Penguin The Riverside Villas Murder Эмис Кингсли

In this surreal comedy of soldiers and spies, Lieutenant James Churchill and his colleagues find themselves questioning their purpose. Are they for death or against it? These men of action will travel between the barracks, the lunatic asylum and the house of an aristocratic nymphomaniac in search of answers. For while few know the awful truth about Operation Apollo, the mission they are being trained for, fewer still understand the motives of the powerful psychiatrist Dr Best, who thinks he is surrounded by repressed homosexuals, and none know the identity of the secret agent among them. When the Anti-Death League is founded they are at last offered the chance to rebel and perhaps escape

The Devil's Workshop is the third historical thriller in Alex Grecian's acclaimed Scotland Yard Murder Squad series • April, 1890 • London wakes to the shocking news of a mass prison escape • Walter Day and the Scotland Yard Murder Squad now face a desperate race against time: if the four convicted murderers aren't recaptured before night settles, they'll vanish into the dark alleys of London's criminal underworld for ever • And in the midst of this mayhem and fear the city's worst nightmare is realized: Jack the Ripper haunts the streets of London once more • From The Yard and The Black Country author, Alex Grecian, comes The Devil's Workshop - and the return of Jack the Ripper. Expect another gruesome foray into the underbelly of Victorian Britain and early crime forensics

The short stories of Kingsley Amis - the great master of post-war comic prose - are dark, playful, moving, surprising and extremely funny. This definitive collection gathers all Amis's short fiction in a single volume for the first time and encompasses five decades of storytelling. In 'The 2003 Claret', written in 1958, a time machine is invented for the weighty task of sending a man to 2010 to discover what the booze will taste like. In 'Boris and the Colonel' a Cambridge spy is unearthed in the sleepy English countryside with the help of a plucky horse, while In 'Mason's Life' two men meet inside their respective dreams. The collection spans many genres, offering ingenious alternative histories, mystery and horror, satirical reflections and a devilishly funny attacks

Murder Squad 4: Alongside Jack the Ripper there is another brutal serial killer roaming the streets of Victorian London • Spring 1890 • The spectre of Jack the Ripper still haunts Inspector Walter Day, his injured leg a daily reminder of his violent brush with London's most feared killer. He alone is convinced that the Ripper remains at large • But, worse is to come for Scotland Yard's Murder Squad. A new killer is terrorizing the citizens of London. They call him the Harvest Man; he hides away in the attics of the unsuspecting, emerging at night to terrorize his victims • This macabre new threat requires Inspector Day to confront his demons, but he soon discovers that the Ripper himself continues to toy with Scotland Yard's finest. The game has only just begun

The last novel from the unsurpassed master of American detective fiction, Dashiell Hammett's The Thin Man is a genre-defining mystery novel, published in Penguin Modern Classics • Ex-detective Nick Charles plans to spend a quiet Christmas holed up in a hotel suite with his glamorous wife Nora, their pet Schnauzer and a case of good Scotch. But then a bullet-riddled corpse and a missing inventor (not to mention the attentions of a beautiful young woman) force him out of retirement and back into business. Trying to make sense of false leads, suspicious alibis and mistaken identities, Nick and Nora are thrown into a world of gangsters, hoodlums and speakeasies, where no-one can be trusted. Dashiell Hammett was credited with inventing the hardboiled crime novel, and this story of murder and mayhem in Manhattan, with its breakneck plot, snappy dialogue - and the hard-drinking, wisecracking couple Nick and Nora - is one of his most thrillingly enjoyable mysteries

The Story of the Stone (c.1760) is one of the greatest novels of Chinese literature. The first part of the story, The Golden Days, begins the tale of Bao-yu, a gentle young boy who prefers girls to Confucian studies, and his two cousins: Bao-chai, his parents' choice of a wife for him, and the ethereal beauty Dai-yu. Through the changing fortunes of the Jia family, this rich, magical work sets worldly events - love affairs, sibling rivalries, political intrigues, even murder - within the context of the Buddhist understanding that earthly existence is an illusion and karma determines the shape of our lives

The Portable Poe compiles Poe's greatest writings: tales of fantasy, terror, death, revenge, murder, and mystery, including "The Pit and the Pendulum," "The Fall of the House of Usher," "The Cask of Amontillado," and "The Murders in the Rue Morgue," the world's first detective story. In addition, this volume offers letters, articles, criticism, visionary poetry, and a selection of random "opinions" on fancy and the imagination, music and poetry, intuition and sundry other topics

The Spy is the third of Clive Cussler's brilliant historical thrillers • 1908, and American engineering geniuses are being killed off one by one • When a brilliant battleship gun engineer commits suicide, his disbelieving family turn to legendary Van Dorn Detective Agency. Quickly on the case, Isaac Bell establishes that the clues point not to suicide, but murder • So when further deaths connected to a top-secret project follow, Bell realizes that this is sabotage. With the world plunging towards war, it's clearly a spy at large. But which of the many foreign agents he has encountered is responsible? Or is there a more sinister explanation? • In a blistering story featuring dreadnaught battleships and railroards, criminal gangs and beautiful women, The Spy is a breathtaking thriller that just happens to have at stake the fate of the world

The thirteenth-century is just begun and King John has fallen out with the Pope, leaving babies to lie unbaptized in their cradles and corpses in unconsecrated ground. Across a fear-ravaged England, the people are dying in sin • In the village of Gastmere, this has shocking consequences for servant girl Elena. Unwittingly drawn into a macabre scheme to absolve dying Lord Gerard of his crimes, death and betrayal haunt her dreams like a curse • And when Elena is threatened with hanging for a murder she did not commit, it is certain that unnatural conspiracy lies behind these dark deeds. But where can she turn? For in every face lies wickedness and in every shadow lurks treachery

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 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