Penguin The Blue Afternoon Бойд Уильям

Meet John James Todd • Scotsman, auteur, Rousseau-fanatic - and 'subversive element' • Born in 1899, John James Todd is one of the great, failed geniuses of the last century. His reminiscences, collected in The New Confessions, take us from Edinburgh to the Western Front, the Berlin film-world in the Twenties to Hollywood in the Thirties, Forties and beyond • Suffering imprisonment, shooting, marriage, fatherhood, divorce and McCarthyism, Todd is a hostage to good fortune, ill-judgement, bad luck, the vast sweep of history and the cruel, cruel hand of fate

Every life is both ordinary and extraordinary, and Logan Mountstuart's - stretching across the twentieth century - is a rich tapestry of both. As a writer who finds inspiration with Hemingway in Paris and Virginia Woolf in London, as a spy recruited by Ian Fleming and betrayed in the war, and as an art-dealer in '60s New York, Logan mixes with the men and women who shape his times. But as a son, friend, lover and husband, he makes the same mistakes we all do in our search for happiness. Here, then, is the story of a life lived to the full - and a journey deep into a very human heart

Henderson Dores is an Englishman in New York - and completely out of his depth • He should be concentrating on his job as an art assessor, but his complicated personal life keeps intruding. And that's before we even get to his sense of alienation, of being a fish out of water. For Henderson is a shy man lost in a country of extraverts and weirdos. Subway poets, loony millionaires, Bible-bashers and sharp-suited hoods stalk him wherever he goes. But it is only when he's sent to America's deep South to examine a rare collection of paintings that matters take a life-threatening turn. Still, if it doesn't kill you, they say it can only make you stronger

A new translation of Simenon's gripping novel about lives transformed by deceit and the destructive power of lust • It was all real: himself, the room, Andree still lying on the ravaged bed • For Tony and Andree, there are no rules when they meet in the blue room at the Hotel des Voyageurs. Their adulterous affair is intoxicating, passionate - and dangerous. Soon it turns into a nightmare from which there can be no escape. Simenon's stylish and sensual psychological thriller weaves a story of cruelty, reckless lust and relentless guilt

«Распутство и разбой, разбой и распутство – это всегда в моде!» • Вот уже семь лет продолжается Троянская война. Под стенами Трои разбит лагерь греков. В битву возвращается Ахилл, легендарный греческий герой. Тем временем царевич Трои влюбляется в Крессиду, чей отец сбежал во вражеский лагерь. Обмен пленными разлучает влюбленных – как им кажется, навсегда… • «Троил и Крессида» – это пьеса Шекспира, вдохновленная одноименной поэмой Чосера и гомеровской «Илиадой». Книга содержит вступление Колина Барроу, введение в биографию Шекспира и театр елизаветинской эпохи, хронологию творчества писателя, рекомендации для дальнейшего чтения, эссе об адаптациях в кино и театре и комментарии к пьесе • По мотивам произведения было снято несколько фильмов • Книга на английском языке

«О, кто гнуснее может быть, чем тот, • Кто друга в бездну горя низведет?» • Тимон Афинский растрачивает все свое состояние и погрязает в долгах. Однако перспектива окончательно обнищать его не пугает: он надеется, что друзья, которым он так часто помогал, отплатят ему тем же. Но теперь, когда Тимон оказался в затруднительном положении, их обещания ничего не значат… • «Жизнь Тимона Афинского» – это пьеса Шекспира, сочетающая в себе как оптимизм, так и пессимизм; это трагикомедия, сатира, крик души от боли и несправедливости… • Книга содержит введение в биографию Шекспира и театр елизаветинской эпохи, вступление к пьесе, хронологию творчества писателя, рекомендации для дальнейшего чтения, эссе об адаптациях в кино и театре и комментарии к пьесе • По мотивам произведения было снято несколько фильмов

The poems of Emily Jane Brontл are passionate and powerful works that convey the vitality of the human spirit and of the natural world. Only twenty-one of her poems were published during her lifetime - this volume contains those and all others attributed to her. Many poems describe the mythic country of Gondal and its citizens that she imagined with Anne, and remain the only surviving record of their joint creation. Other visionary works, including 'Remembrance' and 'No coward soul is mine', boldly confront mortality and anticipate life after death. And poems such as 'Redbreast early in the morning' and 'The blue bell is the sweetest flower' evoke the wild beauties of nature she observed on the Yorkshire moors, while also examining the state of her psyche

'It is an old maxim of mine that when you have excluded the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.' • Sherlock Holmes, scourge of criminals everywhere, whether they be lurking in London's foggy backstreets or plotting behind the walls of an idyllic country mansion, and his faithful colleague Dr Watson solve twelve breathtaking and perplexing mysteries • In The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, the first collection of the great consulting detective's cases, we encounter some of his most famous and devilishly difficult problems, including A Scandal in Bohemia, The Speckled Band, The Red-Headed League, The Blue Carbuncle, The Five Orange Pips and The Man with the Twisted Lip

The infamous literary hoax that fooled the art world • On January 8 1960, artist Nat Tate set out to burn his entire life's work. Four days later he jumped off a Staten Island ferry, killing himself. His body was never found • When William Boyd published his biography of Abstract Expressionist Nat Tate, tributes poured in from a whole host of artists and critics in the New York art world. They toasted the troubled genius in a Manhattan launch party attended by David Bowie and Gore Vidal • But Nat Tate never existed. The book was a hoax • Will Boyd's biography of a fake artist is a brilliant probe into the politics of authenticity and reputation in the modern art scene. It is a playful and intelligent insight into the fascinating, often cryptic world of modern art

The Moonstone is one of the first true works of detective fiction, in which Wilkie Collins established the groundwork for the genre itself. This Penguin Classics edition is edited with an introduction by Sandra Kemp • The Moonstone, a priceless yellow diamond, is looted from an Indian temple and maliciously bequeathed to Rachel Verinder. On her eighteenth birthday, her friend and suitor Franklin Blake brings the gift to her. That very night, it is stolen again. No one is above suspicion, as the idiosyncratic Sergeant Cuff and the Franklin piece together a puzzling series of events as mystifying as an opium dream and as deceptive as the nearby Shivering Sand. The intricate plot and modern technique of multiple narrators made Wilkie Collins's 1868 work a huge success in the Victorian sensation genre

The Penguin English Library Edition of The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins • 'Here was our quiet English house suddenly invaded by a devilish Indian Diamond - bringing after it a conspiracy of living rogues, set loose on us by the vengeance of a dead man' • When Rachel Verinder's birthday present - the Moonstone, a large Indian diamond - is stolen at her party, suspicion and the diamond's mysterious curse seem set to ruin everyone and everything she loves. Only Sergeant Cuff's famous detective skills offer any hope of peace and a future for them all. The intricate plot and modern technique of multiple narrators made Wilkie Collin's 1868 work a huge success in the Victorian sensation genre. With a reconstruction of the crime, red herrings and a 'locked-room' puzzle, The Moonstone was also a major precursor of the modern mystery novel

The original 'sensation novel', The Woman in White opens with Walter Hartright's eerie encounter with a strange, solitary woman on a moonlit London road. Engaged as a drawing master to the beautiful Laura Fairlie, Walter becomes embroiled in the sinister intrigues of Sir Percival Glyde and his 'charming' friend Count Fosco, who has a taste for white mice, vanilla bonbons and poison. Pursuing questions of identity and insanity along the corridors of English country mansions and the madhouse, this is the first and most influential of the Victorian genre that combined Gothic horror with psychological realism