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A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian by Marina Lewycka
Category: No Category | Series: Penguin Essentials
'Two years after my mother died, my father fell in love with a glamourous blonde Ukrainian divorcee. He was eighty-four and she was thirty-six. She exploded into our lives like a fluffy pink grenade, churning up the murky water, bringing to the surface a sludge of sloughed-off memories, giving the famil ...Show more
Animal Farm by George Orwell
Category: Classic Fiction | Series: Penguin Essentials
George Orwell's timeless and timely allegorical novel--a scathing satire on a downtrodden society's blind march towards totalitarianism."All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others."A farm is taken over by its overworked, mistreated animals. With flaming idealism and stirring slog ...Show more
Lady Chatterley's Lover by D. H. Lawrence
Category: Classic Fiction | Series: Penguin Essentials
'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 and 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 marr ...Show more
On the Road by Jack Kerouac
Category: No Category | Series: Penguin Essentials
'What's your road, man - holyboy road, madman road, rainbow road, guppy road, any road. It's an anywhere road for anybody anyhow'. Sal Paradise, young and innocent, joins the slightly crazed Dean Moriarty on a breathless, exuberant ride back and forth across the United States. Their hedonistic search fo ...Show more
Out Of Africa: Penguin Essentials by Karen Blixen
Category: No Category | Series: Penguin Essentials Ser.
'I had a farm in Africa, at the foot of the Ngong Hills . . . Up in this high air you breathed easily . . . you woke up in the morning and thought- Here I am, where I ought to be.'From the moment Karen Blixen arrived in Kenya in 1914 to manage a coffee plantation, her heart belonged to Africa. Drawn to ...Show more
Perfume: Penguin Essentials by Patrick Suskind
Category: Classic Fiction | Series: Penguin Essentials
Patrick Suskind's Perfume is a classic novel of death and sensuality in Paris, published as a Penguin Essential for the first time. 'In eighteenth-century France there lived a man who was one of the most gifted and abominable personages in an era that knew no lack of gifted and abominable personages. Hi ...Show more
The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler
Category: No Category | Series: Penguin Essentials
Hard-boiled detective fiction at its best: Raymond Chandler's best loved novel, The Big Sleep, published as a Penguin Essential for the first time. "I was neat, clean, shaved and sober, and I didn't care who knew it. I was everything the well-dressed private detective ought to be. I was calling on four ...Show more
The Circle by Dave Eggers
Category: No Category | Series: Penguin Essentials
Fast, thrilling, compulsively addictive - The Circle is Dave Eggers's timely novel about our obsession with the internet, now available as a Penguin Essential for the first time. When Mae is hired to work for the Circle, the world's most powerful internet company, she feels she's been given the opportun ...Show more
The Help by Kathryn Stockett
Category: No Category | Series: Penguin Essentials
The #1 New York Times bestselling novel and basis for the Academy Award-winning film--a timeless and universal story about the lines we abide by, and the ones we don't. Aibileen is a black maid in 1962 Jackson, Mississippi, who's always taken orders quietly, but lately she's unable to hold her bitte ...Show more
The History Of Love: Penguin Essentials by Nicole Krauss
Category: No Category | Series: Penguin Essentials
This Book is Shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction 2006 and winner of the 2006. Prix du Meilleur Livre Etranger, The History of Love explores the lasting power of the written word and the lasting power of love. Published as a Penguin Essential for the first time. 'When I was born my mother named ...Show more
The Mosquito Coast by Paul Theroux
Category: Travel | Series: Penguin Essentials
The Mosquito Coast - winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize - is a breathtaking novel about fanaticism and a futile search for utopia from bestseller Paul Theroux. Published as a Penguin Essential for the first time. Allie Fox is going to re-create the world. Abominating the cops, crooks, junkies ...Show more
The Periodic Table by Primo Levi
Category: No Category | Series: Penguin Essentials
'So it happens, therefore, that every element says something to someone' Inspired by the rhythms of the "Periodic Table", Primo Levi assesses his life in terms of the chemical elements he associates with his past. From his birth into an Italian Jewish family through his training as a chemist, to the pai ...Show more