When last we saw Viktor, in the final pages of Death & the Penguin, he was taking his seat aboard the Expedition to Antarctica plane, fearing for his life. Meanwhile, Penguin Misha was left abandoned in a clinic recovering from a heart transplant. Now, in Penguin Lost, we join Viktor for his brief stay in & escape from Antarctica to discover that, characteristically, he has fallen on his feet. Visiting, on his return to Kiev, Penguinologist Pidpaly's grave, Viktor mistakes an elusive child in white shirt & black shorts for Misha on funeral duty. He is first interrogated & then befriended by a Mafia boss who, while burying his contract-killed son-in-law, is also running for election as People's Deputy. Viktor helps in his campaign, & is rewarded with introductions to those able to further his desperate search for Misha, said to be in the zoo of the murderous Chechen Khachayev. For Viktor, it is both a quest & an odyssey of atonement; for the reader, an experience as rich, topical & black-humouredly illuminating as Death & the Penguin. ...

Milo's mum has laid an Egg, & it's due to hatch at any time. So when Mum has to go on a food-finding expedition, Dad has to look after the Egg. So it's up to Milo to deliver the Penguin Post mail. He delivers parcels of all shapes & sizes to all sorts of animals. As he is delivering the last parcel he realises there's an extra package in the mailbag, one that he needs to get home as quickly as he can... ...

The death of Adam Penhallow on the eve of his birthday seems, at first, to be by natural causes. He was elderly after all. But Penhallow wasn't well liked. He had ruled over his estate with an iron will & a sharp tongue. He had played one relative off against another. He was so bad tempered & mean that both his servants & his family hated him.

It soon transpires that far from being a peaceful death, Penhallow was, in fact, murdered. Poisoned. With his family gathered to celebrate his birthday, & servants that both feared & despised him, there are more than a dozen prime suspects. But which one of them turned hatred into murder?

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The death of Adam Penhallow on the eve of his birthday seems, at first, to be by natural causes. He was elderly after all. But Penhallow wasn't well liked. He had ruled over his estate with an iron will & a sharp tongue. He had played one relative off against another. He was so bad tempered & mean that both his servants & his family hated him.

It soon transpires that far from being a peaceful death, Penhallow was, in fact, murdered. Poisoned. With his family gathered to celebrate his birthday, & servants that both feared & despised him, there are more than a dozen prime suspects. But which one of them turned hatred into murder?

...

The original Boogie, reluctant hero of the South West Peninsular Path, was the Mongrel from hell. Mark Wallington's New Boogie, like New Labour, appears a much trendier & more wholesome incarnation -until, that is, Mark gets him on the Pennine Way. This is the big one in every sense. Clearly Boogie will do fine -but will Mark be up to the task? ...

If we thought we could get away with it, this would be called ' Tails of the City'-It's a witty, warm, wonderfully eccentric novel which like Maupin's throws an irresistible concoction of San Francisco characters & life together, this time in a park & with their dogs. Inevitably the owners grow like their dogs, if they aren't already; they (that's the owners) pour out their souls to strangers in the park; they fall in love, requited & unrequited; they write poetry; they grow old, they worry, have affairs, learn French, cooking, horticulture
- life, with its ups & downs like the San Francisco streets, goes on- for Tobin, the ex-hippie poet gardener, who holds it all together; & for skinny Hillary Birdwood with her thick specs & wild silver retriever Tess; for the saturnine & sexy psychiatrist & his unlikely corgi; for Jake & his Aghan trio; for Anna Leone & Dr Hawthorne with Posy the bichon fries & Romeo the rottweiler; & Nigel, Chantal & Roger the standard poodle, & a whole host of others & their pooches
- all set against the irresistible backdrop of one of the most enticing & evocative cities in the world.

...

At the beginning of the twentieth century soccer was widely accepted as the most popular game in the western world. In the space of a few decades it had become the most widely supported team game in Britain, watched & played by more boys & men than any other sport. Yet here was a game with strong traditional folk-roots; a game with a history which stretched back to the late Middle Ages. In the course of the nineteenth century football was transformed, mainly within the British public schools, to become the codified & disciplined game of urban working men. The passion for the game spread from one town to another; a passion which, though familiar today, was new in the years after 1870. Thereafter the game rapidly spread to much of the world: in Europe, South America & a host of other societies. This book tells the story of the rise of this remarkable British game
- & the way it became the game of the masses across the world. In the wealth of literature about football published in recent years, no other book provides so concise & colourful an account as THE PEOPLES GAME. First published in 1975, this new edition has been rewritten to incorporate the findings of scholars & writers on the game over the past 20 years.
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