The Bog Baby Willis J Penguin Group

The great error in Rip's composition was an insuperable aversion to all kinds of profitable labour. As an early pioneer of the short story, Irving provides us with a host of memorable characters and haunting landscapes. 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. Washington Irving (1783-1859)

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

The New York Times bestseller - A beautifully written, thought-provoking novel. #1 New York Times bestselling author Kathryn Stockett • In 1940, Iris James is the postmistress in coastal Franklin, Massachusetts. Iris knows more about the townspeople than she will ever say, and believes her job is to deliver secrets. Yet one day she does the unthinkable: slips a letter into her pocket, reads it, and doesn't deliver it • Meanwhile, Frankie Bard broadcasts from overseas with Edward R. Murrow. Her dispatches beg listeners to pay heed as the Nazis bomb London nightly. Most of the townspeople of Franklin think the war can't touch them. But both Iris and Frankie know better • The Postmistress is a tale of two worlds-one shattered by violence, the other willfully na ve-and of two women whose job is to deliver the news, yet who find themselves unable to do so

The Castle is the story of K., the unwanted Land Surveyor who is never to be admitted to the Castle nor accepted in the village, and yet cannot go home. As he encounters dualities of certainty and doubt, hope and fear, and reason and nonsense, K.'s struggles in the absurd, labyrinthine world where he finds himself seem to reveal an inexplicable truth about the nature of existence. Kafka began The Castle in 1922 and it was never finished, yet this, the last of his three great novels, draws fascinating conclusions that make it feel strangely complete

The Yellow House: Van Gogh, Gauguin and Nine Turbulent Weeks in Arles is art critic Martin Gayford's account of the tumultuous nine weeks in which the famous nineteenth century artists Vincent van Gogh and Paul Gauguin shared a house in the small French town of Arles

This is the Orange Prize long listed debut novel by the author of The German Boy. In 1958, in a small Devon village, on an idyllic summer afternoon, two children are drowned. Their parents, Isabel and Robert, are overcome with grief but, as time passes, their tragedy becomes part of the everyday fabric of village life. One summer's day, thirty years later, Anna arrives. She comes to the village on a whim, hoping to start afresh - and, without telling anyone she is pregnant, goes to live with Isabel. For a time the women find solace in each other's company, but the baby's arrival causes powerful feelings of loss and heartbreak to surface, and Anna must question whether Isabel's feelings towards her child are entirely benign

'Strangely enough, I mistook it for a gentleman at first. Fortunately I had my spectacles with me so I could see it was really a nose.' With this pair of absurd, comic stories Gogol indulges his imagination and delights readers. 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

Idleness is the enemy of the soul. Saint Benedict's advice to monks - on everything from correct posture to the value of silence - has offered spiritual guidance to many for fifteen centuries. One of 46 new books in the bestselling Little Black Classics series, to celebrate the first ever Penguin Classic in 1946. Each book gives readers a taste of the Classics' huge range and diversity, with works from around the world and across the centuries - including fables, decadence, heartbreak, tall tales, satire, ghosts, battles and elephants

This is 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

By the waters running through the valleys of Kashmir, teenage boys come to play cricket, talk about girls, and just be. But a few years later, when they are young men and violence grips the region, they are gone. Only the son of the local headman has stayed. He knows his friends have slipped over the border to Pakistan, and turned militant to bear arms against the Indian army. He would like to join them - but he cannot. Instead, put in an impossible position by an Indian army Captain, he must cross into the shadowland between the opposing sides, a ghost walking among the dead. His fate, like that of his lost brothers, unknown

Spain, 1936 and the brink of civil war. Young, poor Sara Quiroga is swept up in a whirlwind romance with her wily love Ramiro. Fleeing Madrid together for Morocco, her love blinds her to his real failings. Soon abandoned, left penniless and in debt to the authorities, she has to rely on the one skill she still possesses: sewing. Taken under the wing of the bullish but caring housekeeper Candelaria, Sara is able to sew for the glamorous foreign English and German women in Tetouan. Privy to their unbridled gossip, Sara becomes invaluable to the British secret service, a position that is filled with untold risk. A tale of danger, espionage, love and war, The Seamstress is a WWII tale like no other

It was on a beautiful morning in June 1973 that eleven-year-old Miller McAllister's world fell apart... That was the weekend that police found the remains of three missing teenage girls on the tiny Scottish island of Fidra. And that was the weekend that Miller's father, Douglas, was arrested for triple murder. Thirty-two years later, Douglas has died in prison and Miller returns home after decades of self-imposed exile. The McAllister family always maintained Douglas' innocence - as steadfastly as Miller maintained his guilt. But when Miller is given the legal archive and a letter his father wrote to him just days before his death, suddenly everything looks less clear. To excavate the past and recover the truth, Miller immerses himself in the terrible events of over thirty years ago and his family's darkest hour