From the bestselling author of Girl with a Pearl Earring comes a historical tale of love sex & revenge. Jean le Viste a newly-wealthy member of the French court commissions a series of tapestries to hang in his chateau named ' The Lady & the Unicorn.' Nicolas his chosen designer is a talented artist. He is also dangerously attractive to the women around him including le Viste's wife Genevieve & his daughter Claude. Nicolas is at once smitten with Claude but will her social standing prevent her from returning his advances? As Nicolas begins to weave the tapestries so too do the lives & desires of the people around him intertwine. As people fall in love are shunned take revenge find unrequited love turn to the church or to pagan ideals the tapestries become to each an ideal vision of life
- yet all discover that they are unable to make this ideal world their own. Set against the historical backdrop of medieval France Chevalier weaves together an intricate tapestry of love revenge & art in a novel which will appeal to fans of Sarah Dunant Rachel Hore & Philippa Gregory.
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She fights. He bites. Janie Parkers a supernatural assassin
- not by choice but whats a girl gonna do? The only thing standing
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Weathering critical scorn Lady Audleys Secret" quickly established Mary Elizabeth Braddon as the leading light of Victorian sensation fiction sharing the honour only with Wilkie Collins. Addictive cunningly plotted & certainly sensational " Lady Audleys Secret" draws on contemporary theories of insanity to probe mid-Victorian anxieties about the rapid rise of consumer culture. What is the mystery surrounding the charming heroine? Lady Audleys secret is investigated by Robert Audley aristocrat turned detective in a novel that has lost none of its power to disturb & entertain." ...

The Penguin English Library Edition" of " Lady Audleys Secret" by Mary Elizabeth Braddon. Lady Audley uttered a long low wailing cry & threw up her arms above her head with a wild gesture of despair. In this outlandish outrageous triumph of scandal fiction a new Lady Audley arrives at the manor: young beautiful
- & very mysterious. Why does she behave so strangely? What exactly is the dark secret this seductive outsider carries with her? A huge success in the nineteenth century the books anti-heroine
- with her good looks & hidden past
- embodied perfectly the concerns of the Victorian age with morality & madness. " The Penguin English Library" contains 100 editions of the best fiction in English from the eighteenth century & the very first novels to the beginning of the First World War."


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Thirty years after she first heard his voice singing to her from a jukebox at her local drive-in Barbara began her love affair with Frank Sinatra. After a tempestuous courtship she finally heard him say the wedding vows that began his fourth final & most enduring marriage; one that would last more than two decades until the end of his life. Generous & jealous witty & wicked Frank comes alive in this poignant inside story of the highs & lows of marriage to one of the world's most famous men. In this her first public love letter to the husband she adored his wife celebrates the sensational singer sexy heartthrob possessive mate & loyal friend that was Frank Sinatra. This book will let his legions of fans see another side of Ol' Blue Eyes". Though Frank Sinatra's children have written memoirs about their father this is the first time his wife of twenty-two years is sharing intimate details of life with the man & the legend." ...

With its four-letter words & its explicit descriptions of sexual intercourse Lady Chatterleys Lover is the novel with which D.H. Lawrence is most often associated. First published privately in Florence in 1928 it only became a world-wide best-seller after Penguin Books had successfully resisted an attempt by the British Director of Public Prosecutions to prevent them offering an unexpurgated edition to the general public. The famous trial of Lady Chatterley heralded the sexual revolution of the coming decades & signalled the defeat of Establishment prudery. Yet Lawrence himself was hardly a liberationist & the conservativism of many aspects of his novel would later lay it open to attacks from the political avant-garde & from feminists. The story of how the wife of Sir Clifford Chatterley responds when her husband returns from the war paralysed from the waist down & of the tender love which then develops between her & her husbands gamekeeper is a complex one open to a variety of conflicting interpretations. This edition of the novel offers an occasion for a new generation of readers to discover what all the fuss was about; to appraise Lawrences bitter indictment of modern industrial society & to ask themselves what lessons there might be for the 21st century in his intense exploration of the complicated relations between love & sex. ...

Part of Penguins" beautiful hardback " Clothbound Classics" series designed by the award-winning Coralie Bickford-Smith these delectable & collectible editions are bound in high-quality colourful tactile cloth with foil stamped into the design. Constance Chatterley feels trapped in her sexless marriage to the invalid Sir Clifford. Unable to fulfil his wife emotionally or physically Clifford encourages her to have a liaison with a man of their own class. But Connie is attracted instead to her husbands gamekeeper & embarks on a passionate affair that brings new life to her stifled existence. Can she find a true equality with Mellors despite the vast gulf between their positions in society? One of the most controversial novels in English literature " Lady Chatterleys Lover" is an erotically charged & psychologically powerful depiction of adult relationships." ...

' Connie was aware however of a growing restlessness... It thrilled inside her body in her womb somewhere till she felt she must jump into water & swim to get away from it; a mad restlessness. It made her heart beat violently for no reason'. Lady Constance Chatterley is trapped in a loveless marriage to a man who is impotent. Oppressed by her dreary life she is drawn to Mellors the gamekeeper. Breaking out against the constraints of society she yields to her instinctive desire for him & discovers the transforming power of physical love which leads them both towards fulfillment. Banned for many years for its frank depiction of sex Lady Chatterley's Lover" was first published by Penguin in 1960 & was at the centre of a sensational obscenity trial at the Old Bailey. D. H. Lawrence himself called it 'the most improper novel in the world'." ...

Tristan Wemyss Earl of Trentham never expected he'd need to wed within a year or forfeit his inheritance. But he is not one to bow to the matchmaking mamas of the ton. No he will marry a lady of his own choosing. & the lady he chooses is the enchanting neighbour living with her family next door. Miss Leonora Carling has beauty spirit & passion; unfortunately matrimony is the last thing on her mind.. . Once bitten forever shy
- never again will Leonora allow any man to capture her heart & break it. But Tristan is a seasoned campaigner who will not accept defeat especially when a mysterious blackguard with dark designs on Leonora's family home gives him the perfect excuse to come to the lady's aid
- as her protector confidant seducer...and husb&.

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It is 1923 & Evangeline English keen lady cyclist arrives with her sister Lizzie at the ancient Silk Route city of Kashgar to help establish a Christian mission. Lizzie is in thrall to their forceful & unyielding leader Millicent but Evas motivations for leaving her bourgeois life back at home are less clear-cut. As they attempt to navigate their new home & are met with resistance & calamity Eva commences work on her book A Lady Cyclists Guide to Kashgar... In present-day London another story is beginning. Frieda a young woman adrift in her own life opens her front door one night to find a man sleeping on the landing. In the morning he is gone leaving on the wall an exquisite drawing of a long-tailed bird & a line of Arabic script. Tayeb who has fled to England from Yemen has arrived on Friedas doorstep just as she learns that she is the next-of-kin to a dead woman she has never heard of: a woman whose abandoned flat contains many surprises
- among them an ill-tempered owl. The two wanderers begin an unlikely friendship as their worlds collide & they embark on a journey that is as great & as unexpected as Evas. A stunning debut peopled by unforgettable characters A Lady Cyclists Guide to Kashgar is an extraordinary story of inheritance & the search for belonging in a fractured & globalised world.
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