Penguin The Gold-Rimmed Spectacles Bassani Giorgio

A new translation of Giorgio Bassani's haunting collection of short stories that evoke 1930s Ferrara, with an introduction by Ali Smith • Isolated lives and a lost world are evoked in these memorable stories set in the Jewish-Italian community of 1930s Ferrara. A young man's unrequited love; a strange disappearance; a faded hotel; a lonely funfair; the smell of mown hay at the gates of the Jewish Cemetery - these vivid, impressionistic snapshots build a picture of life's brevity and intensity. Part of the sequence including The Gold-Rimmed Spectacles and The Garden of the Finzi-Continis, and featuring people and places from these novels, The Smell of Hay is told with a voice that is by turns intimate, ironic, elegiac and rueful • This new translation contains two pieces, added by Bassani to his earlier collection, which have never appeared in English before

'It was useless to think I'd ever be able to throw open the door behind which I was yet again hiding ... Not now. Not ever.' • School is a place of unspoken hierarchies and rivalries for a young teenage boy growing up in the provincial town of Ferrara. But as the everyday classroom and playground dramas are played out, they begin to reflect the disturbing undertones of 1930s Italy, and the narrator realizes that being Jewish means he will always be excluded. The fourth book in Bassani's Romanzo di Ferrara cycle, Behind the Door is a luminous portrayal of childhood friendship and the loss of innocence

'It struggled to keep itself aloft, to gain height. But then it suddenly gave up, and dropped as though it were breaking into many pieces' • Early on a cold Sunday morning, forty-five-year-old Edgardo Limentani gets up to join a shooting party in the countryside surrounding the town of Ferrara. As the day passes, he contemplates his past, his disappointments and how he has got here. Like the birds he shoots, he realizes, he is trapped, broken, waiting alone for the final coup de grace. Then he sees a way out • The fifth book in Bassani's Novel of Ferrara sequence, and his final novel, The Heron is a taut, poignant portrait of a middle-aged man's reckoning with his life

Penguin Readers is a graded reading series for English Language Teaching (ELT) markets, designed for teenagers and young adults learning English as a foreign or second language • In Yukon, Canada during the 1890s Klondike Gold Rush, strong sled dogs are in high demand. Buck is stolen from his comfortable home in California and sold into service as a sled dog in Alaska. Will he survive life in the wild? • Penguin Readers is a series of the best new fiction, essential non-fiction and popular classics written for learners of English as a foreign language. Beautifully illustrated and carefully adapted, the series introduces language learners around the world to the bestselling authors and most compelling content from Penguin Random House. The eight levels of Penguin Readers follow the Common European Framework and include language activities that help readers to develop key skills

The Tombs is the thrilling fourth Fargo adventure by Clive Cussler • It's a prize beyond imagination • When an archaeologist excavating a top secret historical site realizes the magnitude of his discovery he requests help from treasure hunters Sam and Remi Fargo. And in rushing to join him, the husband and wife team are thrown into their most daring quest to date • The clues point to the hidden tomb of Attila the Hun, the High King who was reportedly buried with a vast fortune of gold and jewels and plunder, a bounty that has never been found • But as Sam and Remi piece together the puzzle, the trail takes them through Hungary, Italy, France, Russia, and Kazakhstan and not to a single tomb, but five. And into the path of deadly danger. They are not the only ones hunting for the High King's riches

The Penguin English Library Edition of The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad • 'Madness and despair! Give me that for a lever, and I'll move the world' • In the only novel Conrad set in London, The Secret Agent communicates a profoundly ironic view of human affairs. The story is woven around an attack on the Greenwich Observatory in 1894 masterminded by Verloc, a Russian spy working for the police, and ostensibly a member of an anarchist group in Soho. His masters instruct him to discredit the anarchists in a humiliating fashion, and when his evil plan goes horribly awry, Verlac must deal with the repercussions of his actions • The Penguin English Library - 100 editions of the best fiction written in English, from the eighteenth century and the very first novels, to the beginning of the First World War

The Penguin English Library Edition of The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot • If life had no love in it, what else was there for Maggie? • Tragic and moving, The Mill on the Floss is a novel of grand passions and tormented lives. As the rebellious Maggie's fiery spirit and imaginative nature bring her into bitter conflict with her narrow provincial family, most painfully with her beloved brother Tom, their fates are played out on an epic scale. George Eliot drew on her own frustrated rural upbringing to create one of the great novels of childhood, and one of literature's most unforgettable heroines • The Penguin English Library - 100 editions of the best fiction in English, from the eighteenth century and the very first novels to the beginning of the First World War

The Penguin English Library Edition of The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells • 'Death!' I shouted. 'Death is coming! Death!' • In this pioneering, shocking and nightmarish tale, naive suburban Londoners investigate a strange cylinder from space, but are instantly incinerated by an all-destroying heat-ray. Soon, gigantic killing machines that chase and feed on human prey are threatening the whole of humanity. A pioneering work of alien invasion fiction, The War of the World's journalistic style contrasts disturbingly with its horrifying visions of the human race under siege • The Penguin English Library - 100 editions of the best fiction in English, from the eighteenth century and the very first novels to the beginning of the First World War

The Penguin English Library Edition of The Five Orange Pips and Other Cases by Arthur Conan Doyle • 'He is the Napoleon of crime, Watson ... He sits motionless, like a spider in the centre of its web, but that web has a thousand radiations, and he knows well every quiver of each of them' • 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 these breathtaking and perplexing mysteries. In Arthur Conan Doyle's The Five Orange Pips and Other Cases we encounter some of his most famous and devilishly difficult problems • The Penguin English Library - 100 editions of the best fiction in English, from the eighteenth century and the very first novels to the beginning of the First World War

The Penguin English Library edition of The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James • 'She knew of no wrong that he had done; he was not violent, he was not cruel; she simply believed that he hated her' • When Isabel Archer, a beautiful, spirited American, is brought to Europe by her wealthy aunt Touchett, it is expected that she will soon marry. But Isabel, resolved to enjoy her freedom, does not hesitate to turn down two eligible suitors. Then she finds herself irresistibly drawn to Gilbert Osmond. Charming and cultivated, Osmond sees Isabel as a rich prize waiting to be taken. In this portrait of a 'young woman affronting her destiny', Henry James created one of his most magnificent heroines, and a story of intense poignancy • The Penguin English Library - 100 editions of the best fiction in English, from the eighteenth century and the very first novels to the beginning of the First World War

The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. Marx and Engels' revolutionary summons to the working classes - one of the most important and influential political theories ever formulated. Introducing Little Black Classics: 80 books for Penguin's 80th birthday. Little Black Classics celebrate the huge range and diversity of Penguin Classics, with books from around the world and across many centuries. They take us from a balloon ride over Victorian London to a garden of blossom in Japan, from Tierra del Fuego to 16th-century California and the Russian steppe. Here are stories lyrical and savage; poems epic and intimate; essays satirical and inspirational; and ideas that have shaped the lives of millions. Karl Marx (1818-1883) and Friedrich Engels (1820-1895)

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