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| web penguin readers: Web John Wyndham, 1999 The island of Tanakuatua seems like heaven to the 40 people who go there in order to create a utopian society, but soon they start to die in a horrible way and it seems that something strange and deadly is out there in the jungle. |
| web penguin readers: Penguin Readers Level 4: Women Who Changed the World Ladybird, 2019-10-29 Penguin Readers is an ELT graded reader series for learners of English as a foreign language. With carefully adapted text, new illustrations and language learning exercises, the print edition also includes instructions to access supporting material online. Titles include popular classics, exciting contemporary fiction, and thought-provoking non-fiction, introducing language learners to bestselling authors and compelling content. The eight levels of Penguin Readers follow the Common European Framework of Reference for language learning (CEFR). Exercises at the back of each Reader help language learners to practise grammar, vocabulary, and key exam skills. Before, during and after-reading questions test readers' story comprehension and develop vocabulary. Visit the Penguin Readers website Exclusively with the print edition, readers can unlock online resources including a digital book, audio edition, lesson plans and answer keys. These are the stories of some of the women who changed our world. Read about the women who fought to be equal to men, and learn about the things that women have done in education, science, sport and politics. |
| web penguin readers: Penguin Readers Level 5 Stephen Bryant, 2000 Internettes historie med aktivitetshæfte forsynet med opgaveforslag |
| web penguin readers: Penguin Readers Level 2: Mulan and Other Tales of Heroes (ELT Graded Reader) Penguin Books, 2021-09-30 Penguin Readers is an ELT graded reader series. Please note that the eBook edition does NOT include access to the audio edition and digital book. Written for learners of English as a foreign language, each title includes carefully adapted text, new illustrations and language learning exercises. Titles include popular classics, exciting contemporary fiction, and thought-provoking non-fiction, introducing language learners to bestselling authors and compelling content. The eight levels of Penguin Readers follow the Common European Framework of Reference for language learning (CEFR). Exercises at the back of each Reader help language learners to practise grammar, vocabulary, and key exam skills. Before, during and after-reading questions test readers' story comprehension and develop vocabulary. Mulan and Other Tales of Heroes, a Level 2 Reader, is A1+ in the CEFR framework. Sentences contain a maximum of two clauses, introducing the future tenses will and going to, present continuous for future meaning, and comparatives and superlatives. It is well supported by illustrations, which appear on most pages. These four stories are very old and many of them are about special people or animals. Is your favourite hero in this book? Visit the Penguin Readers website Register to access online resources including tests, worksheets and answer keys. Exclusively with the print edition, readers can unlock a digital book and audio edition (not available with the eBook). |
| web penguin readers: Penguin Readers Level 2: The Call of the Wild Jack London, 2019-10-29 Penguin Readers is an ELT graded reader series for learners of English as a foreign language. With carefully adapted text, new illustrations and language learning exercises, the print edition also includes instructions to access supporting material online. Titles include popular classics, exciting contemporary fiction, and thought-provoking non-fiction, introducing language learners to bestselling authors and compelling content. The eight levels of Penguin Readers follow the Common European Framework of Reference for language learning (CEFR). Exercises at the back of each Reader help language learners to practise grammar, vocabulary, and key exam skills. Before, during and after-reading questions test readers' story comprehension and develop vocabulary. Visit the Penguin Readers website Exclusively with the print edition, readers can unlock online resources including a digital book, audio edition, lesson plans and answer keys. In 1897, people found gold in the Klondike, Canada. Thousands of people traveled there to find more gold. They needed big, strong dogs to work for them. This is the story of one of those dogs, Buck. A man takes him from his family in California, and Buck has to pull a sled in Canada. Will he survive? |
| web penguin readers: Links Nuruddin Farah, 2005-03-29 From the internationally acclaimed author of North of Dawn, Links is a novel that will stand as a classic of modern world literature. Jeebleh is returning to Mogadiscio, Somalia, for the first time in twenty years. But this is not a nostalgia trip—his last residence there was a jail cell. And who could feel nostalgic for a city like this? U.S. troops have come and gone, and the decimated city is ruled by clan warlords and patrolled by qaat-chewing gangs who shoot civilians to relieve their adolescent boredom. Diverted in his pilgrimage to visit his mother’s grave, Jeebleh is asked to investigate the abduction of the young daughter of one of his closest friend’s family. But he learns quickly that any act in this city, particularly an act of justice, is much more complicated than he might have imagined. |
| web penguin readers: The Liars' Club Mary Karr, 2005-05-31 #4 on The New York Times’ list of The 50 Best Memoirs of the Past 50 Years The New York Times bestselling, hilarious tale of a hardscrabble Texas childhood that Oprah.com calls the best memoir of a generation “Wickedly funny and always movingly illuminating, thanks to kick-ass storytelling and a poet’s ear.” —Oprah.com The Liars’ Club took the world by storm and raised the art of the memoir to an entirely new level, bringing about a dramatic revival of the form. Karr’s comic childhood in an east Texas oil town brings us characters as darkly hilarious as any of J. D. Salinger’s—a hard-drinking daddy, a sister who can talk down the sheriff at age twelve, and an oft-married mother whose accumulated secrets threaten to destroy them all. This unsentimental and profoundly moving account of an apocalyptic childhood is as “funny, lively, and un-put-downable” (USA Today) today as it ever was. |
| web penguin readers: The Turtle Warrior Mary Ellis, 2005-01-25 The Turtle Warrior is the story of the Lucas family, who live in a beautiful and remote part of Wisconsin inhabited by working-class European immigrants and the Ojibwe. By 1967 the Lucas farm has fallen into disrepair, thanks to the hard drinking of John Lucas, who brutalizes his wife and two sons. When the eldest, James, escapes by enlisting to fight in Vietnam, he leaves young Bill alone to protect his mother with only his own will and the spirit of his brother to guide him. Beautifully written and deeply felt, The Turtle Warrior takes readers from the heartland of America to the battlefields of World War II and Vietnam weaving a haunting tale of an unforgettable world where the physical and spiritual, the past and the present, merge. |
| web penguin readers: All Over Creation Ruth Ozeki, 2004-03-30 A warm and witty saga about agribusiness, environmental activism, and community—from the celebrated author of The Book of Form and Emptiness and A Tale for the Time Being Yumi Fuller hasn’t set foot in her hometown of Liberty Falls, Idaho—heart of the potato-farming industry—since she ran away at age fifteen. Twenty-five years later, the prodigal daughter returns to confront her dying parents, her best friend, and her conflicted past, and finds herself caught up in an altogether new drama. The post-millennial farming community has been invaded by Agribusiness forces at war with a posse of activists, the Seeds of Resistance, who travel the country in a camping car, “The Spudnick,” biofueled by pilfered McDonald’s french-fry oil. Following her widely hailed, award-winning debut novel, My Year of Meats, Ruth Ozeki returns here to deliver a quirky cast of characters and a wickedly humorous appreciation of the foibles of corporate life, globalization, political resistance, youth culture, and aging baby boomers. All Over Creation tells a celebratory tale of the beauty of seeds, roots, and growth—and the capacity for renewal that resides within us all. |
| web penguin readers: The Woman Who Walked into Doors Roddy Doyle, 1997-01-01 “This unflinching novel chronicles a woman’s relationship with a violent man in a way that brings fresh insight to the subject . . . engaging and uplifting.” —O, The Oprah Magazine From Roddy Doyle, Booker Prize-winning author of The Women Behind the Door, the heartrending origin story of Paula Spencer, a brave and tenacious housewife Paula Spencer is a thirty-nine-year-old mother of four, a blue-collar worker, an alcoholic in recovery—or maybe not. Then one day a police officer knocks on her door. From the look on his face, she can tell it’s not good news. His revelation takes Paula back to the past, to her contented childhood, the audacity she learned as a teenager, the exhilaration of her romance with her husband Charlo, and the violent marriage to him that left her powerless. Now, as she struggles to reclaim her dignity from the abuse that left her with scars and a worsening drinking problem, this new revelation threatens to shatter the fragile peace she’s built for herself and drag her back down the dark paths she thought she’d left behind. Capturing both her vulnerability and strength, Roddy Doyle gives Paula a voice that is singular and real, the story of an ordinary woman whose extraordinary character will stay with you long after this novel and into the subsequent books in his trilogy, Paula Spencer and The Women Behind the Door. |
| web penguin readers: The Photograph Penelope Lively, 2004-05-25 One of Britain's most talented and experienced writers. The closer you look the more mystery you see. --The Times (London) A seductive and hugely suspenseful novel by Booker Prize winning author Penelope Lively, about what can happen when you look too closely into the past Searching through a little-used cupboard at home, Glyn Peters chances upon a photograph he has never seen before. Taken in high summer, many years earlier, it shows his wife, Kath, holding hands with another man. Glyn's work as a historian should have prepared him for unexpected findings and reversals, but he is ill-prepared for this radical shift in perception. His mind fills with questions. Who was the man? Who took the photograph? Where was it taken? When? Had Kath planned for him to find out all along? As Glyn begins to search for answers, he, and those around him, find the certainties of the past and present slip away, and the picture of the beautiful woman they all thought they knew distort. Propelled by the author’s signature mastery of narrative and psychology, The Photograph is Lively at her very best. |
| web penguin readers: Augusta Locke William Haywood Henderson, 2007-03-27 An indelible portrait of a woman who through great toughness of character blazes her own trail Novelist William Haywod Henderson has won acclaim for his depictions of land and nature and his ability to bring the American West to vivid life. Of his most recent novel, The Rest of the Earth, Annie Proulx remarked that Henderson “writes some of the most evocative and transcendently beautiful prose in contemporary American literature.” Redolent with myth, humor, strange landscapes, and stark reality, Henderson’s new novel tells the story of Augusta Locke, a troubled yet spirited woman, as she raises her daughter in the deserts of Wyoming. Spanning the twentieth century, Augusta’s extraordinary challenges play out themes of love and loss, home and family, redemption and reconciliation. |
| web penguin readers: The Night Journal Elizabeth Crook, 2007-01-30 A mesmerizing novel of four generations of Southwestern women bound to a mythical legacy With its family secrets and hallowed texts containing explosive truths, The Night Journal suggests A. S. Byatt’s Possession transplanted to the raw and beautiful landscape of the American Southwest. Meg Mabry has spent her life oppressed by her family’s legacy—a heritage beginning with the journals written by her great-grandmother in the 1890s and solidified by her grandmother Bassie, a famous historian who published them to great acclaim. Until now, Meg has stubbornly refused to read the journals. But when she concedes to accompany the elderly and vipertongued Bassie on a return trip to the fabled land of her childhood in New Mexico, Meg finally succumbs to the allure of her great-grandmother’s story—and soon everything she believed about her family is turned upside down. |
| web penguin readers: The Alphabet Versus the Goddess Leonard Shlain, 1999-09-01 This groundbreaking book proposes that the rise of alphabetic literacy reconfigured the human brain and brought about profound changes in history, religion, and gender relations. Making remarkable connections across brain function, myth, and anthropology, Dr. Shlain shows why pre-literate cultures were principally informed by holistic, right-brain modes that venerated the Goddess, images, and feminine values. Writing drove cultures toward linear left-brain thinking and this shift upset the balance between men and women, initiating the decline of the feminine and ushering in patriarchal rule. Examining the cultures of the Israelites, Greeks, Christians, and Muslims, Shlain reinterprets ancient myths and parables in light of his theory. Provocative and inspiring, this book is a paradigm-shattering work that will transform your view of history and the mind. |
| web penguin readers: A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian Marina Lewycka, 2006-03-28 Nominated for the Man Booker Prize “A charming comedy of eros . . . A ride that, despite the bumps and curves in the road, never feels anything less than jaunty.” —Los Angeles Times “Charming, poignantly funny.” —The Washington Post Book World 'Two years after my mother died, my father fell in love with a glamorous blonde Ukrainian divorcee. He was eighty-four and she was thirty-six. She exploded into our lives like a fluffy pink grenade, churning up the murky water, bringing to the surface a sludge of sloughed-off memories, giving the family ghosts a kick up the backside.' Sisters Vera and Nadezhda must aside a lifetime of feuding to save their émigré engineer father from voluptuous gold-digger Valentina. With her proclivity for green satin underwear and boil-in-the-bag cuisine, she will stop at nothing in her pursuit of Western wealth. But the sisters' campaign to oust Valentina unearths family secrets, uncovers fifty years of Europe's darkest history and sends them back to roots they'd much rather forget . . . |
| web penguin readers: Lost in a Good Book Jasper Fforde, 2004-02-24 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the author of The Constant Rabbit comes “Harry Potter just for adults . . . [an] immensely enjoyable, almost compulsive experience” (The New York Times Book Review)—the second novel in the renowned Thursday Next series. “[Lost in a Good Book] is satire, fantasy, literary criticism, thriller, whodunit, game, puzzle, joke, postmodern prank, and tilt-a-whirl.”—The Washington Post If resourceful, fearless literary detective Thursday Next thought she could avoid the spotlight after her heroic escapades in the pages of Jane Eyre, she was sorely mistaken. Her adventures as a renowned Special Operative in literary detection have left Thursday Next yearning for a rest. But when the love of her life is eradicated by the corrupt multinational Goliath Corporation, Thursday must bite the bullet and moonlight as a Prose Resource Operative in the secret world of Jurisfiction, the police force inside the books. There she is apprenticed to Miss Havisham, the famous man-hater from Dickens’s Great Expectations, who teaches her to book-jump like a pro. If Thursday retrieves a supposedly vanquished enemy from the pages of Poe’s “The Raven,” she thinks Goliath might return her lost love, Landen. But her latest mission is endlessly complicated. Not only are there side trips into the works of Kafka and Austen, and even Beatrix Potter’s The Tale of Flopsy Bunnies, Thursday finds herself the target of a series of potentially lethal coincidences, the authenticator of a newly discovered play by the Bard himself, and the only one who can prevent an unidentifiable pink sludge from engulfing all life on Earth. Don’t miss any of Jasper Fforde’s delightfully entertaining Thursday Next novels: THE EYRE AFFAIR • LOST IN A GOOD BOOK • THE WELL OF LOST PLOTS • SOMETHING ROTTEN • FIRST AMONG SEQUELS • ONE OF OUR THURSDAYS IS MISSING • THE WOMAN WHO DIED A LOT |
| web penguin readers: The City of Falling Angels John Berendt, 2006-09-26 A #1 New York Times Bestseller! Funny, insightful, illuminating . . . —The Boston Globe Twelve years ago, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil exploded into a monumental success, residing a record-breaking four years on the New York Times bestseller list (longer than any work of fiction or nonfiction had before) and turning John Berendt into a household name. The City of Falling Angels is Berendt's first book since Midnight, and it immediately reminds one what all the fuss was about. Turning to the magic, mystery, and decadence of Venice, Berendt gradually reveals the truth behind a sensational fire that in 1996 destroyed the historic Fenice opera house. Encountering a rich cast of characters, Berendt tells a tale full of atmosphere and surprise as the stories build, one after the other, ultimately coming together to portray a world as finely drawn as a still-life painting. |
| web penguin readers: Death in a Strange Country Donna Leon, 2008-12-30 The New York Times–bestselling series continues with the murder of an American soldier in Venice: “This is definitely an author to watch (Kirkus Reviews). Early one morning, Commissario Guido Brunetti of the Venice police confronts a grisly sight when the body of a young man is fished out of a fetid canal. All clues point to a violent mugging, but for Brunetti the motive of robbery seems altogether too convenient. When something discovered in the victim’s apartment suggests the existence of a high-level conspiracy, Brunetti becomes convinced that somebody, somewhere, is taking great pains to provide a ready-made solution to the crime. Rich with atmosphere and marvelous plotting, Death in a Strange Country is a superb novel in Donna Leon’s chilling Venetian mystery series. Praise for Donna Leon and the Commissario Brunetti Mysteries “One of the best international crime writers is Donna Leon, and her Commissario Guido Brunetti tales set in Venice are at the apex of continental thrillers.” —Rocky Mountain News “Leon’s books shimmer in the grace of their setting and are warmed by the charm of her characters.” —The New York Times Book Review “Brunetti . . . long ago joined the ranks of the classic fictional detectives.” —Evening Standard “Commissario Brunetti, most charismatic current Euro-cop, uncovers deadly ants’ nest of corruption. A highly accomplished, scary read.” —The Guardian |
| web penguin readers: The Observations Jane Harris, 2007-06-27 The Observations is a hugely assured and darkly funny debut set in nineteenth-century Scotland. Bessy Buckley, the novel's heroine, is a cynical, wide-eyed, and tender fifteen-year-old Irish girl who takes a job as a maid in a once-grand country house outside Edinburgh, where all is not as it seems. Asked by her employer, the beautiful Arabella, to keep a journal of her most intimate thoughts, Bessy soon makes a troubling discovery and realizes that she has fled her difficult past only to arrive in an even more disturbing present. |
| web penguin readers: A Long Long Way Sebastian Barry, 2005-09-08 A powerful new novel about divided loyalties and the realities of war from “master storyteller” (Wall Street Journal) Sebastian Barry, author of Old God's Time In 1914, Willie Dunne, barely eighteen years old, leaves behind Dublin, his family, and the girl he plans to marry in order to enlist in the Allied forces and face the Germans on the Western Front. Once there, he encounters a horror of violence and gore he could not have imagined and sustains his spirit with only the words on the pages from home and the camaraderie of the mud-covered Irish boys who fight and die by his side. Dimly aware of the political tensions that have grown in Ireland in his absence, Willie returns on leave to find a world split and ravaged by forces closer to home. Despite the comfort he finds with his family, he knows he must rejoin his regiment and fight until the end. With grace and power, Sebastian Barry vividly renders Willie’s personal struggle as well as the overwhelming consequences of war. |
| web penguin readers: Marrying Mozart Stephanie Cowell, 2004-12-28 Amadeus meets Little Women in this irresistibly delightful historical novel by award-winning author Stephanie Cowell. The year is 1777 and the four Weber sisters, daughters of a musical family, share a crowded, artistic life in a ramshackle house. While their father scrapes by as a music copyist and their mother secretly draws up a list of prospective suitors in the kitchen, the sisters struggle with their futures, both marital and musical—until twenty-one-year-old Wolfgang Mozart walks into their lives. Bringing eighteenth-century Europe to life with unforgiving winters, yawning princes, scheming parents, and the enduring passions of young talent, Stephanie Cowell’s richly textured tale captures a remarkable historical figure—and the four young women who engage his passion, his music, and his heart. |
| web penguin readers: Passarola Rising Azhar Abidi, 2006-12-26 In the year 1731, Alexandre Lourenco watches as his brother Bartolomeu’s airship, the Passarola, ascends from the ramparts of St. Jorge’s Castle in Lisbon. When the brothers board the ship, they embark on a journey that will take them from the salons and bordellos of Enlightenment Paris to the desolate far reaches of the North Pole, in search of scientific truth and knowledge. As they encounter such characters as the loquacious Voltaire and the irascible King Stanislaus of Poland, and attempt to escape Russian enemy fire and the condemnation of Portugal’s Cardinal Conti, Alexandre hopes to find his calling in life, while his brother keeps his eyes on the Passarola’s next horizon. A delightful picaresque tale filled with evocative period detail, Azhar Abidi’s debut is not only a story of adventure and suspense, but a thoughtful book on the nature of truth, and a heartfelt portrait of the relationship between brothers. |
| web penguin readers: The Gardens of the Dead William Brodrick, 2007-10-02 Investigating the death of an attorney whose demise has been marked by bizarre puzzles, barrister detective Father Anselm discovers a link between the dead woman and his own choices in a difficult case that he won two years earlier. By the author of The 6th Lamentation. Reprint. 30,000 first printing. |
| web penguin readers: A Star Called Henry Roddy Doyle, 2004-10-05 Roddy Doyle’s acclaimed novel about an intrepid Irishman’s years of reckless heroism and adventure – “An extraordinarily entertaining epic.” (The Washington Post) Born at the beginning of the twentieth century, Henry Smart lives through the evolution of modern Ireland, and in this extraordinary novel he brilliantly tells his story. From his own birth and childhood on the streets of Dublin to his role as soldier (and lover) in the Irish Rebellion, Henry recounts his early years of reckless heroism and adventure. At once an epic, a love story, and a portrait of Irish history, A Star Called Henry is a grand picaresque novel brimming with both poignant moments and comic ones, and told in a voice that is both quintessentially Irish and inimitably Roddy Doyle's. |
| web penguin readers: Something Rotten Jasper Fforde, 2005-07-26 “Prepare to be delighted” (Time) with the fourth novel in the New York Times bestselling Thursday Next series, a totally original, action-packed romp through the alternate reality of literature-obsessed England. “Infused with humor and extraordinary inventiveness . . . [Something Rotten] is worth reading for anyone with an insatiable appetite for cleverness.”—Los Angeles Times It’s back to reality for Detective Thursday Next—and fiction never looked so good. Thursday has had her fill of her responsibilities as the Bellman in Jurisfiction. Packing up her son, Friday, Thursday returns to Swindon accompanied by none other than the dithering Danish prince Hamlet. But returning to SpecOps is no snap—as outlaw fictioneer Yorrick Kaine plots for absolute power, the return of Swindon’s patron saint foretells doom, and if that isn’t bad enough, back in the Book World The Merry Wives of Windsor is becoming entangled with Hamlet. Can Thursday find a Shakespeare clone to stop this hostile takeover? Can she vanquish Kaine and prevent the world from plunging into war? And, most important, will she ever find reliable childcare? Don’t miss any of Jasper Fforde’s delightfully entertaining Thursday Next novels: THE EYRE AFFAIR • LOST IN A GOOD BOOK • THE WELL OF LOST PLOTS • SOMETHING ROTTEN • FIRST AMONG SEQUELS • ONE OF OUR THURSDAYS IS MISSING • THE WOMAN WHO DIED A LOT |
| web penguin readers: The Rug Merchant Meg Mullins, 2007-06-26 At the heart of Meg Mullins?s debut novel is one of the most touchingly believable characters in recent fiction, a gentle soul in the body of an Iranian exile in New York. Ushman Khan sells exquisite hand-woven rugs to a wealthy clientele that he treats with perfect rectitude. He is lonely, and his loneliness becomes unbearable when he learns that his wife in Iran is leaving him. But when a young woman named Stella comes into his store, what ensues is a love story that is all the more moving because its protagonists understand tragedy. The Rug Merchant will sweep readers away with its inspiring, character-rich tale about shaking free from disappointment and finding connection and acceptance in whatever form they appear. |
| web penguin readers: The Saffron Kitchen Yasmin Crowther, 2007-08-28 In a powerful debut novel that moves between the crowded streets of London and the desolate mountains of Iran, Yasmin Crowther paints a stirring portrait of a family shaken by events from decades ago and worlds away. On a rainy day in London the dark secrets and troubled past of Maryam Mazar surface violently, with tragic consequences for her daughter, Sara, and her newly orphaned nephew. Maryam leaves her English husband and family and returns to the remote Iranian village where her story began. In a quest to piece their life back together, Sara follows her mother and finally learns the terrible price Maryam once had to pay for her freedom, and of the love she left behind. Set against the breathtaking beauty of two very different places, this stunning family drama transcends culture and is, at its core, a rich and haunting narrative about mothers and daughters. |
| web penguin readers: Parasites Like Us Adam Johnson, 2004-10-26 The debut novel by the author of The Orphan Master's Son (winner of the 2013 Pulitzer Prize) and the story collection Fortune Smiles (winner of the 2015 National Book Award) Hailed as remarkable by the New Yorker, Emporium earned Adam Johnson comparisons to Kurt Vonnegut and T.C. Boyle. In his acclaimed first novel, Parasites Like Us, Johnson takes us on an enthralling journey through memory, time, and the cost of mankind's quest for its own past. Anthropologist Hank Hannah has just illegally exhumed an ancient American burial site and winds up in jail. But the law will soon be the least of his worries. For, buried beside the bones, a timeless menace awaits that will set the modern world back twelve thousand years and send Hannah on a quest to save that which is dearest to him. A brilliantly evocative apocalyptic adventure told with Adam Johnson's distinctive dark humor, Parasites Like Us is a thrilling tale of mankind on the brink of extinction. |
| web penguin readers: The Age of Doubt Andrea Camilleri, 2012-05-29 “You either love Andrea Camilleri or you haven’t read him yet. Each novel in this wholly addictive, entirely magical series, set in Sicily and starring a detective unlike any other in crime fiction, blasts the brain like a shot of pure oxygen...transporting. Long live Camilleri, and long live Montalbano.” —A.J. Finn, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Woman in the Window The day after a storm floods Vigàta, Inspector Montalbano encounters a strange, bedraggled woman who expresses interest in a certain yacht scheduled to dock that afternoon. Not long after she's gone, the crew of the yacht reports having found a dinghy in the port, and within it, a disfigured corpse. Also at anchor is an eighty-five-foot luxury boat with a somewhat shady crew. Both boats will have to stay in Vigàta until the investigation is over—the unidentified man was poisoned, it seems. Based on the information—and misinformation—the mysterious woman shared with him, Montalbano begins to think the occupants of the yacht just might know a little more about the man's death than they're letting on. |
| web penguin readers: In the Heart of the Sea Nathaniel Philbrick, 2001-05-01 From the author of Mayflower, Valiant Ambition, and In the Hurricane's Eye--the riveting bestseller tells the story of the true events that inspired Melville's Moby-Dick. Winner of the National Book Award, Nathaniel Philbrick's book is a fantastic saga of survival and adventure, steeped in the lore of whaling, with deep resonance in American literature and history. In 1820, the whaleship Essex was rammed and sunk by an angry sperm whale, leaving the desperate crew to drift for more than ninety days in three tiny boats. Nathaniel Philbrick uses little-known documents and vivid details about the Nantucket whaling tradition to reveal the chilling facts of this infamous maritime disaster. In the Heart of the Sea, recently adapted into a major feature film starring Chris Hemsworth, is a book for the ages. |
| web penguin readers: The Paper Moon Andrea Camilleri, 2008-04-01 “You either love Andrea Camilleri or you haven’t read him yet. Each novel in this wholly addictive, entirely magical series, set in Sicily and starring a detective unlike any other in crime fiction, blasts the brain like a shot of pure oxygen. Aglow with local color, packed with flint-dry wit, as fresh and clean as Mediterranean seafood — altogether transporting. Long live Camilleri, and long live Montalbano.” A.J. Finn, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Woman in the Window With their dark sophistication and dry humor, Andrea Camilleri's classic crime novels continue to win more and more fans in America. The latest installment of the popular mystery series finds the moody Inspector Montalbano further beset by the existential questions that have been plaguing him of late. But he doesn't have much time to wax philosophical before the gruesome murder of a man-shot at point-blank range in the face with his pants down-commands his attention. Add two evasive, beautiful women as prime suspects, some dirty cocaine, mysterious computer codes, and a series of threatening letters, and things soon get very complicated at the police headquarters in Vigàta. |
| web penguin readers: Doctored Evidence Donna Leon, 2007-12-01 “A smart and stylish fast-paced case of intrigue and corruption” in the Venetian-set, New York Times–bestselling mystery series (Los Angeles Times). After a wealthy elderly woman is found brutally murdered in her Venetian apartment, the police suspect her maid, who has disappeared and is heading for her native Romania. But when it becomes clear the maid could not have had time to kill the old woman before catching her train, Guido Brunetti decides—unofficially—to take on the case himself. As his wife reads about the seven deadly sins, Brunetti realizes that this is probably not a crime motivated by greed—rather, the motive may have more to do with the temptations of lust. But perhaps Brunetti is following a false trail and thinking of the wrong sin altogether . . . “The detective’s humane police work is disarming, and his ambles through the city are a delight; but it is this peculiar insistence on turning every case into a morality tale that gives Leon’s fiction its subtlety and substance and makes us follow Brunetti wherever we must—even into the sea.” —The New York Times Book Review “Holds together as an elegant puzzle, as a character study and as a story of an officer’s need to reclaim truth in all its complexities from those who want to find easy answers to life’s, and death’s, perplexing mysteries.” —The Washington Post Book World “A compelling and intricate series of events as convoluted and intricate as the canals of Venice itself . . . Another expert mystery.” —The Baltimore Sun |
| web penguin readers: The Track of Sand Andrea Camilleri, 2010-10-26 “You either love Andrea Camilleri or you haven’t read him yet. Each novel in this wholly addictive, entirely magical series, set in Sicily and starring a detective unlike any other in crime fiction, blasts the brain like a shot of pure oxygen. Aglow with local color, packed with flint-dry wit, as fresh and clean as Mediterranean seafood — altogether transporting. Long live Camilleri, and long live Montalbano.” A.J. Finn, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Woman in the Window Inspector Salvatore Montalbano wakes from strange dreams to find a gruesomely bludgeoned horse carcass in front of his seaside home. When his men came to investigate, the carcass has disappeared, leaving only a trail in the sand. Then his home is ransacked and the inspector is certain that the crimes are linked. As he negotiates both the glittering underworld of horseracing and the Mafia's connection to it, Montalbano is aided by his illiterate housekeeper, Adelina, and a Proustian memory of linguate fritte. Longtime fans and new readers alike will be charmed by Montalbano's blend of unorthodox methods, melancholy self-reflection, and love of good food. |
| web penguin readers: The Fourth Bear Jasper Fforde, 2007-07-31 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Enter the seedy underbelly of nursery crime, where characters are never as they seem, in this “brilliantly, breathlessly odd” (USA Today) novel from the renowned author of The Big Over Easy and the Thursday Next series. “Like the best novels of Douglas Adams or Terry Pratchett, Fforde goes beyond his genre.”—Los Angeles Times Book Review “Jasper Fforde is able to write diabolically. . . . Outrageous satirical agility is his stock in trade.”—The New York Times Detective Jack Spratt and Sergeant Mary Mary long to collar the Gingerbreadman—psychopath, sadist, criminal genius, cookie—who’s at large in Reading. Instead, they’re demoted to searching for missing journalist Henrietta “Goldy” Hatchett. The last witnesses to see her alive were the reclusive three bears, and Jack thinks something’s odd about their story. How could that porridge be too hot, too cold, and just right if it was poured at the same time? The question is: was there a fourth bear? |
| web penguin readers: Oh, Play That Thing Roddy Doyle, 2005-10-25 The sequel to Roddy Doyle’s beloved novel A Star Called Henry – an entertaining romp across America in the 1920s Fleeing the Irish Republican paymasters for whom he committed murder and mayhem, Henry Smart has left his wife and infant daughter in Dublin and is off to start a new life. When he lands in America, it is 1924 and New York City is the center of the universe. Henry turns to hawking cheap hooch on the Lower East Side, only to catch the attention of the mobsters who run the district. In Chicago, Henry finds a newer America alive with wild, happy music played by a man with a trumpet and bleeding lips called Louis Armstrong. But in a city also owned by the mob, Armstrong is a prisoner of his color. He needs a man--a white man--and the man he chooses is Henry Smart. |
| web penguin readers: Martha Washington Patricia Brady, 2006-05-30 With this revelatory and painstakingly researched book, Martha Washington, the invisible woman of American history, at last gets the biography she deserves. In place of the domestic frump of popular imagination, Patricia Brady resurrects the wealthy, attractive, and vivacious young widow who captivated the youthful George Washington. Here are the able landowner, the indomitable patriot (who faithfully joined her husband each winter at Valley Forge), and the shrewd diplomat and emotional mainstay. And even as it brings Martha Washington into sharper and more accurate focus, this sterling life sheds light on her marriage, her society, and the precedents she established for future First Ladies. |
| web penguin readers: The Silver Screen Maureen Howard, 2005-07-26 Maureen Howard deepens her inquiry into the meeting place of history and family in this stunning and accessible novel. Isabel Murphy renounced silent-film stardom to raise a family in Rhode Island. Now she is dead at 90 and her children are trying to break free of the lives she has dealt them. Joe, a Jesuit priest, has failed at love and the healing of souls. Stodgy Rita has found late happiness with a gangster who has turned state’s evidence. And Gemma, Isabel’s honorary child, has grown up to experience a strange celebrity as a photographer. A darkly comic story of guilt, love, and forgiveness, The Silver Screen is luminous in its intelligence and empathy. |
| web penguin readers: This Blinding Absence of Light Tahar Ben Jelloun, 2006-01-31 An immediate and critically acclaimed bestseller in France, This Blinding Absence of Light is the latest work by internationally renowned author Tahar Ben Jelloun, the first North African winner of the Prix Goncourt and winner of the Prix Mahgreb. Crafting real life events into narrative fiction, Ben Jelloun reveals the horrific story of the desert concentration camps in which King Hassan II of Morocco held his political enemies in underground cells with no light and only enough food and water to keep them lingering on the edge of death. Working closely with one of the survivors, Ben Jelloun narrates the story in the simplest of language and delivers a shocking novel that explores both the limitlessness of inhumanity and the impossible endurance of the human will.--Publisher description. |
| web penguin readers: The Brewer of Preston Andrea Camilleri, 2014-12-30 The New York Times bestselling author of the Inspector Montalbano series brings us back to Vigàta in the nineteenth century for a rip-roaring comic novel. 1870s Sicily. Much to the displeasure of Vigàta’s stubborn populace, the town has just been unified under the Kingdom of Italy. They’re now in the hands of a new government they don’t understand, and they definitely don’t like. Eugenio Bortuzzi has been named Prefect for Vigàta, a regional representative from the Italian government to oversee the town. But the rowdy and unruly Sicilians don’t care much for this rather pompous mainlander nor the mediocre opera he’s hell-bent on producing in their new municipal theater. The Brewer of Preston, it’s called, and the Vigàtese are revving up to wreak havoc on the performance’s opening night. |
| web penguin readers: This Book Will Save Your Life A.M. Homes, 2007-04-03 Since her debut in 1989, A. M. Homes, author of the forthcoming novel The Unfolding, has been among the boldest and most original voices of her generation, acclaimed for the psychological accuracy and unnerving emotional intensity of her storytelling. Her ability to explore how extraordinary the ordinary can be is at the heart of her touching and funny new novel, her first in six years. This Book Will Save Your Life is a vivid, uplifting, and revealing story about compassion, transformation, and what can happen if you are willing to lose yourself and open up to the world around you. |
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