This is the story of King Midas... Or that's what we were always told. The Golden King with his palace of riches and me, his golden touched girl. I'm kept locked away. For my safety, I'm told. No one can get in. Apart from him. But when political upheaval becomes strife in our kingdom, I am sent with the royal court to be with my King. And everything I know starts to change.
I've left the grips of one king to fall into the hands of another. Rip's name is whispered in taverns and street corners throughout the kingdoms. But as I get to know him, I realise he is not what he seems... He is Fae. Part of the powerful and magical people who abandoned this world hundreds of years ago. But here one stands before me. And when he turns his onyx eyes u
Over a span of seven decades, Charles Handy was, variously, a businessman, a writer, a philanthropist and a philosopher. Not even a stroke as he approached the age of 90 dimmed his intellectual curiosity or his immense zest for life.
In this, his final book, written from the vantage point of a contemplative old age and drawing on his articles for The Idler, he shares his thoug
2014: A great poem is read aloud and never heard again. For generations, people speculate about its message, but no copy has yet been found. 2119: The lowlands of the UK have been submerged by rising seas. Those who survive are haunted by the richness of the world that has been lost. Tom Metcalfe, an academic at the University of the South Downs, part of Britain’s remaining island archipe
Startling in its revelations, disturbing in its implications - a thriller of gripping intensity and immense literary power. Two violent deaths in the Swedish wilderness; the hurried flight of a sinister stranger: terrible events long buried in Annie Raft's memory - until she sees her daughter in the arms of the man she believes responsible for the killings...
Far from the gentle slopes of the Hundred Acre Wood lies The Red House, the setting for A.A Milne's only detective story, where secret passages, uninvited guests, a sinister valet and a puzzling murder lay the foundations for a classic crime caper.
Jeanette is adopted and brought up by her mother as one of God's elect. Zealous and passionate, she seems destined for life as a missionary, but then she falls for one of her converts. At sixteen, Jeanette decides to leave the church, her home and her family, for the young woman she loves.
Modern life can be baffling and chaotic. Is there any way of making sense of it? The answer, explains groundbreaking thinker Steven Levitt, lies in economics. Not ordinary economics, but freakonomics. It is at the heart of everything we see and do and the subjects that bedevil us daily: from parenting to crime, sport to politics, fat to cheating, fear to traffic jams. In Freakonomics Levitt turns
Virginia Woolf's blazing polemic on female creativity, the role of writers and the silent fate of Shakespeare's imaginary sister remains a powerful reminder of a woman's need for financial independence and intellectual freedom.
This is the "Penguin English Library Edition" of "Oliver Twist" by Charles Dickens. 'A parish child - the orphan of a workhouse - the humble, half-starved drudge - to be cuffed and buffeted through the world, despised by all, and pitied by none'. Dark, mysterious and mordantly funny, "Oliver Twist" features some of the most memorably drawn villains in all of fiction - the treacherous gangmaster F
The Penguin English Library Edition of Persuasion by Jane Austen'Her attachment and regrets had, for a long time, clouded every enjoyment of youth; and an early loss of bloom and spirits had been their lasting effect'Persuasion, Jane Austen's last novel, is a moving, masterly and elegiac love story tinged with the heartache of missed opportunities.
Horror, madness, violence and the dark forces hidden in humanity abound in this tales, including - among others - the bloody, brutal and baffling murder of a mother and daughter in Paris in "The Murders in the Rue Morgue", the creeping insanity of "The Tell-Tale Heart", and the Gothic nightmare of "The Masque of the Red Death".
The Penguin English Library Edition of Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe'I walk'd about on the shore, lifting up my hands, and my whole being, as I may say, wrapt up in the contemplation of my deliverance ... reflecting upon all my comrades that were drown'd, and that there should not be one soul sav'd but my self ...
The Penguin English Library Edition of A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens'Liberty, equality, fraternity, or death; - the last, much the easiest to bestow, O Guillotine!'Described by Dickens as 'the best story I have written', A Tale of Two Cities interweaves thrilling historical drama with heartbreaking personal tragedy.
Lockwood, the new tenant of Thrushcross Grange on bleak Yorkshire moors, is forced to seek shelter one night at Wuthering Heights, the home of his landlord. There he discovers the history of the tempestuous events that took place years before: of the intense passion between the foundling Heathcliff and Catherine Earnshaw, and her betrayal of him.