Literature

This collection brings together six of Turgenev's best-known `long' short stories, in which he turns his skills of psychological observation and black comedy to subjects as diverse as the tyranny of serfdom, love, and revenge on the Russian steppes. These stories all display the elegance and clarity of Turgenev's finest writing.

The seventh book in Dorothy L Sayers' classic Lord Peter Wimsey series, introduced by writer and crime reviewer Barry Forshaw - a must-read for fans of Agatha Christie's Poirot and Margery Allingham's Campion Mysteries. 'D. L. Sayers is one of the best detective story writers' Daily TelegraphLord Peter Wimsey bent down over General Fentiman and drew the Morning Post gently away from the gnarled old hands. Then, with a quick jerk, he lifted the quiet figure. It came up all of a piece, stiff as a wooden doll . . . But how did the general die? Who was the mysterious Mr X who fled when he was wanted for questioning? And which of the general's heirs, both members of the Bellona Club, is lying?'She brought to the detective novel originality, intelligence, energy and wit.' P.

My father, thunderstruck, was demanding to know: "But when? This is madness! Impossible." When ar fasf he replaces the receiver in a grand Shakespearean manner - my father has it in the blood - he broke the news to us: Dictatorship. My mother cried out and collapsed in a heap on the sofa. Calliope the maid, as part of her duties, always manages to sense the right moment for a restorative coffee, and set off for the kitchen. My father repeated: "Dictatorship, do you hear!" I stared at him, shaking off sleep. This is how Myrsini Panayotou, an Athenian girl about to start university, learns of the coup d'etat that brought to power the infamous dictatorship of the "Colonels" in her country in the early hours of Friday, 21st April 1967. The child of a well-to-do family, Myrsini enthusiastically joins the underground resistance, making common cause with a varied cast of characters from backgrounds very different from her own. After an early failed love affair, she gets engaged to George, a political prisoner, only to find her human instincts increasingly difficult to reconcile with her idealistic philosophy once he is released. The story moves towards its climax as Myrsini becomes involved in the bloody events of 17th November 1973, when tanks were used to evict students from the Athens Polytechnic. At the same time the fortunes of Myrsini's family form a backdrop at once touching and bizarre to an impressionable girl's unflinching search for a true identity, both for herself and for her country. "Fool's Gold" is a sparkling novel by a talented writer, one of the foremost of a generation which grew up in the shadow of the events Maro Douka describes.

High in the pine forests of the Spanish Sierra, a guerrilla band prepares to blow up a vital bridge. Robert Jordan, a young American volunteer, has been sent to handle the dynamiting. There, in the mountains, he finds the dangers and the intense comradeship of war. And there he discovers Maria, a young woman who has escaped from Franco's rebels.

Representing four prominent American women writers who flourished in the period following the Civil War, this collection includes "Life in the Iron Mills" by Rebecca Harding Davis, "The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, "The Country of the Pointed Firs" by Sarah Orne Jewett, and "Souls Belated" by Edith Wharton. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

A funny, poignant snapshot of young adulthood from the much-loved author of The Catcher in the RyeFranny Glass and Lane Coutell are the perfect campus couple: beautiful, intelligent, their whole lives ahead of them. But one weekend when Franny is visiting, amid the excitement of the big Yale game, something goes wrong and tensions begin to surface. Are they really such a perfect match after all?Franny's older brother is Zooey.

They come from a sophisticated yet highly eccentric family: all seven Glass siblings are former child stars, all strange and enchanting and damaged in their own way. And when Franny's anxiety spirals into a full-blown breakdown, Zooey is the only one who might be able to save her. A novel in two intertwining stories, Franny and Zooey brilliantly captures the emotional strains and traumas of entering adulthood.

It is a gleaming example of the wit, precision and poignancy that have made J.D. Salinger one of the most beloved American novelists of the twentieth century.

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - A NEW YORK TIMES 10 BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR - Winner of the John Gardner Fiction Award - A National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist - A Los Angeles Times Book Prize Finalist

Freedom, by New York Times-bestselling author Jonathan Franzen, the author of Crossroads, is a masterly novel of contemporary love and marriage, a brilliant charting of the temptations and burdens of liberty: the thrills of teenage lust, the shaken compromises of middle age, the wages of suburban sprawl, and the heavy weight of empire.

Patty and Walter Berglund were the pioneers of old St. Paul--the gentrifiers, the hands-on parents, the avant garde of the Whole Foods generation. But now, in the new millennium, they have become a mystery. Why has their teenage son moved in with the aggressively Republican family next door? Why has Walter, once an environmental lawyer, taken a job working with Big Coal? Most startling of all, why has Patty, the perfect neighbor, turned into the local Fury?

Patty and Walter Berglund are indelible characters, and their mistakes and joys, as they struggle to learn how to live in an ever more confusing world, have become touchstones of contemporary American reality.

James Patterson's BookShots. Short, fast-paced, high-impact entertainment.French detective Luc Moncrief joined the NYPD for a fresh start - but someone wants to make his first big case his last.Welcome to New York.

Alexander the Great died at the age of thirty-three, leaving behind an empire that stretched from Greece and Egypt to India. After Alexander's death in 323 B.C. his only direct heirs were two unborn sons and a simpleton half-brother. Every long-simmering faction exploded into the vacuum of power. Wives, distant relatives and generals all vied for the loyalty of the increasingly undisciplined Macedonian army. Most failed and were killed in the attempt. For no one possessed the leadership to keep the great empire from crumbling. But Alexander's legend endured to spread into worlds he had seen only in dreams.