Penguin Diary of a Country Priest Bernanos Georges

Nikolai Gogol's short fiction, collected here as The Diary of a Madman, The Government Inspector and Selected Stories, deeply influenced later Russian literature with powerful depictions of a society dominated by petty bureaucracy and base corruption. This Penguin Classics edition is translated with notes by Ronald Wilks, and an introduction by Robert A. Maguire • This volume includes a selection of Gogol's most admired short fiction and his most famous drama. A hilarious and biting political satire, 'The Government Inspector' has been popular since its first performance and was regarded by Nabokov as the greatest Russian play ever written. The stories gathered here, meanwhile, range from comic to tragic and describe the isolated lives of low-ranking clerks, lunatics and swindlers

Его зовут Роули, и это его книжечка. Теперь он ведёт дневник, совсем как его друг Грег • Цикл книг для детей «Дневник слабака», рассказывающий историю Грега Хэффли, очаровал читателей по всему миру • Теперь о своих приключениях расскажет его лучший друг, Роули Джефферсон. О Греге он, кстати, не забыл: в конце концов, тот говорит, что однажды разбогатеет и станет звездой, так что кто-то должен рассказать о его прошлом. Правда, понравится ли такая биография одному из самых известных слабаков в мире – большой вопрос… • «Дневник Роули, лучшего друга слабака» – первый из спиноффов цикла Джеффа Кинни «Дневник слабака», в которых роль главного героя сыграл Роули Джефферсон • По циклу «Дневник слабака» были сняты несколько полнометражных фильмов и мультфильмов для сервиса Disney+

Georges Simenon's chilling portrayal of tragic love, persecution and betrayal • 'One sensed in him neither flesh nor bone, nothing but soft, flaccid matter, so much so that his movements were hard to make out. Very red lips stood out from his orb-like face, as did the thin moustache that he curled with an iron and looked as if it had been drawn on with India ink; on his cheekbones were the symmetrical pink dots of a doll's cheeks.' • People find Mr Hire strange, disconcerting. The tenants he shares his building with try to avoid him. He is a peeping Tom, a visitor of prostitutes, a dealer in unsavoury literature. He is also the prime suspect for a brutal murder that he did not commit. Yet Mr Hire's innocence will not stand in the way of those looking for a scapegoat as tragedy unfolds in this quietly devastating and deeply unnerving novel

The second book in the new Penguin Maigret series: Georges Simenon's devastating tale of misfortune, betrayal and the weakness of family ties, in a new translation by Anthea Bell • Instead of the detail filling itself in and becoming clearer, it seemed to escape him. The face of the man in the ill-fitting coat just misted up so that it hardly looked human. In theory this mental portrait was good enough, but now it was replaced by fleeting images which should have added up to one and the same man but which refused to get themselves into focus • The circumstances of Monsieur Gallet's death all seem fake: the name the deceased was travelling under and his presumed profession, and more worryingly, his family's grief. Their haughtiness seems to hide ambiguous feelings about the hapless man

The profession he had always yearned for did not actually exist ... he imagined a cross between a doctor and a priest, a man capable of understanding another's destiny at first glance • The very first investigation by eager young police secretary Jules Maigret leads him to a wealthy Paris family's dark secrets

'As you are well aware, we never loved each other in your lifetime. Both of us pretended.' • Simenon explores the complexity of parent child relationships and the bitterness of things left unsaid in this stark, confessional piece • Penguin Modern: fifty new books celebrating the pioneering spirit of the iconic Penguin Modern Classics series, with each one offering a concentrated hit of its contemporary, international flavour. Here are authors ranging from Kathy Acker to James Baldwin, Truman Capote to Stanislaw Lem and George Orwell to Shirley Jackson; essays radical and inspiring; poems moving and disturbing; stories surreal and fabulous; taking us from the deep South to modern Japan, New York's underground scene to the farthest reaches of outer space

A brilliant new translation of Simenon's critically acclaimed masterpiece • 'And always the dirty snow, the heaps of snow that look rotten, with black patches and embedded garbage ... unable to cover the filth.' • Nineteen-year-old Frank - thug, thief, son of a brothel owner - gets by surprisingly well despite living in a city under military occupation, but a warm house and a full stomach are not enough to make him feel truly alive in such a climate of deceit and betrayal. During a bleak, unending winter, he embarks on a string of violent and sordid crimes that set him on a path from which he can never return. Georges Simenon's matchless novel is a brutal, compelling portrayal of a world without pity; a devastating journey through a psychological no-man's land

'For personal reasons, or for reasons I don't know myself, I began feeling old, and I began keeping notebooks. I was nearing the age of sixty' • Georges Simenon's autobiographical notebooks, in which he recorded his observations, experiences, anxieties and 'all the silly ideas that pass through my head', are one of the most candid self-portraits of a writer ever put to paper. Here, as the celebrated author ruthlessly examines his tortuous writing methods, his past, his fame, his intimate relationships and his fears of ageing, the result is an unsparing, often painfully revealing insight into a man trying both to find and to escape himself

Maigret savoured the sensations of his youth again: the cold, stinging eyes, frozen fingertips, an aftertaste of coffee. Then, stepping inside the church, a blast of heat, soft light; the smell of candles and incense • The last time Maigret went home to the village of his birth was for his father's funeral. Now an anonymous note predicting a crime during All Souls' Day mass draws him back there, where troubling memories resurface and hidden vices are revealed • Penguin is publishing the entire series of Maigret novels in new translations. This novel has been published in a previous translation as Maigret Goes Home

Maigret plunges into the murky Parisian underworld in book twenty-nine of the new Penguin Maigret series • 'That shoeless foot looked incongruous lying on the pavement next to another foot encased in a shoe made of black kid leather. It was naked, private . . . It was Maigret who retrieved the other shoe which lay by the kerb six or seven metres away' • A series of strange phone calls leads Inspector Maigret through the Paris streets towards a man out of his depth amid a network of merciless criminals • This novel has been published in a previous translation as Maigret's Special Murder

It was indeed a photograph, a picture of a woman. But the face was completely hidden, scribbled all over in red ink. Someone had tried to obliterate the head, someone very angry. The pen had bitten into the paper. There were so many criss-crossed lines that not a single square millimetre had been left visible • On the other hand, below the head, the torso had not been touched. A pair of large breasts. A light-coloured silk dress, very tight and very low cut • Sailors don't talk much to other men, especially not to policemen. But after Captain Fallut's body is found floating near his trawler, they all mention the Evil Eye when they speak of the Ocean's voyage • Penguin is publishing the entire series of Maigret novels in new translations. This novel has been published in a previous translation as The Sailors' Rendezvous

'A radiant late afternoon. The sunshine almost as thick as syrup in the quiet streets of the Left Bank • there are days like this, when ordinary life seems heightened, when the people walking down the street, the • trams and cars all seem to exist in a fairy tale.' • A story told by a condemned man leads Maigret to a bar by the Seine and into the sleazy underside of respectable Parisian life. In the oppressive heat of summer, a forgotten crime comes to light • Penguin is publishing the entire series of Maigret novels in new translations. This novel is a revised translation, previously published as The Bar on the Seine