CAN a machine really do the job of a writer? HOW would you take exact revenge on a cruel tabloid journalist? WHY does no one emerge from the house of an eccentric landlady? THIRTEEN UNEXPECTED TALES WITH SHOCKING AND UNSETTLING TWISTS AT EVERY TURN.

Chosen 16 times as a 'Book of the Year' - the top non-fiction pick of 2012'The best work of modern history I have ever read' A. N. Wilson, Financial TimesAt the end of the Second World War, the Soviet Union unexpectedly found itself in control of a huge swathe of territory in Eastern Europe. Stalin and his secret police set out to convert a dozen radically different countries to a completely...

From the bestselling author of The Black Swan, a bold book that challenges many of our long-held beliefs about risk and reward, politics and religion, finance and personal responsibility Why should we never listen to people who explain rather than do? Why do companies go bust? How is it that we have more slaves today than in Roman times? Why does imposing democracy on other countries never...

Twenty-five years after her tragic death, James Patterson tells the heartbreaking true story of Princess Diana's life as a mother and a global icon. At the age of thirteen, she became Lady Diana Spencer. At twenty, Princess of Wales. At twenty-one, she earned her most important title: Mother. As she fell in love, first with Prince Charles and then with her sons, William and Harry, the world...

Book 3 in the The Summer I Turned Pretty series, now major TV show on Amazon Prime! The heart-wrenching final part in the bestselling The Summer I Turned Pretty Series, perfect for fans of To All The Boys I've Loved Before and The Kissing Booth! One girl. Two boys. The biggest decision of her life . . . Just when Isabel thinks she had everything mapped out, life proves that when it comes to...

Beautifully written yet highly controversial, An Image of Africa asserts Achebe's belief in Joseph Conrad as a 'bloody racist' and his conviction that Conrad's novel Heart of Darkness only serves to perpetuate damaging stereotypes of black people, while The Trouble with Nigeria is a searing outpouring of Achebe's frustrations with his country.

'This was the first Jack Reacher novel and with its lean, spare prose it has one of the most intriguing heroes of our times and displays a gift for explosive drama.' Daily Express Jack Reacher jumps off a bus and walks fourteen miles down a country road into Margrave, Georgia. An arbitrary decision he's about to regret. Reacher is the only stranger in town on the day they have had their...

For many years, the great poet Von Humboldt Fleisher and Charlie Citrine, a young man inflamed with a love for literature, were the best of friends. At the time of his death, however, Humboldt is a failure, and Charlie's life has reached a low point: his career is at a standstill, and he's enmeshed in an acrimonious divorce, infatuated with a highly unsuitable young woman and involved with a...

Meet the forensic pathologist, Dr Richard Shepherd. He solves the mysteries of unexplained or sudden death. He has performed over 23,000 autopsies, including some of the most high-profile cases of recent times; the Hungerford Massacre, the Princess Diana inquiry, and 9/11. He has faced serial killers, natural disaster, 'perfect murders' and freak accidents. His evidence has put killers...

Kikuji has been invited to a tea ceremony by a mistress of his dead father. He is shocked to find there the mistress's rival and successor, Mrs. Ota, and that the ceremony has been awkwardly arranged for him to meet his potential future bride. But he is most shocked to be drawn into a relationship with Mrs. Ota - a relationship that will bring only suffering and destruction to all of them....

Perhaps the biggest question Stephen Hawking tried to answer in his extraordinary life was how the universe could have created conditions so perfectly hospitable to life. In order to solve this mystery, Hawking studied the big bang origin of the universe, but his early work ran into a crisis when the math predicted many big bangs producing a multiverse - countless different universes, most...

An essential guide to navigating our data-driven world, from one of the most influential psychologists of the twenty-first century Is more data always better? Do algorithms really make better decisions than humans? Can we stay in control in an increasingly automated world? Drawing on examples from all spheres of life - media literacy, online dating, self-driving cars, the justice system,...

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...

[Leon] has a wonderful feeling for the social complexities of Venice, where corruption is as old and deep and treacherous as the canals ... Like all the best detective fiction, Doctored Evidence not only solves a mystery, but also anatomises the setting in which the crime occurred' Daily Mail When a wealthy Venetian woman is found brutally murdered, the prime suspect is her Romanian maid,...

The epic sequel to Chuck Wendig's apocalyptic literary masterpiece WANDERERS. HOW DO YOU SURVIVE THE END OF THE WORLD? Five years ago, a group of ordinary Americans fell under the grip of a strange new malady that caused them to sleepwalk across the country. They were followed on their quest by the shepherds: friends and family who gave up everything to protect them. Their destination,...

'Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of my tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta.' Humbert Humbert is a middle-aged, frustrated college professor. In love with his landlady's twelve-year-old daughter Lolita, he'll do anything to possess her. Unable and unwilling to stop himself, he is...

From the twice Booker-shortlisted author of The Reluctant Fundamentalist and Exit West, a story of love, loss, and rediscovery in a time of unsettling change One morning, Anders wakes to find that his skin has turned dark, his reflection a stranger to him. At first he tells only Oona, an old friend, newly a lover. Soon, reports of similar occurrences surface across the land. Some see in the...

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...

In his early twenties, poor, depressed, stranded in the Coral Sea on the HMS Rattlesnake, hopelessly in love with the young Englishwoman Henrietta Heathorn, Thomas Henry Huxley was a nobody. And yet together he and Henrietta would return to London and go on to found one of the great intellectual and scientific dynasties of their age. The Huxley family through four generations profoundly...

Under USSR rule, the subject matter and style of literary expression in Ukraine was strictly controlled and censored. But once Ukraine gained independence in 1991 its literary scene flourished, as the moving and delightful poems, essays and extracts collected here show. There are fifteen authors included in this book, both established and emerging, and in this anthology we see them grappling...