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In Going Solo, the world's favourite storyteller, Roald Dahl, tells of life as a fighter pilot in Africa.'They did not think for one moment that they would find anything but a burnt-out fuselage and a charred skeleton, and they were astounded when they came upon my still-breathing body lying in the sand nearby.' In 1938 Roald Dahl was fresh out of school and bound for his first job in Africa, hoping to find adventure far from home. However, he got far more excitement than he bargained for when the outbreak of the Second World War led him to join the RAF. His account of his experiences in Africa, crashing a plane in the Western Desert, rescue and recovery from his horrific injuries in Alexandria, flying a Hurricane as Greece fell to the Germans, and many other daring deeds, recreates a world as bizarre and unnerving as any he wrote about in his fiction. 'Very nearly as grotesque as his fiction. The same compulsive blend of wide-eyed innocence and fascination with danger and horror' Evening Standard 'A non-stop demonstration of expert raconteurship' The New York Times Book Review. Roald Dahl, the brilliant and worldwide acclaimed author of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, James and the Giant Peach, Matilda, and many more classics for children, also wrote scores of short stories for adults. These delightfully disturbing tales have often been filmed and were most recently the inspiration for the West End play, Roald Dahl's Twisted Tales by Jeremy Dyson. Roald Dahl's stories continue to make readers shiver today.

Een in Europa wonende Amerikaanse psychiater trouwt met een van zijn patienten, wier schizofrenie hij weet te genezen, hetgeen echter tot zijn eigen ondergang leidt.

A novel that studies the moral disintegration of a man whose obsessive desire to possess his step-daughter, Dolores Haze, destroys the lives of those around him.

With an Introduction, Notes and Bibliography by Michael Irwin, Emeritus Professor of English, University of Kent, Canterbury.

The young Thomas Hardy, working as an architect, but fired with literary ambition, tried for years to get into print. He finally succeeded with Desperate Remedies, a 'sensation novel' in the mode of Wilkie Collins. Here was a racy specimen of the genre, replete with sudden death, dark mysteries, intriguing clues, fire and storm, flight and pursuit.

Anyone who enjoys The Woman in White is likely to enjoy Desperate Remedies. But that is only half the story. Hardy contrived also, in this unlikely context, to give a first airing to various of the ideas and technical experiments which were to characterise his later fiction. The result is an exhilaratingly uneven work: at any point in the narrative some brilliant passage of description or metaphor may burst out like a firework. Desperate Remedies can be relished both for what it is and for what it promises.

One of the most moving accounts of being a boy ever written, My Childhood is a both wonderful and harrowing memoir - and one of the great works of Russian literature. A new series of twenty distinctive, unforgettable Penguin Classics in a beautiful new design and pocket-sized format, with coloured jackets echoing Penguin's original covers.

'Who could read the programme for the excursion without longing to make one of the party?'

So Mark Twain acclaims his voyage from New York City to Europe and the Holy Land in June 1867. His adventures produced The Innocents Abroad, a book so funny and provocative it made him an international star for the rest of his life. He was making his first responses to the Old World - to Paris, Milan, Florence, Venice, Pompeii, Constantinople, Sebastopol, Balaklava, Damascus, Jerusalem, Nazareth, and Bethlehem.For the first time he was seeing the great paintings and sculptures of the 'Old Masters'. He responded with wonder and amazement, but also with exasperation, irritation, disbelief. Above all he displayed the great energy of his humour, more explosive for us now than for his beguiled contemporaries.

On a sunny day in June, Clarissa Dalloway, elegant and vivacious, is getting ready for a party and exulting in the vibrant swell of London. As Clarissa's preparations take her from the golden morning to the glittering evening, she muses on the choices she made as a young woman, the romances that have enriched her life, and the passage of time. In another part of London, war hero Septimus Smith is suffering from shell shock - what we would now term PTSD - and is haunted by the death of his friend. He finds himself teetering on the brink of madness, unable to leave his wounds behind. Over the course of a single day, the lives of Clarissa and Septimus will interweave and finally converge as the party reaches its climax.

With the publication of her first novel, THE HEART IS A LONELY HUNTER, Carson McCullers, all of twenty-three, became a literary sensation. With its profound sense of moral isolation and its compassionate glimpses into its characters' inner lives, the novel is considered McCullers' finest work, an enduring masterpiece first published by Houghton Mifflin in 1940. At its center is the deaf-mute John Singer, who becomes the confidant for various types of misfits in a Georgia mill town during the 1930s. Each one yearns for escape from small town life. When Singer's mute companion goes insane, Singer moves into the Kelly house, where Mick Kelly, the book's heroine (and loosely based on McCullers), finds solace in her music. Wonderfully attuned to the spiritual isolation that underlies the human condition, and with a deft sense for racial tensions in the South, McCullers spins a haunting, unforgettable story that gives voice to the rejected, the forgotten, and the mistreated -- and, through Mick Kelly, gives voice to the quiet, intensely personal search for beauty.
Richard Wright praised Carson McCullers for her ability "to rise above the pressures of her environment and embrace white and black humanity in one sweep of apprehension and tenderness." She writes "with a sweep and certainty that are overwhelming," said the NEW YORK TIMES. McCullers became an overnight literary sensation, but her novel has endured, just as timely and powerful today as when it was first published. THE HEART IS A LONELY HUNTER is Carson McCullers at her most compassionate, endearing best.

By turns romantic and harshly realistic, Hemingway's story of a tragic romance set against the brutality and confusion of World War I cemented his fame as a stylist and as a writer of extraordinary literary power. A volunteer ambulance driver and a beautiful English nurse fall in love when he is wounded on the Italian front. The best American novel to emerge from World War I, A Farewell to Arms is the unforgettable story of an American ambulance driver on the Italian front and his passion for a beautiful English nurse. Hemingway's frank portrayal of the love between Lieutenant Henry and Catherine Barkley, caught in the inexorable sweep of war, glows with an intensity unrivaled in modern literature, while his description of the German attack on Caporetto -- of lines of fired men marching in the rain, hungry, weary, and demoralized -- is one of the greatest moments in literary history. A story of love and pain, of loyalty and desertion, A Farewell to Arms, written when he was 30 years old, represents a new romanticism for Hemingway.

Explosive, subversive, wild and funny, 50 years on the novel's strength is undiminished. Reading Joseph Heller's classic satire is nothing less than a rite of passage.

Set in the closing months of World War II, this is the story of a bombardier named Yossarian who is frantic and furious because thousands of people he has never met are trying to kill him. His real problem is not the enemy - it is his own army which keeps increasing the number of missions the men must fly to complete their service. If Yossarian makes any attempts to excuse himself from the perilous missions then he is caught in Catch-22: if he flies he is crazy, and doesn't have to; but if he doesn't want to he must be sane and has to. That's some catch...

Powerful and political, with unforgettable characters and timeless themes, The World According to Garp is John Irving's breakout novel. The precursor of Irving's later protest novels, it is the story of Jenny, an unmarried nurse who becomes a single mom and a feminist leader, beloved but polarizing--and of her son, Garp, less beloved, but no less polarizing.

From the tragicomic tone of its first sentence to its mordantly funny last line -- "we are all terminal cases" -- The World According to Garp maintains a breakneck pace. The subject of sexual hatred and violence -- of intolerance of sexual minorities, and sexual differences -- runs through the book, as relevant now as ever. Available in more than forty countries -- with more than ten million copies in print -- Garp is a comedy with forebodings of doom.

A wild ride inside the glowing head of Dennis Rodman--the NBA's greatest rebounder and America's most outspoken and outrageous athlete.
When "Sports Illustrated put the man they call "America's most provocative athlete" on their cover, they sold more copies than any other issue they had sold in a decade (except the swimsuit issue). Why? Because Dennis Rodman, superstar basketball player who joined the Chicago Bulls for the 1996 season, has more in common with Mick Jagger than with his new teammate Michael Jordan. With his body-covering tattoos and ever-changing fluorescent hair, Rodman's sideline antics and celebrated benchings have captivated sports fans as much as his record-breaking on-court performances and earned him a reputation as a rebel with the same penchant for shocking behavior as his on-again off-again squeeze, Madonna. In "Bad As I Wanna Be he'll share his surprising and candid opinions on everything from fame, money, and race relations, to sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll--and he'll talk about his life, from going to prison for stealing watches to his daughter, the light of his life.
At a time when most celebrities and professional athletes try to control their public personas like politicians and refrain from expressing their true beliefs, Dennis Rodman is a refreshingly unique, uncompromising individual who both transcends his world and refuses to conform to it. "Bad As I Wanna Be is as candid, intriguing, and unforgettable as he is.

Dodgers is a dark, unforgettable coming-of-age journey that recalls the very best of Richard Price, Denis Johnson, and J.D. Salinger.

It is the story of a young LA gang member named East, who is sent by his uncle along with some other teenage boys—including East's hothead younger brother—to kill a key witness hiding out in Wisconsin. The journey takes East out of a city he's never left and into an America that is entirely alien to him, ultimately forcing him to grapple with his place in the world and decide what kind of man he wants to become.
 
Written in stark and unforgettable prose and featuring an array of surprising and memorable characters rendered with empathy and wit, Dodgers heralds the arrival of a major new voice in American fiction.

Richard Brautigan was a literary idol of the 1960s and 1970s whose comic genius and iconoclastic vision of American life caught the imagination of young people everywhere. He came of age during the Haight-Ashbury period and has been called “the last of the Beats.” His early books became required reading for the hip generation, and on its publication Trout Fishing in America became an international bestseller. An indescribable romp, the novel is best summed up in one word: mayonnaise.

This new edition includes an introduction by the poet Billy Collins, who first encountered Brautigan's work as a student in California.

A "New York Times" Bestseller and Whitbread Book of the Year.
Heaney s performance reminds us that "Beowulf," written near the turn of another millennium, was intended to be heard not read.
Composed toward the end of the first millennium of our era, "Beowulf" is the elegiac narrative of the adventures of Beowulf, a Scandinavian hero who saves the Danes from the seemingly invincible monster Grendel and, later, from Grendel s mother. He then returns to his own country and lives to old age before dying in a vivid fight against a dragon.
The poem is about encountering the monstrous, defeating it, and then having to live on in the exhausted aftermath. In the contours of this story, at once remote and uncannily familiar at the end of the twentieth century, Seamus Heaney finds a resonance that summons power to the poetry from deep beneath its surface.
While an abridgment of Heaney s full translation of "Beowulf," Heaney prepared this abridgment himself to read for the BBC program from which this recording is taken."

Covering the decisive moment of the Bolshevik revolution, "Ten Days" revealed the author to be among the first Americans to grasp the true significance of the Revolution and to make the U.S. public aware of it. The book remains acclaimed today. It is published in many countries and in a multitude of languages. This edition, a facsimile of the original 1919 printing was prepared by John Howard Lawson, the late noted film writer who himself made history as, member of the famed "Hollywood Ten." His introduction corrects distortions of Reed and his time presented in other edited versions. Included also are biographical sketches of the main participant, contemporary photographs, a map of Petrograd showing where events took place, prefaces by Lenin and his wife Krupskaya, editorial notes and an index.

In the Britain of the second century, Corinium (modern Cinrencester) is a bustling town, frequented by vagrants and pickpockets. So pavement-maker Libertus is not entirely surprised to witness a stabbing on the street. Luckily the victim, the wealthy decurion Quintas Ulpius, has a personal physician on hand, and tragedy is averted, but not for long. Commanded by his patron, Marcus Spetimus to investigate the attack, Libertus arrives at Quintus's sumptious mansion only moments before the decurion is knifed again, fatally this time.

Henry Biggs, ex-baseball star, is still a celebrity in rural Vermont, where he has ambiguous political ambitions which are encouraged by Ed Cobb, Speaker of the House. And just in case a bit more than encouragement is needed, Ed has a nice little line in blackmail up his sleeve.

With My Education: A Book of Dreams William S. Burroughs pushes on into new territory, once again committing the unspeakable crime of questioning the reality structure. Dreams have always been a rich source of imagery in Burroughs' work. In this book they are a direct and powerful force. Hundreds of dreams - intense, vivid, visionary - form the spiraling core of a unique and haunting journey into perception. Exploring and embodying Burroughs' provocative ideas on writing, painting, consciousness and creativity, My Education is profoundly personal, and may be as close to a memoir as we will see.

Our age is obsessed by the idea of conspiracy. We see it everywhere - from Pearl Harbor to 9/11, from the assassination of John F. Kennedy to the death of Princess Diana. In this age of terrorism, the idea of conspiracy can fuel radical or fringe elements to violence. The author, a journalist, sees a pattern among these inflammatory theories. They use similarly murky methods to insinuate their claims: they link themselves to the supposed conspiracies of the past; they carefully manipulate their evidence, to hide its holes; they rely on the authority of dubious academic sources. Most important, they elevate their believers to an elite, a group of people able to see beyond lies to a higher reality. In this book, the author carefully probes and explodes a dozen of the major conspiracy theories. He examines why people believe them, and makes an argument for a true skepticism: one based on a thorough knowledge of history and a strong dose of common sense--From publisher description.

Roger Scruton argues that to understand adequately the roots of Islamic terrorism, one must understand both the unique historical evolution of the state and the dynamic of globalization. Scruton reveals the philosophical and theological roots of the current clash of civilizations. He addresses issues such as the conflict between Islam and secular law, notions of citizenship, fulfilling the human need for belonging, and why globalization provokes such an apparent desire for revenge against the West in some Islamic minds. Scruton's narrative raises fundamental questions about the West's ability to recover and defend its own religious heritage while limiting the harmful effects of its decadent hyper-individualism and the culture of repudiation it has sparked both within its own societies and the societies it touches. Finally, Scruton calls for the West to re-examine some of its assumptions about such matters as immigration, multiculturalism, progress and prosperity.

Frances Cairncross is the media editor for The Economist magazine. With this book she offers an analysis of the changes taking place in the telecommunications industry and the effects these will have on business and society.