Penguin Breath of Life Lispector Clarice

'She suddenly leaned toward the mirror and sought the loveliest way to see herself' • Lucrecia Neves is vain, unreflective, insolently superficial, almost mute. She may have no inner life at all. As she morphs from small-town girl to worldly wife of a rich man, and her small home town surrenders to the forces of progress, Lucrecia seeks perfection: to be an object, serene, smooth, beyond the burden of words or even thought itself. A book that obsessed its author, The Besieged City is unlike any other work in Lispector's canon: a story of transformation, of what it means to see and to be seen

Oceans are the most mysterious places on earth. Their depths remain largely unexplored, yet ninety-five percent of the planet's habitable space lies within them. And now the life they support is in the balance • Callum Roberts uses his lifetime's experience working with the oceans to take us on a panoramic tour beneath the seas, exploring the richness of life in the deep and how it has altered over the centuries. He shows the catastrophic impact of humanity on the oceans, but also how we can restore them to life

Little Clothbound Classics: irresistible, mini editions of short stories, novellas and essays from the world's greatest writers, designed by the award-winning Coralie Bickford-Smith • Thirteen short tales from one of the most blistering and innovative writers of the twentieth century • The small incidents of life become moments of inner revelation in the luminous writing of Clarice Lispector. A woman contemplating a vase of roses after a nervous breakdown; a tangled mother-daughter relationship; a man's abandonment of a dog; an animal in a zoo: each one leads to mystery and self-discovery, delight and devastation

G.H., a well-to-do Rio sculptress, enters the room of her maid, which is as clear and white 'as in an insane asylum from which dangerous objects have been removed'. There she sees a cockroach - black, dusty, prehistoric - crawling out of the wardrobe and, panicking, slams the door on it. Her irresistible fascination with the dying insect provokes a spiritual crisis, in which she questions her place in the universe and her very identity, propelling her towards an act of shocking transgression. Clarice Lispector's spare, deeply disturbing yet luminous novel transforms language into something otherworldly, and is one of her most unsettling and compelling works • Clarice Lispector was a Brazilian novelist and short story writer. Her innovation in fiction brought her international renown

Creation by Adam Rutherford tells the entire spellbinding story of life in two gripping narratives • Creation: The Origin of Life is a four-billion-year detective story that uses the latest science to explain what life is and where it first came from, offering answers to the very grandest of questions before arriving at a thrilling solution • This same science has led to a technological revolution: the ability to create entirely new life forms within the lab, known as synthetic biology. The Future of Life introduces these remarkable innovations, explains how they work, and presents a powerful argument for their benefit to humankind

Milligan's Meaning of Life is a glorious celebration of the legendary Spike Milligan. Here you will find his most intimate and hilarious reflections on life • With his lightning-quick wit, unbridled creativity and his ear for the absurd, Milligan revolutionised British comedy. Throughout his life, Milligan also wrote prolifically - scripts, poetry, fiction, as well as several volumes of memoir, in which he took an entirely idiosyncratic approach to the truth. In this ground-breaking work, Norma Farnes, his long-time manager, companion, counsellor and confidante, gathers together the loose threads, reads between the lines and draws on the full breadth of his writing to present his life in his own words: an autobiography - of sorts • From his childhood in India, through his early career as a jazz musician and sketch-show entertainer, his spells in North Africa and Italy with the Royal Artillery, to that fateful first broadcast of The Goon Show and beyond into the annals of comedy history, this is the autobiography Milligan never wrote

Karen Blixen's Out of Africa is the lyrical and luminous memoir of Kenya that launched a million tourist trails, beautifully repackaged as part of the Penguin Essentials range • 'I had a farm in Africa, at the foot of the Ngong Hills... Up in this high air you breathed easily... you woke up in the morning and thought: Here I am, where I ought to be.' • From the moment Karen Blixen arrived in Kenya in 1914 to manage a coffee plantation, her heart belonged to Africa. Drawn to the intense colours and ravishing landscapes, Blixen spent her happiest years on the farm, and her experiences and friendships with the people around her are vividly recalled in these memoirs • Out of Africa is the story of a remarkable and unconventional woman, and of a way of life that has vanished for ever

For Rich, life is golden • He fizzes with happiness and love • When Rich dies, he leaves behind a family without a father, a husband, a son and a best friend • His wife, Ruth, can't imagine living without him and finds herself faced with a grief she's not sure she can find her way through. At the same time, their young son Ollie becomes intent on working out the meaning of life. Because everything happens for a reason. Doesn't it? • But when they discover a mismatched collection of presents left by Rich for his loved ones, it provides a puzzle for them to solve, one that will help Ruth navigate her sorrow and help Ollie come to terms with what's happened • Together, they will learn to lay the ghosts of the past to rest, and treasure the true gift that Rich has left them: the ability to embrace life and love every moment

Со страниц сборника «сельских» рассказов Роальда Даля «Ах, эта сладкая загадка жизни!» веет убаюкивающими ароматами деревни, но великий сказочник и рассказчик вполне способен взбодрить читателя парой-тройкой неожиданных поворотов • Буйная корова, которую надо отвести на спаривание с быком в расцвете сил. Стог сена, в котором завелись крысы. Тонкости разведения личинок. Незаконная ловля фазанов на изюминки и снотворные таблетки. Каким бы ни был задел рассказов Даля о жизни простых людей и их чудачествах, они всегда пронизаны кипучей энергией. Он добавляет в каждую историю несколько капель юмора и пару зловещих ноток, и получившееся сочетание отдаёт на вкус самыми сладкими загадками жизни • Книга на английском языке • The sweet scents of rural life infuse Ah, Sweet Mystery of Life, a collection of Roald Dahl's country stories - but there is always something unexpected lurking in the undergrowth

One of the key works in the nineteenth-century battle between science and Scripture, Charles Lyell's Principles of Geology (1830-33) sought to explain the geological state of the modern Earth by considering the long-term effects of observable natural phenomena. Written with clarity and a dazzling intellectual passion, it is both a seminal work of modern geology and a compelling precursor to Darwinism, exploring the evidence for radical changes in climate and geography across the ages and speculating on the progressive development of life. A profound influence on Darwin, Principles of Geology also captured the imagination of contemporaries such as Melville, Emerson, Tennyson and George Eliot, transforming science with its depiction of the powerful forces that shape the natural world

Haunting, terrifying and hilarious, The Day of the Oprichnik is a dazzling novel and a fierce critique of life in the New Russia • Moscow 2028: Andrei Danilovich Komiaga, oprichnik, member of the czar's inner circle of trusted courtiers, rouses himself from a drunken stupor and prepares for another day of debauchery, violence, terror and beauty. In this New Russia, futuristic technology combine with the draconian world of Ivan the Terrible to create a dystopia chillingly akin to reality. Over the twenty-four-hour span of the novel, Komiaga will rape, pillage and torture, in the name of the czar he fears and adores. Shimmering with invention, fierce social commentary and razor-sharp wit, Day of the Oprichnik imagines a near future too disturbing to contemplate and too close to reality to ignore