The Penguin Book of the British Short Story 2. From P.G. Wodehouse to Zadie Smith

This exciting collection celebrates the richness and variety of the Spanish short story, from the nineteenth century to the present day • Featuring over fifty stories selected by revered translator Margaret Jull Costa, it blends old favourites and hidden gems - many of which have never before been translated into English - and introduces readers to surprising new voices as well as giants of Spanish literary culture, from Emilia Pardo Bazan and Leopoldo Alas, through Merce Rodoreda and Manuel Rivas, to Ana Maria Matute and Javier Marias • Brimming with romance, horror, history, farce, strangeness and beauty, and showcasing alluring hairdressers, war defectors, vampiric mothers, and talismanic mandrake roots, the daring and entertaining assortment of tales in The Penguin Book of Spanish Short Stories will be a treasure trove for readers

This eclectic, moving and richly enjoyable collection is the essential introduction to Korean literature • Journeying through Korea's dramatic recent past, from the Japanese occupation and colonial era to the devastating war between north and south and the rapid, disorienting urbanization of later decades, The Penguin Book of Korean Short Stories captures a hundred years of vivid storytelling • Here are peddlers and donkeys travelling across moonlit fields; artists drinking and debating in the tea-houses of 1920s Seoul; soldiers fighting for survival; exiles from the war who can never go home again; and lonely men and women searching for connection in the dizzying modern city. The collection features stories by some of Korea's greatest writers, including Pak Wanso, O Chonghui and Cho Chongnae, as well as many brilliant contemporary voices, such as P'yon Hyeyong, Han Yujoo and Kim Aeran

'The Boy-scouts mistook my signal, and have killed the postman. I've had very little practice in this sort of thing, you see' • The British short story tradition is probably the richest, most varied and historically extensive in the world. This new anthology celebrates the full diversity and energy of its writers, subjects and tones, from the story's origins with Defoe, Swift and Fielding, to the 'golden age' of the fin de siecle and Edwardian period, ending with the First World War. Including the most famous authors as well as some magnificent, little-known stories never republished since their first appearance in magazines and periodicals, these stories are by turns topical and playful, ghostly and theatrical, rumbustious and sublime • Edited with an introduction by Philip Hensher

A major new celebration of the French short story across the twentieth century • The short story has a rich tradition in French literature. This feast of an anthology celebrates its most famous practitioners, as well as newly translated writers ready for rediscovery. Here are fables, puzzles, fairy tales, war stories and family histories, testing and expanding the boundaries of the form. They are stories about the self and the other, the centre and the periphery, experimental and existential, real and surreal • The second volume takes the reader through the tumultuous twentieth century in the company of writers including Simone de Beauvoir and Maryse Conde, Patrick Modiano and Virginie Despentes, covering world wars, revolutions, and the horrors of the motorway service station

Jhumpa Lahiri's landmark collection brings together forty writers that reflect over a hundred years of Italy's vibrant and diverse short story tradition, including well known authors such as Italo Calvino, Elsa Morante and Luigi Pirandello, alongside many captivating rediscoveries • Poets, journalists, visual artists, musicians, editors, critics, teachers, scientists, politicians, translators: the writers that inhabit these pages represent a dynamic cross section of Italian society

Рассказ - один из самых широко представленных жанров американской литературы. В этот сборник вошли многие видные образцы жанра, охватывающие период с раннего девятнадцатого века по настоящее время. На его страницах вы найдёте самых разнообразных персонажей, среди которых встречаются заключённые, люди искусства, труженики сельского хозяйства, рабы, солдаты и торговцы, ведьмы и призраки, родичи и возлюбленные. Их истории рассказывают как главные классики Америки (Натаниэль Готорн, Эдит Уортон, Реймонд Карвер...), так и не столь известные авторы, например, Фэнни Ферн или Чарльз Чеснат. Откройте для себя широко известные рассказы (в том числе уморительную "Знаменитую прыгающую лягушку из Калавераса" Марка Твена и жуткое "Сердце-обличитель" Эдгара Алана По) и истории, заслуживающие более широкую аудиторию (например, рассказ Эрнеста Хемингуэя о недопонимании "Вне сезона" и оду современной любви и остроумию из-под пера Лорри Мур)

A major new celebration of the French short story • The short story has a rich tradition in French literature. This feast of an anthology celebrates its most famous practitioners, as well as newly translated writers ready for rediscovery. Here are decadent tales, 'bloody tales', fairy tales, detective stories and war stories. They are stories about the self and the other, husbands, wives and lovers, country and city, rich and poor • The first volume spans four hundred years, taking the reader from the sixteenth century to the 'golden age' of the fin de siecle. Its pages are populated by lovers, phantoms, cardinals, labourers, enchanted statues, gentleman burglars, retired bureaucrats, panthers and parrots, in a cacophony of styles and voices. From the affairs of Madame de Lafayette to the polemic realism of Victor Hugo, the supernatural mystery of Guy de Maupassant to the dark sensuality of Rachilde, this is the place to start for lovers of French literature, new and old

От бунтовщиков до писателей, от спортсменов до астронавтов — присоединяйтесь к Кейт Фокс в увлекательном и поучительном путешествии по жизни этих необыкновенных женщин, чьи жизни и достижения слишком долго были скрыты • От Картимандуа, забытой королевы Севера железного века, до курящей Вудбайн футболистки Лили Парр, Кейт с ее фирменным остроумием и чувством юмора показывает, как эти удивительные первопроходцы заложили основу для современных звезд от Виктории Вуд до Little Mix. Никола Адамс, Бетти Бутройд и Хелен Шарман должны поблагодарить этих невоспетых чемпионов севера за то, что они проложили этот путь • Забавная, поучительная и призывающая к оружию, эта книга идеально подходит для нации, готовой заново открыть для себя своих скрытых героев

The Penguin Book of Card Games is the authoritative up-to-date compendium, describing an abundance of games to be played both for fun and by serious players • Auctions, trumpless hands, cross-ruffing and lurching: card players have a language all of their own. From games of high skill (Bridge) to games of high chance (Newmarket) to trick-taking (Whist) and banking (Pontoon), David Parlett, seasoned specialist in card games, takes us masterfully through the countless games to choose from • Not content to merely show us games with the conventional fifty-two card pack, Parlett covers many games played with other types of cards - are you brave enough to play with Tarot? With a 'working description' of each game, with the rules, variations and origins of each, as well as an appendix of games invented by the author himself, The Penguin Book of Card Games will delight, entertain and inform both the novice and the seasoned player

The completely updated edition of J. M. Roberts and Odd Arne Westad's widely acclaimed, landmark bestseller The Penguin History of the World • For generations of readers The Penguin History of the World has been one of the great cultural experiences - the entire story of human endeavour laid out in all its grandeur and folly, drama and pain in a single authoritative book. Now, for the first time, it has been completely overhauled for its 6th edition - not just bringing it up to date, but revising it throughout in the light of new research and discoveries, such as the revolution in our understanding of many civilizations in the Ancient World. The closing sections of the book reflect what now seems to be the inexorable rise of Asia and the increasingly troubled situation in the West

This delightful book is the latest in the series of Ladybird books which have been specially planned to help grown-ups with the world about them. The large clear script, the careful choice of words, the frequent repetition and the thoughtful matching of text with pictures all enable grown-ups to think they have taught themselves to cope. The subject of the book will greatly appeal to grown-ups. The eight books in the series feature original Ladybird artwork alongside brilliantly funny, brand new text

An anthology of Great War short stories by British writers, both famous and lesser-known authors, men and women, during the war and after its end. These stories are able to illustrate the impact of the Great War on British society and culture and the many modes in which short fiction contributed to the war's literature. The selection covers different periods: the war years themselves, the famous boom years of the late 1920s to the more recent past in which the First World War has received new cultural interest