and Gold Daggers. This outstanding collection is a must for crime lovers everywhere.

Mark Twain's gloriously funny Diary of Adam and Eve, which John Updike described as a paradigm of the relations between sexes, is presented here with a number of other Twain pieces on our two oldest ancestors, showing the writer's interest in this most famous episode of the Bible.

By giving a voice to Adam and Eve, and by hitting all the notes on the literary scale - from the intimate to the comical, from the journalistic to the idyllic - Twain displays the brilliance and wit for which he is rightly considered one of the greatest satirists of all time

Uplifting and utterly defiant' Matt Nixson, Daily Express 'Immediate and important ... This is an insider's account of how an ordinary life became extraordinary' Helen Davies, The Times'At first we did not understand what war was. You can't understand it until you see it and hear it.'As Russian forces build up beyond the Ukrainian borders and the prospect of war becomes a devastating reality, Andrey Kurkov chronicles the shocking impact of Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Part political and historical commentary, part personal journal, Kurkov explores the fraught interrelation of Russian and Ukrainian history, the complicated coexistence of their languages, and in describing how a peaceful society defies occupation, the author builds an image of a culture which, contrary to Putin's claims, is unique and democratic, liberal and diverse, one that will 'resist to the end'. Redirecting his satirical flair to paint a defiant portrait of his compatriots, Kurkov tells of a people united against erasure. Bread is baked and shared in the ruins.

An amputee is carried aboard an evacuating train, grandmothers escape occupied towns with their noisome roosters. And despite the networks of toloka, of community work for common good, being stretched to breaking point, and the embittering reticence of some European nations to make good their promises of aid and armaments, hope channels its perennial resistance: children are born deep within besieged cities and farmers go on working the fields made lethal by unexploded shells. Kurkov braids his personal story with those of other displaced Ukrainians and the communities that have gone to extraordinary lengths to care for them.

Showing an irrepressible spirit, they 'wait for the moment when it will be safe to return,' he writes, 'just as I am waiting.'

The cult classic that can still change your life Let the dice decide! This is the philosophy that changes the life of bored psychiatrist Luke Rhinehart and in some ways changes the world as well. Because once you hand over your life to the dice, anything can happen. Entertaining, humorous, scary, shocking, subversive, The Dice Man is one of the cult bestsellers of our time."

A spoof encyclopedia of contemporary accepted wisdom and commonplaces, the Dictionary of Received Ideas sees Flaubert at his witty and satirical best. Perhaps intended as a companion to his final, unfinished novel Bouvard and Pecuchet, this compilation was the result of a lifetime of collecting the absurd and the cliched with darkly humorous explanations.

A playful look at nineteenth-century values and talking points, this dictionary will provide enduring entertainment and prove relevant even today.