The riveting first — person narrative of a young man who grows to be the most notorious magician his world has ever seen. From his childhood in a troupe of traveling players, to years spent as a near-feral orphan in a crime-ridden city, to his daringly brazen yet successful bid to enter a legendary school of magic, The Name of the Wind is a masterpiece that transports readers into the body and mind of a wizard. It is a high-action novel written with a poet's hand, a powerful coming-of-age story of a magically gifted young man, told through his eyes: to read this book is to be the hero.

The Australian Secret Service recruits Alex Rider to infiltrate a ruthless gang known as Snakeheads. Alex accepts the assignment, and it becomes his most dangerous mission yet.

Rose loves Dimitri, Dimitri might love Tasha, and Mason would die to be with Rose... Its winter break at St Vladimirs, but Rose is feeling anything but festive. A massive Strigoi attack has put the school on high alert, and now the Academys crawling with Guardians — including Roses hard-hitting mother, Janine Hathaway. And if hand-to-hand combat with her mom wasnt bad enough, Roses tutor Dimitri has his eye on someone else, her friend Masons got a huge crush on her, and Rose keeps getting stuck in Lissas head while shes making out with her boyfriend, Christian! The Strigoi are closing in, and the Academys not taking any risks... This year, St Vlads annual holiday ski trip is mandatory. But the glittering winter landscape and the posh Idaho resort only create the illusion of safety. When three friends run away in an offensive move against the deadly Strigoi, Rose must join forces with Christian to rescue them. But heroism rarely comes without a price...

«Rose Hathaway is close to graduation from St. Vladimir's Academy. Since Mason's death, Rose has had dark flashbacks in the middle of practice, can't concentrate in class, and has terrifying dreams about Lissa. But Rose has an even «bigger» secret — she's in love with Dimitri.»

How do we see the world around us? The Penguin on Design series includes the works of creative thinkers whose writings on art, design and the media have changed our vision forever. Susan Sontag's groundbreaking critique of photography asks forceful questions about the moral and aesthetic issues surrounding this art form. Photographs are everywhere. They have the power to shock, idealize or seduce, they create a sense of nostalgia and act as a memorial, and they can be used as evidence against us or to identify us. In six incisive essays, Sontag examines the ways in which we use these omnipresent images to manufacture a sense of reality and authority in our lives.

Welcome to St Benedict's Country Club and Spa. As a home away from home for the A-list, naturally membership comes at a premium — only the over-sexed, the over-rich and the over-beautiful need apply. But the St Benedict's experience involves more sex, bad behaviour, blackmail and deviance than most women can handle. Are you ready to join the Club?

'What I want you to have, Imogen, above all, is a sense of your own history; a sense of where you come from, and of the forces that made you'. Rosamund lies dying in her remote Shropshire home. But before she does so, she has one last task: to put on tape not just her own story but the story of the young blind girl, her cousin's granddaughter, who turned up mysteriously at her party all those years ago. This is a story of generations, of the relationships within a family — and of what goes to make a child. Called 'the best English novelist of his generation' by Nick Hornby, Jonathan Coe extends his range in this magnificent account of a Shropshire family in the last half of the twentieth century.

Virginia Woolf tested the boundaries of fiction in these short stories, developing a new language of sensation, feeling and thought, and recreating in words the 'swarm and confusion of life'. Defying categorization, the stories range from the more traditional narrative style of Solid Objects through the fragile impressionism of Kew Gardens to the abstract exploration of consciousness in The Mark on the Wall.

Gordon Comstock loathes dull, middle-class respectability and worship of money. He gives up a 'good job' in advertising to work part-time in a bookshop, giving him more time to write. But he slides instead into a self-induced poverty that destroys his creativity and his spirit. Only Rosemary, ever-faithful Rosemary, has the strength to challenge his commitment to his chosen way of life. Through the character of Gordon Comstock, Orwell reveals his own disaffection with the society he once himself renounced.

Set in the days of the Empire, with the British ruling in Burma, Burmese Days describes both indigenous corruption and Imperial bigotry, when 'after all, natives were natives — interesting, no doubt, but finally only a 'subject' people, an inferior people with black faces'. Against the prevailing orthodoxy, Flory, a white timber merchant, befriends Dr Veraswami, a black enthusiast for Empire. The doctor needs help. U Po Kyin, Sub-divisional Magistrate of Kyauktada, is plotting his downfall. The only thing that can save him is European patronage: membership of the hitherto all-white Club. While Flory prevaricates, beautiful Elizabeth Lackersteen arrives in Upper Burma from Paris. At last, after years of 'solitary hell', romance and marriage appear to offer Flory an escape from the 'lie' of the 'pukka sahib pose'.

A cultural storm swept through the 1960s — Pop Art, Bob Dylan, psychedelia, underground movies — and at its centre sat a bemused young artist with silver hair: Andy Warhol. Andy knew everybody (from the cultural commissioner of New York to drug-driven drag queens) and everybody knew Andy. His studio, the Factory, was the place: where he created the large canvases of soup cans and Pop icons that defined Pop Art, where one could listen to the Velvet Underground and rub elbows with Edie Sedgwick and where Warhol himself could observe the comings and goings of the avant-guarde.

The 15th Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter novela now in paperback. Into Anita Blakeas worldaa world already overflowing with powera come creatures so feared that centuries-old vampires refuse to mention their names.

Told with deadpan humour and bitter irony, Kurt Vonnegut's cult tale of global destruction preys on our deepest fears of witnessing Armageddon and, worse still, surviving it... Dr Felix Hoenikker, one of the founding 'fathers' of the atomic bomb, has left a deadly legacy to the world. For he is the inventor of 'ice-nine', a lethal chemical capable of freezing the entire planet. The search for its whereabouts leads to Hoenikker's three ecentric children, to a crazed dictator in the Caribbean, to madness. Felix Hoenikker's Death Wish comes true when his last, fatal gift to mankind brings about the end, that for all of us, is nigh...

What were Roald Dahl's first words? Read his account of going to football matches with Joss Spivvis, the gardener. This new edition of a favourite book contains a wealth of new photos, facts and writings about Roald Dahl and his childhood, together with the original text and illustrations from his much-loved memoir. With lots of little-known details, this is a must-have for all Dahl fans!

Williams's Pulitzer Prize-winning play has captured both stage and film audiences since its debut in 1954. One of his best-loved and most famous plays, it exposes the lies plaguing the family of a wealthy Southern planter of humble origins.

Set in the Kaw River Valley where Paretsky grew up, BLEEDING KANSAS is the story of the Schapens and the Grelliers, two farm families whose histories have been entwined since the 1850s, when their ancestors settled the valley as antislavery emigrants. Sara Paretsky is the New York Times bestselling author of FIRE SALE and KILLING ORDERS.

Special Agent Paul Chavasse is about to start a much-deserved holiday when he is abruptly pulled back to active duty. He knows that if he's being called into action, a job has gone bad-and it's about to get a lot worse. As Hitler's private secretary-and an influential member of the Third Reich-Martin Bormann was one of those rare Nazis who managed to simply disappear at the end of World War II. But the terrible secrets Bormann carried into oblivion are about to be revealed to the world. A manuscript that exposes former Nazis now in hiding is up for grabs, and there are those in power who have much to lose with its discovery. Now, Chavasse must retrieve the Bormann Testament before it is buried forever-and him along with it...

Cabot Cove, Maine's most famous mystery author, Jessica Fletcher, is excited about promoting her new book in glamourous San Francisco. She can't wait for drinks and dinner on Fisherman's Wharf, a ride on the cable cars, and a romantic rendezvous with Scottish policeman George Sutherland. She doesn't know that solving a murder may be penciled into her agenda.

Jessica Fletcher's mid-summer vacation to New York's famed Hampton beaches turns into a lesson in the art of murder. Indulging in a lifelong passion, she enrolls in an art class, but when the model they had been sketching fails to stir-the victim of a deadly poison-Jessica canvasses the area, chasing down a killer with an artistic flair.