PENGUIN RANDOM HOUSE UK – serie

Published anonymously in 1776, the year of the American Declaration of Independence, Paine's Common Sense became an immediate best-seller, with fifty-six editions printed in that year alone. It was this pamphlet, more than any other factor, which helped to spark off the movement that established the independence of the United States. From his experience of revolutionary politics, Paine drew those principles of fundamental human rights which, he felt, must stand no matter what excesses are committed to obtain them, and which he later formulated in his Rights of Man.

Immortalized in these famous stories, G.K. Chesterton's endearing amateur sleuth has entertained countless generations of readers. For, as his admirers know, Father Brown's cherubic face and unworldly simplicity, his glasses and his huge umbrella, disguise a quite uncanny understanding of the criminal mind at work.

Written by a Greek traveller in the second century ad for a principally Roman audience, Pausanias' Guide to Greece is a comprehensive, extraordinarily literate and well-informed guidebook for tourists of the age. Concentrating on buildings, tombs and statues, it also describes in detail the myths, religious beliefs and historical background behind the monuments considered. In doing so, it preserves Greek legends, quotes classical literature and poetry that would otherwise have been lost, and offers a fascinating depiction of the glory of classical Greece immediately before its third-century decline. This, the second of two volumes, explores Southern Greece including Sparta, Arkadia, Bassae and the games at Olympia. An inspiration to travellers and writers across the ages, including Byron and Shelley, it remains one of the most influential of all travel books.

It has been known by many different names to many different people: Knob, dick, schmuck, tool, percy, John Thomas, the bald headed mouse. It inspires lust, fear, awe and laughter. And yet, it is an object of shame and when engorged, indecency. It can be a pound of flesh or an ounce of wrinkles. It can be used to express both love and hate. It can create life. It can condemn us to death. And it can do wees as well. How can one little flap of sponge and sinew be all these things? You will be surprised how little you know about the skin chimney, because although men may constantly brag and exaggerate about their little chap, they rarely talk about their feelings for it. At last, Richard Herring, reveals the truth about man and his manhood in the 21st Century.

Spoof letter writing has a long history from Lazlo Toth to Henry Root but nothing can prepare you for the uniquely surreal and endearing world of Ted L Nancy. A kind of Trigger Happy correspondence, his innocent requests, queries, complaints, demands and suggestions to hotels, airlines, multi-national corporations, local government and department stores are so absurd it is amazing they fool anyone - but often the deadpan responses are even more hilarious. Ted wants to know if he can graft his big toe onto his nose, why his wife left him while he was in a coma for another man in a coma, and if he can consummate his marriage in the administrative office of the chapel. He writes to hotels telling them he eats his mattress. He writes to casinos to ask if his band the 'Fat Beatles' can perform and if he can stay in their hotel dressed as a bladder. Utterly addictive and wet-yourself-in-a-public-place funny: Dear Business Permits Dept: I want to apply for a business permit in your fine city... I operate the SOUP & SLEEP RESTAURANTS. You can either order soup or sleep. A hostess will greet you and you would say, "I'd like to sleep." She will lead you to a table where you can catch a few winks. Dear Helena Ocean & Dog Licensing Dept: I will stage the play "MARK TWAIN WITH TOURETTE'S SYNDROME."... Let me know what arrangements I need to make to store my anchovy tank at your seaport. Thank you. I await large crowds.

In February 2005, Edwyn Collins suffered two devastating brain haemorrhages. He should have died. Doctors advised that if he did survive, there would be little of him left. If that wasn't enough, he went on to contract MRSA as a result of an operation to his skull and spent six months in hospital. Initially, Edwyn couldn't speak, read, write, walk, sit up or feed himself. He had lost all movement in his right side and was suffering from aphasia - an inability to use or understand language. When he initially recovered consciousness the only words he could say were 'Grace', 'Maxwell', 'yes' and 'no'.But with the help of his partner Grace and their son Will, Edwyn fought back. Slowly, and with monumental effort, he began to teach his brain to read and speak all over again - with some areas of his mind it was if he had been a slate wiped utterly clean. Through a long and arduous road of therapy he began to re-inhabit his body until he could walk again. Grace's story is an intimate and inspiring account of what you do to survive when your husband is all but taken away without warning by a stroke.

In the parched soil of Provence, a fifth gospel has been discovered, Mary Magdalene's account of Jesus' teaching and her relationship with him. It is a book of revelation, for it unveils a new Christianity, one which embraces the female equally with the male and acknowledges and celebrates women's spirituality. A passionate story of love and search, of separation and rebirth, The Secret Gospel imagines an alternative history for the much maligned Mary Magdalene, where she runs away from her family but returns to be captivated, both emotionally and theologically, by Jesus. The Secret Gospel of Mary Magdalene is a brilliant and moving vision of Christianity that is also startlingly modern in its conclusions.

THIS BOOK REVEALS THE CONSPIRACY BY LEONARDO, NEWTON, GOETHE AND OTHER MEMBERS OF THE INITIATE TRADITION TO INFLUENCE THE COURSE OF HISTORY BY MAGIC. From the dawn of history and perhaps beyond a small group of magi working within a specific magical tradition have believed they have been influencing the course of history, guiding mankind towards higher levels of consciousness. Theirs is a reincarnationist philosophy and they believe that, as initiates of the highest order, they return in local groups at key moments to conspire to change the course of events. Whether or not their beliefs are right, whether or not their magical practices work in the way they believe, this book will prove that certain remarkable individuals, many of them famous in other areas, have undoubtedly held these beliefs. Bestsellers such as HOLY BLOOD, HOLY GRAIL and THE TOMB OF GOD have been written by amateur historians trying to penetrate the veil of secrecy that surrounds this conspiracy; here for the first time an initiate of the order reveals the truth.

Paul Theroux invites us to join him on one of his most exotic and tantalizing adventures exploring the coasts and blue lagoons of the Pacific Islands, and taking up residence to discover the secrets of these isles.Theroux is a mesmerizing narrator – brilliant, witty, keenly perceptive as he floats through Gauguin landscapes, sails in the wake of Captain Cook and recalls the bewitching tales of Jack London and Robert Louis Stevenson. Alone in his kayak, paddling to seldom visited shores, he glides through time and space, discovering a world of islands, their remarkable people, and in turn, happiness.‘A sharp, fascinating and highly entertaining book … Theroux at his best’ Daily Telegraph.

Spiderweb is the twelfth novel by Booker Prize winning author Penelope Lively.Stella Brentwood has led an exotic life for a woman of her time. Her frivolous best friend at Oxford, Nadine, knew early what she wanted: marriage and children. Stella, too, has had her share of passion, but her work as an anthropologist - always the outsider, the observer, was her priority.Now she has decided to root herself in Somerset landscape. But she finds that village society in England us far more chaotic, more unpredictable, and even more cruel, than she has known before. And that she cannot - or will not - conform to its rules.'She is a writer of great subtlety and understanding, and this is her best novel since Moon Tiger, which won the Booker Prize in 1987' The Scotsman'Evokes an escalating atmosphere of menace . . . Lively at her deceptively easy-to-read best' Daily Mail

The Cistercian Order was born in Burgundy at the start of the twelfth century as a movement of radical renewal - an Order that survives to this day with the greater part of its written heritage preserved. This volume brings together a selection of its finest works, which speak powerfully across the centuries to modern readers. Writings by St Bernard of Clairvaux (c. 1090-1153) - including his letters, The Life of Malachy the Irishman, sermons on the Song of Songs and the sharply satirical Apologia for Abbot William - reveal him to be a highly individual and influential writer of the Middle Ages. Also included here are a charming description of Clairvaux, biographies of abbots and a series of exemplary stories, all drawing on the Scriptures to express intensely personal forms of monastic theology.

His elegantly-crafted tale of sibling rivalry, Honoré de Balzac's The Black Sheep is translated from the French with an introduction by Donald Adamson in Penguin Classics.Philippe and Joseph Bridau are two extremely different brothers. The elder, Philippe, is a superficially heroic soldier and adored by their mother Agathe. He is nonetheless a bitter figure, secretly gambling away her savings after a brief but glorious career as Napoleon's aide-de-camp at the battle of Montereau. His younger brother Joseph, meanwhile, is fundamentally virtuous - but their mother is blinded to his kindness by her disapproval of his life as an artist. Foolish and prejudiced, Agathe lives on unaware that she is being cynically manipulated by her own favourite child - but will she ever discover which of her sons is truly the black sheep of the family? A dazzling depiction of the power of money and the cruelty of life in nineteenth-century France, The Black Sheep compellingly explores is a compelling exploration of the nature of deceit.Donald Adamson's translation captures the radical modernity of Balzac's style, while his introduction places The Black Sheep in its context as one of the great novels of Balzac's renowned Comédie humaine.Honoré De Balzac (1799-1850) failed at being a lawyer, publisher, printer, businessman, critic and politician before, at the age of thirty, turning his hand to writing. His life's work, La Comédie humaine, is a series of ninety novels and short stories which offer a magnificent panorama of nineteenth-century life after the French Revolution. Balzac was an influence on innumerable writers who followed him, including Marcel Proust, Émile Zola, Charles Dickens, and Edgar Allan Poe.If you enjoyed The Black Sheep, you might like Balzac's Eugénie Grandet, also available in Penguin Classics.

Alphonse Daudet's novels established him as the most successful writer in France by the end of the XIX century; but it was the LETTERS, first published in book form in 1869, which remained his favourite creation and has proved his most lasting. Throughout his working life in Paris Daudet never lost his almost umbilical attachment to Provence. These tales of that region are characterised by a tenderness and delicacy, a wistfulness and wry humour, which give moving substance to his claim that to invent, for him, was to remember.

Dining on Stones is Iain Sinclair's sharp, edgy mystery of London and its environsAndrew Norton, poet, visionary and hack, is handed a mysterious package that sees him quit London and head out along the A13 on an as yet undefined quest. Holing up in a roadside hotel, unable to make sense of his search, he is haunted by ghosts: of the dead and the not-so dead; demanding wives and ex-wives; East End gangsters; even competing versions of himself. Shifting from Hackney to Hastings and all places in-between, while dissecting a man's fractured psyche piece by piece, Dining on Stones is a puzzle and a quest - for both writer and reader.'Exhilarating, wonderfully funny, greatly unsettling - Sinclair on top form' Daily Telegraph'Prose of almost incantatory power, cut with Chandleresque pithiness' Sunday Times'Spectacular: the work of a man with the power to see things as they are, and magnify that vision with a clarity that is at once hallucinatory and forensic' Independent on SundayIain Sinclair is the author of Downriver (winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the Encore Award); Landor's Tower; White Chappell, Scarlet Tracings; Lights Out for the Territory; Lud Heat; Rodinsky's Room (with Rachel Lichtenstein); Radon Daughters; London Orbital, Dining on Stones, Hackney, that Rose-Red Empire and Ghost Milk. He is also the editor of London: City of Disappearances.

The Sequence of event of the Second World War was altered forever at the very moment the task force of ultra-modern stealth warships emerged from a rip in the time-space continuum. Hurled back from 2021 to 1942 after a quantum experiment goes horribly wrong, no one could have predicted the impact of this futuristic fighting force. Chaos ensues...In the third and final gripping instalment of the Axis of Time trilogy, the revised history of the War is more alarming than ever. Hitler and the Japanese race towards atomic capability; Stalin plots to tear down the future and rebuild it in his own image; and the allies begin their Great Crusade, with the weapons of know-how of the twenty-first century.The final battle of the war is about to begin...

The Life and Passion of William of Norwich gives a remarkable insight into life in a medieval cathedral city, brilliantly capturing the everyday concerns of ordinary people and focussing on the miraculous cures carried out at a shrine. But this was no ordinary shrine; fervent worshippers gathered around the burial-place where they believed that a boy was buried, a boy murdered by the Jews of Norwich. A chilling, highly significant document, The Life and Passion of William of Norwich is, as far as we know, the earliest version of what was to become the 'blood libel' which has haunted Europe ever since. Miri Rubin both superbly translates the book and in her introduction interprets the sequence of events that led to the monk Thomas of Monmouth's appalling narrative. The consequences of his fantasies have been incalculable.

'The seed of madness exists in all of us and with no warning may attack, overpower, crush and bury us ... 'Policarpo Quaresma - fastidious civil servant, dedicated patriot, self-styled visionary - is a defender of all things Brazilian, full of schemes to improve his beloved homeland. Yet somehow each of his ventures, whether it is petitioning for Brazil's national language to be changed, buying a farm to prove the richness and fertility of the land, or offering support to government forces as they suppress a military revolt - results in ridicule and disaster. Quixotic and hapless, Quaresma's dreams will eventually be his undoing. Funny, despairing, moving and absurd, Lima Barreto's masterpiece shows a man and a country caught in the violent clash between illusion and reality, hope and decline, sanity and madness.

Doona was a jewel of a planet -- a pastoral paradise with rivers, lakes, mountains and seas. The Hrrubans needed it to revitalise their decadent race, to give it back something of the old pioneering spirit. The Terrans needed it as an overspill from the hysterical crowding of Earth, a place to breathe and move without restrictions.So they both sent a colonising party -- and they both began to think of Doona as Home. And then one day the smooth-skinned, two-legged mammal known as Man came face to face with the furry, four-pawed mammal known as Hrruban...

From the point of view of 2050, you're historyTheological warfare. Elvis on an epic time-travel journey - the Presliad. Buddhavision - a network bigger than God (and more powerful, too). Nasty nuclear leftovers. Naughty sex habits. Dalai Dan (the 153rd reincarnation of the Lama of that ilk) and Barry, the talkative Time Sprout. Even with all this excitement, you wouldn't think a backwater planet like Earth makes much of a splash in the galatic pond.But the soap opera called The Earthers is making big video bucks in the intergalactic ratings race. And alien TV execs know exactly what the old earth drama needs to make the off-world audience sit up and stare: a spectacular Armageddon-type finale. With a cast of millions - including you! DON'T TOUCH THAT DIAL - IT'S GONNA BE A HELLUVA SHOW!

Even in the heat of battle, Geoff Fulton, a professional soldier, would always carry with him the memory of the night he was on leave, when his timely intervention rescued fourteen-year-old Lizzie from the oldest of perils for a young girl, and thereby began to change her life. Lizzie came from a desperately poor home, ruled by a slatternly stepmother only too ready to profit from setting the girl along the same sordid road as her elder sister had been made to take.The year was 1937 and the place a rural enclave of County Durham, where Geoff had been born and raised in the old farmhouse that remained the home of his parents, even though most of its land had been sold off to neighbouring Low Tarn Hall. There his father still worked as estate manager for the demanding Ernest Bradford-Brown, self-made owner of this and many another property. Anxious about his increasingly handicapped mother and seeing in Lizzie a girl of spirit, Geoff concluded that she might, with care and training, solve his problem and benefit herself. So, after a quick visit to outface the protesting Mrs Gillespie, he was soon back home with his willing protegée.Then, in 1943, when Geoff returned wounded from the desert war, it was to find a Lizzie he hardly recognised - mature and highly attractive. For her part, she soon came to realise that he too had changed. Embittered by his experiences at war and rejected by Ernest Bradford-Brown's daughter Janis after a lengthy relationship long opposed by her irascible father, to Lizzie he now showed a ruthless streak that was at considerable odds with the caring man who had, all those years ago, rescued her from poverty and deprivation.

An enthralling and swashbuckling naval adventure from bestselling author James Nelson you won't be able to put down. Perfect for fans of Patrick O'Brian and C.S. Forester. "First-rate action writing" - Publishers Weekly"Authenticity runs throughout the books, carrying total conviction" - Patrick O'Brian"Fast paced and the plot has lots of twists..." - ***** Reader review"Going to buy all his nautical books in time!! Love these!" - ***** Reader review****************************************IN THE FACE OF BETRAYAL, HE MUST UNITE HIS MEN TO FIGHT AGAINST TYRANNY...1776: A decade of simmering tensions is finally coming to the boil. Determined to cast off the chains of British tyranny, the rebel government of Philadelphia has authorised the creation of the United States Navy - a brazen act of American aggression against the greatest maritime power in the world.Captain Isaac Biddlecomb sets sail in the Charlemagne on a daring mission to raid the British store of arms on New Providence Island in the Bahamas. Yet his greatest enemy is an undisciplined crew on the brink of mutiny.Beset by betrayal and treachery, Biddlecomb must find a way of uniting his men against a cruel and common foe... as the British Navy prepares to sink the Charlemagne under the merciless blasts of its guns.The Continental Risque is the third novel in James Nelson's Revolution at Sea series. Biddlecomb's story continues in Lords of the Ocean. Have you read By Force of Arms and The Maddest Idea, his first two adventures?

This emotional and uplifting saga full of twists and turns by the Sunday Times bestselling author Ruth Hamilton is perfect for fans of Catherine Cookson, Dilly Court and Josephine Cox. "I believe that Ruth Hamilton is very much the successor to Catherine Cookson. Her books are plot driven, they just rip along; laughs, weeps, love, they've got the lot, and they're quality writing as well" -- SARAH BROADHURST, RADIO FOUR"Another first class read" -- ***** Reader review"Absolutely loved this book. Ruth Hamilton is possibly my favourite author..." -- ***** Reader review"Another great read, didn't want it to end. [I] always feel bereft when I've finished one of Ruth's books" -- ***** Reader review"A very good read. I couldn't put this book down and go to bed. Had to read it all in one go" -- ***** Reader review***********************************************************ONE WOMAN'S FIGHT FOR FREEDOM AND LOVE...Born into the First World War, Dorothy has a bleak childhood under the iron fist of an implacable mother and the silent compliance of a browbeaten father.Her escape is achieved just before the disastrous advent of Hitler, and there is further tragedy to come.Follow her through childhood and adolescence, then on into her twenties. Can she win her own battle for freedom, for love and for her own place in the world?

A boy has been crucified in Galway city. People are shocked; the broadsheets debate how the brutal death reflects the state of the nation; the Irish Church is scandalized. No further action is taken.Then the sister of the murdered boy is burned alive and PI Jack Taylor decides to take matters into his own hands.Taylor's investigations take him to old city haunts where he encounters ghosts - living and dead. But what he eventually finds surpasses even his darkest imaginings

On 17 April 1986 John McCarthy was kidnapped in Beirut. For the next five years he was cut off from everything and everybody he knew and loved, from family, friends, and, perhaps above all, from Jill Morrell, the girl he was going to marry.For five years, John McCarthy had to endure the deprivation - both physical and psychological - of captivity; the filth and squalor of the cells in which he was kept; the agony of isolation and repeated self-examination; and the pain of ignorance, of not knowing if those he loved even realized he was alive.For Jill Morrell, the five years of John's captivity were a different kind of hell: the initial shock and disbelief; the gradual acceptance that John had been taken and that her life had changed irrevocably, that all their plans had been shattered.But Jill refused to give up hope. For five years she and a group of friends worked ceaselessly on behalf of John and all British hostages in the Middle East, until the extraordinary day in August 1991 when John McCarthy stepped down from an aeroplane at RAF Lyneham. A day when they could begin again.This is their story, a remarkable account of courage, endurance, hope and love.

Originally published in weekly instalments, Nine Suitcases is the Hungarian writer Béla Zsolt's harrowing memoir of his experiences in the ghetto of Nagyvarad and as a forced labourer in the Ukraine. Written with exceptional freshness and a devastating blend of angry despair and cool detachment, Zsolt - one of the earliest writers on the Holocaust - provides not only a rare insight into Hungarian fascism, but a shocking exposure of the cruelty, indifference, selfishness, cowardice and betrayal of which human beings - the victims no less than the perpetrators - are capable in extreme circumstances. Interspersed with moments of grotesque farce, grim irony and occasional memories of human kindness, Zsolt's nightmarish but meticulously realistic chronicle of smaller and larger crimes against humanity is as riveting as it is horrifying.

Sister Stanislaus Kennedy, or Sister Stan as she is affectionately known, has been described as a visionary and social innovator. Now, in The Road Home she looks back on her life - from her early years growing up on the family farm in the Dingle Peninsula, Co. Kerry, to the day when, at the age of eighteen, she made the life-changing decision to become a nun. Inspired by the work of Mother Mary Aikenhead, who founded the Sisters of Charity in 1815, Stan went on to dedicate her life to the service of the poor and to fighting for a fairer, more equal society.Here, as she reflects on the many challenges she has met, both personal and political, she recalls how she was also inspired by her mentor, Bishop Peter Birch and how, under his guidance she helped to set up an innovative model of community care in Kilkenny - a model that was to become a blueprint for the rest of Ireland.Over the years Stan also developed into a formidable campaigner and worked tirelessly - sometimes against severe opposition - to establish other immensely influential human rights and social justice agencies, includingFocus Ireland, now the biggest national voluntary organisation for the homeless, Young Social Innovators, a national social justice education programme for young people, and The Immigrant Council of Ireland (ICI), which supports the rights of migrants and their families and is a catalyst for public debate. In 2000, Stan also founded The Sanctuary - a meditation and spirituality centre in Dublin where, amidst the bustle of city life, people can experience peace, quiet, and the space to explore and develop their inner world.Inspiring and thought-provoking, this fascinating memoir provides a unique insight into the life and work of one of the most influential social activists of our day, the many political battles she has fought and won, and how, with dogged determination and courage, she has shaped the lives and the fortunes of thousands of people. Quite simply, The Road Home is the remarkable story of a remarkable woman.

Although he is most famous for The Faerie Queene, this volume demonstrates that for these poems alone Spenser should still be ranked as one of England's foremost poets.Spenser's shorter poems reveal his generic and stylistic versatility, his remarkable linguistic skill and his mastery of complex metrical forms.The range of this volume allows him to emerge fully in the varied and conflicting personae he adopted, as satirist and eulogist, elegist and lover, polemicist and prophet.The volume includes The Shepeardes Calender, Complaints, and A Theatre for Wordlings.