Sophia Willoughby of Blandamer House, upstanding Victorian matriarch, has packed her errant husband off to Paris with his mistress Minna. But when tragedy throws her life off balance Sophia goes to seek him out, and instead finds herself intensely attracted to the charismatic, bohemian Minna, who leads her on a wild, chaotic adventure through a city in the throes of revolution.

The Wordsworth Classics' Shakespeare Series presents a newly-edited sequence of William Shakespeare's works. The textual editing takes account of recent scholarship while giving the material a careful reappraisal. Much Ado About Nothing has long been celebrated as one of Shakespeare's most popular comedies. The central relationship, between Benedick and Beatrice, is wittily combative until...

In Invisible Cities Marco Polo conjures up cities of magical times for his host, the Chinese ruler Kublai Khan, but gradually it becomes clear that he is actually describing one city: Venice. As Gore Vidal wrote 'Of all tasks, describing the contents of a book is the most difficult and in the case of a marvellous invention like Invisible Cities, perfectly irrelevant.'

The Second World War. Poland. Our narrator has no intention of being a hero. He plans to survive this war, whatever it takes. Meticulously he recounts his experiences: the slow unravelling of national events as well as uncomfortable personal encounters on the street, in the café, at the office, in his love affairs. He is intimate but reserved; conversational but careful; reflective but...

We are capable of savage acts of violence but also spectacular feats of kindness: is one side of our nature destined to win out over the other? Every act of human behaviour has multiple layers of causation, spiralling back seconds, minutes, hours, days, months, years, even centuries, right back to the dawn of time and the origins of our species. In the epic sweep of history, how does our...

The chance to join 'the Revival of the Great Lucia Berlin' (New York Times) From the author of A Manual for Cleaning Women. Ranging from Texas, to Chile, to New Mexico and New York, in Evening in Paradise Berlin writes about the good, the bad and everything in between: struggling young mothers, husbands who pack their bags and leave in the middle of the night, wives looking back at their...

Publishing in English for the very first time, Japan's beloved coming-of-age classic on what really matters in life The streets of Tokyo swarm below fifteen year-old Copper as he gazes out into the city of his childhood. Struck by the thought of the infinite people whose lives play out alongside his own, he begins to wonder, how do you live? Considering life's biggest questions for the first...

Ces personnages vont vous jouer l'histoire d'Antigone. Antigone, c'est la petite maigre qui est assise la-bas, et qui ne dit rien. Elle regarde droit devant elle. Elle pense. Elle pense qu'elle va etre Antigone tout a l'heure, qu'elle va surgir soudain de la maigre jeune fille noiraude et renfermée que personne ne prenait au sérieux dans la famille et se dresser seule en face du monde, seule en...

'This book is going to fundamentally change some of the most important conversations in your life-the ones you have with yourself.' - Adam Grant, bestselling author of Give and Take Malcolm Gladwell, Susan Cain, Adam Grant, and Daniel H. Pink's Next Big Idea Club Winter 2021 Winning Selection One of the best new books of 2021 - BBC Science Focus Magazine, The...

“Road Seeking” is one of a series of novels relating how the Chinese entrepreneurs in Poland seek roads to their dreams, and start business in Poland. This book is a narration offered to Xiao Yao by her Boss Dong Er, head of GD business and service company, who unfolds his turbulent life story starting from a very difficult childhood and stretching to the time spent in Poland to study. After...

Baldwin's ground-breaking second novel, which established him as one of the great American writers of his time 'Audacious... remarkable... elegant and courageous' Caryl Phillips David, a young American in 1950s Paris, is waiting for his fiancée to return from vacation in Spain. But when he meets Giovanni, a handsome Italian barman, the two men are drawn into an...

Shimamura is tired of the bustling city. He takes the train through the snow to the mountains of the west coast of Japan, to meet with a geisha he believes he loves. Beautiful and innocent, Komako is tightly bound by the rules of a rural geisha, and lives a life of servitude and seclusion that is alien to Shimamura, and their love offers no freedom to either of them. Snow Country is both...

With carefully adapted text , new illustrations , language practise activities and additional online resources , the Penguin Readers series introduces language learners to bestselling authors and compelling content . Titles include popular classics , exciting contemporary fiction , and thought-provoking non-fiction .Wuthering Heights, a Level...

With an Introduction, explanatory notes, and annotated bibliography by Nicholas Seager. This collection brings together Jane Austen’s earliest experiments in the art of fiction and novels that she left incomplete at the time of her premature death in 1817. In Sanditon, Austen exercises her acute powers of social observation in the setting of a newly fashionable seaside resort. This edition...

'It was inevitable: the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love.' Fifty-one years have passed since Fermina rebuffed Florentino and married Juvenal Urbino instead. Swearing his love to her, he lives for the day when he can court her again. When Fermina's husband is killed, Florentino seizes his chance to declare his enduring love. But can young love find...

Powieść ta, nazwana niemiecką Anną Kareniną, opowiada dzieje młodej kobiety, która w imię szczerości uczuć ośmieliła się zbuntować przeciwko pruskiej, junkiersko-ziemiańskiej moralności, ponosząc za to okrutną karę. Ta niezbyt u nas znana książka, zajmuje ważne miejsce w literaturze niemieckiej, czego dowodem jest tytuł ostatniej, głośnej powieści Günthera Grassa - Szeroka dziedzina, będący...

The bestselling book that inspired the cult classic film, Girl, Interrupted, starring Winona Ryder and Angelina Jolie. ‘Not since Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar has a personal account of life in a mental hospital achieved as much popularity and acclaim’ TIME ‘Intelligent and painful’ Guardian ‘Poignant, astonishing memoir’ New York Times In 1967, after a session with a psychiatrist she’d never...

Tomie Kawakami is a femme fatale with long black hair and a beauty mark just under her left eye. She can seduce nearly any man, and drive them to murder as well, even though the victim is often Tomie herself. While one lover seeks to keep her for himself, another grows terrified of the immortal succubus. But soon they realize that no matter how many times they kill her, the world will never...

Prince Myshkin returns to Russia from an asylum in Switzerland. As he becomes embroiled in the frantic amatory and financial intrigues which centre around a cast of brilliantly realised characters and which ultimately lead to tragedy, he emerges as a unique combination of the Christian ideal of perfection and Dostoevsky's own views, afflictions and manners. His serene selflessness is...

Wielka powieść o rodzinie - "The Sound and the Fury" "The Sound and the Fury" to monumentalna powieść napisana przez Williama Faulknera, laureata Nagrody Nobla w dziedzinie literatury. Od momentu swojej publikacji w 1929 roku, książka ta uważana jest za jedno z najważniejszych dzieł XX wieku. Faulkner w niezwykle intensywny sposób przedstawia rozpad rodziny Compson, ukazując złożone i...