Penguin The Shadow Friend North Alex

If it had happened to you, you would have run away too • Twenty-five years ago, Paul's friend Charlie Crabtree brutally killed their classmate - and then vanished without a trace • Paul's never forgiven himself for his part in what happened. He's never gone back home • Until his elderly mother has a fall. It's finally time to stop running • It's not long before things start to go wrong. His mother claims there's someone in the house. Paul realises someone is following him. And, in a town many miles away, a copycat killer has struck • Which makes him wonder - what really happened to Charlie the day of the murder? • And can anyone stop it happening again?

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

A new translation of this gripping domestic tragedy, set in Simenon's very own neighbourhood • One by one the lighted windows went dark. The silhouette of the dead man could still be seen through the frosted glass like a Chinese shadow puppet. A taxi pulled up. It wasn't the public prosecutor yet. A young woman crossed the courtyard with hurried steps, leaving a whiff of perfume in her wake • Summoned to the dimly-lit Place des Vosges one night, where he sees shadowy figures at apartment windows, Maigret uncovers a tragic story of desperate lives, unhappy families, addiction and a terrible, fatal greed • Penguin is publishing the entire series of Maigret novels in new translations. This novel has been published in previous translations as Maigret Mystified and The Shadow in the Courtyard

A young and inexperienced sea captain finds that his first command leaves him with a ship stranded in tropical seas and a crew smitten with fever. As he wrestles with his conscience and with the increasing sense of isolation that he experiences, the captain crosses the ‘shadow-line’ between youth and adulthood. In many ways an autobiographical narrative, Conrad's novella was written at the start of the Great War when his son Borys was at the Western Front, and can be seen as an attempt to open humanity’s eyes to the qualities needed to face evil and destruction

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 Steppe and Other Stories 1887-91 is a collection that reveals Anton Chekhov's evolution from a novice writer to a master of short narrative form. This Penguin Classics edition is translated by Ronald Wilks with an introduction by Donald Rayfield • This collection of Chekhov's finest early writing is headlined by 'The Steppe', which established his reputation, telling the unforgettable tale of a boy's journey to a new school in Kiev, travelling through majestic landscapes towards an unknown destiny. 'Gusev' depicts an ocean voyage, where the sea takes on a terrifying, primeval power; 'The Kiss' portrays a shy soldier's failed romantic encounter; and in 'The Duel' two men's enmity ends in farce. Haunting and highly atmospheric, all the stories in this volume show a writer emerging from the shadow of his masters - great Russian writers such as Leo Tolstoy, Ivan Turgenev and Nikolai Gogol - and discovering his own voice

The bestselling author of Getting Rid of Matthew and My Sweet Revenge tells the story of a woman living in her sister's shadow • When it comes to genes, life is a lottery • Abi knows that all too well, having spent her life in the shadow of her beautiful, glamorous older sister Cleo • Headhunted as a model at sixteen, Cleo has been all but lost to Abi for twenty years. So when Abi is invited to spend the summer with her sister's perfect family, she says yes. Maybe Cleo is finally as keen as Abi to regain their childhood closeness? • But Abi is in for a shock. Soon she's left in charge of her two spoilt nieces and her handsome, unhappy brother-in-law. As she moves into her sister's life, a cuckoo in the nest, Abi wrestles with uncomfortable feelings

Setting off in his hometown, and ending up 'almost at the end of the world', Paul Theroux's The Old Patagonian Express is a travel writing tour de force from one of the masters of the genre contains a new preface by the author in Penguin Modern Classics • 'The journey, not the arrival, matters' • The Old Patagonian Expresstells of Paul Theroux's train journey down the length of North and South America. Beginning on Boston's subway, he depicts a voyage from ice-bound Massachusetts to the arid plateau of Argentina's most southerly tip, via pretty Central American towns and the ancient Incan city of Macchu Pichu. Shivering and sweating by turns as the temperature and altitude rise and plummet, he describes the people he encountered - thrown in with the tedious, and unavoidable, Mr Thornberry in Limon and reading to the legendary blind writer, Jorge Luis Borges, in Buenos Aires

Spring, 1953. The sun is shining on Little Green Street, the bunting is being brought out, and Britain is getting ready to crown its new Queen • For Helen Jones, whose father died on the same day as the old king, the coronation might just represent a fresh start. Her husband Tad, organiser of the local street party, is determined to put a smile back on her face • Whereas for Emlyn Hughes, who has secretly admired beautiful single mother Nancy for years, the sudden festive spirit might just be the prompt he needs to finally confess his feelings • As the cakes are baked and the national anthem is rehearsed, the street is finally ready to cast aside the shadow of war for a moment of true joy • But Emlyn and Tad's plans are shaken by the arrival of an unexpected letter and an unwelcome guest

Alec Leamas is tired. It's the 1960s, he's been out in the cold for years, spying in the shadow of the Berlin Wall for his British masters. Now Control wants to bring him in at last - but only after one final assignment. He must travel deep into the heart of Communist Germany and betray his country, a job that he will do with his usual cynical professionalism. But when George Smiley tries to help a young woman Leamas has befriended, it may prove the worst thing he could ever have done • Le Carre's breakthrough work of 1963 was an award-winning number one global bestseller and brought him international renown, redefining the spy story as a gritty and terrible tale of men who are caught up in politics beyond their imagining

"For a time I believed that mankind had been swept out of existence, and that I stood there alone, the last man left alive." • When an alien capsule lands on Horsell Common, Woking, crowds of astonished onlookers gather. But wonder soon turns to terror when the Martians emerge. Armed with deadly heat rays, the aliens begin their conquest of earth. Confronted by powers beyond our control, a technology far in advance of our own, and a race of alien invaders which regard us as no more than ants, humankind faces extinction • While the world crumbles under the shadow of the Martian menace, one man sets out alone across the desolate wasteland to find his wife

Mahmood Mattan is a fixture in Cardiff's Tiger Bay, 1952, which bustles with Somali and West Indian sailors, Maltese businessmen and Jewish families. He is a father, chancer, some-time petty thief. He is many things, in fact, but he is not a murderer • So when a shopkeeper is brutally killed and all eyes fall on him, Mahmood isn't too worried. It is true that he has been getting into trouble more often since his Welsh wife Laura left him. But Mahmood is secure in his innocence in a country where, he thinks, justice is served • It is only in the run-up to the trial, as the prospect of freedom dwindles, that it will dawn on Mahmood that he is in a terrifying fight for his life - against conspiracy, prejudice and the inhumanity of the state. And, under the shadow of the hangman's noose, he begins to realise that the truth may not be enough to save him