'I will go in out of this dust & heat out of this dry glitter of vanity out of these toilsome futilities I will go & never return' Three disturbing mysterious & moving stories from Wells science-fiction pioneer Introducing Little Black Classics 80 books for Penguin's 80th birthday Little Black Classics celebrate the huge range & diversity of Penguin Classics with books from around the world & 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 & the Russian steppe Here are stories lyrical & savage; poems epic & intimate; essays satirical & inspirational; & ideas that have shaped the lives of millions H G Wells (1866-1946) Wells's works available in Penguin Classics are Ann Veronica The Country of the Blind & Other Selected Stories The First Men in the Moon The Invisible Man The Island of Doctor Moreau Kipps Love & Mr Lewisham A Modern Utopia The New Machiavelli The Shape of Things to Come A Short History of the World The Sleeper Awakes The Time Machine Tono-Bungay The War in the Air & The War of the Worlds ...

An illustrated collection of 150 tiny stories each told in 140 characters or less 208 pages illustrated Miller James ...

Partly autobiographical this is the third title in Judith Kerr's internationally acclaimed trilogy of books following the life of Anna through war-torn Germany to London during the Blitz & her return to Berlin to discover the past Berlin is where Anna lived before Hitler when she was still a German child; before she spoke a word of English before her family had all become refugees Long before her happy new existence in London But Mama is there dangerously ill Anna is forced to go back to deal with questions of life & death to face old fears & to discover the past which she has so long shut away ...

West Germany a simmering cauldron of radical protests has produced a new danger to Britain Karfeld menacing leader of the opposition At the same time Leo Harting a Second Secretary in the British Embassy has gone missing
- along with more than forty Confidential embassy files Alan Turner of the Foreign Office must travel to Bonn to recover them facing riots Nazi secrets & the delicate machinations of an unstable Europe in the throes of the Cold War As Turner gets closer to the truth of Harting's disappearance he will discover that the face of International relations
- & the attentions of the British Ministry itself
- is uglier that he could possibly have imagined


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One day Colin Grant's teenage brother Christopher failed to emerge from the bathroom His family broke down the door to find him unconscious on the floor None of their lives were ever the same again Christopher was diagnosed with epilepsy In A Smell of Burning Colin Grant tells the remarkable story of this strange & misunderstood disorder He shows us the famous people with epilepsy like Julius Caesar Joan of Arc & Vincent van Gogh the pioneering doctors whose extraordinary breakthroughs finally helped gain an understanding of how the brain works & through the tragic tale of his brother he considers the effect of epilepsy on his own life ...

As read on Radio 4 seven linked stories set in the Christmas holidays
- all as funny joyous poignant & memorable as Christmas should
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Taking its place alongside works by Ernst Junger Robert Graves & Erich Maria Remarque Emilio Lussu's memoir is one of the most affecting accounts to come out of the First World War A classic in Italy but virtually unknown in the English-speaking world it reveals in spare & detached prose the almost farcical side of the war as seen by a Sardinian officer fighting the Austrian army on the Asiago plateau in northeastern Italy the front so poignantly evoked by Ernest Hemingway in A Farewell to Arms For Lussu June 1916 to July 1917 was a year of continuous assaults on impregnable trenches absurd missions concocted by commanders full of patriotic rhetoric & vanity but lacking in tactical skill & episodes often tragic & sometimes grotesque where the incompetence of his own side was as dangerous as the attacked waged by the enemy A rare firsthand account of the Italian front Lussu's memoir succeeds in staging a fierce indictment of the futility of war in a dry often ironic style that sets his tale wholly apart from the Western Front of Remarque & adds an astonishingly modern voice to the literature of the Great War ...

Sammy is a football crazy rescue puppy Mouser is a fearless grey tabby Together they make an unlikely pair that won't be parted not even by the First World War As the war rages in Europe Londoners are sending brave animals to help the soldiers
- & Mouser & Sammy are soon on their way to the trenches 336 pages Rix Megan
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Based on the real life of Bridget Mary Larkin aka Tipperary Mary We journey back to Ireland to follow the story of a young girl growing up without her father who dies before she is born At the age of 15 she finds the body of her stepfather a man with a history of mental illness who has hanged himself in the family home leaving behind his natural daughter (Bridget's half-sister Philomena) Following the death of her mother Bridget finds love with a local lad Bill But when her brother
- now head of the household
- discovers the relationship he stops it threatening Bill
- then beating & raping Bridget Bill is forced to flee to England while Bridget endures a terrible life at home at the hands of her brother Finally after giving birth to her brother's child at a single mother's institution she has her child removed for adoption & she flees to England in search of Bill & a new life She eventually tracks him down
- & they fall into each other's arms However Bill is now married with a child of his own They begin an affair & she adopts his surname
- but Bill wracked with guilt returns to his wife Now pregnant with Bill's child Bridget's drinking becomes worse As her life spirals out of control
- her daughter Phyllis (named after her beloved young half-sister Philomena) is born Bridget holds onto the child she has had with the love her life for as long as she can
- but is finally forced to let her go Will they ever meet again?






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Sunday Times Crime Book of the Month August 2015 The wronged do not rest in peace Marsac is a quiet town in the Pyrenees best known for its elite university But when one of the professors is found drowned in her bath it becomes clear that the tranquil surface is a lie The chief suspect is the son of Commandant Servaz's university sweetheart; & when she implores him to investigate he cannot refuse To close the case Servaz must delve into his own past & re-open old wounds It will be his most dangerous
- & his most personal
- investigation yet

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