The Penguin Writers' Guides series provides authoritative, succinct and easy-to-follow guidance on specific aspects of written English. Whether you need to brush up your skills or get to grips with something for the first time, these invaluable Guides will help you find the best way to get your message across clearly and effectively. This essential guide covers the key rules — and pitfalls — of written and spoken grammar. It covers such areas as: the building blocks of language, common errors and misconceptions, choosing the right level of expression, differences between British and American English, and political correctness. It also discusses various uses of language, from creative writing, CVs and reports to verbal presentations, and business and personal letters, with many useful suggestions for accurate and fluent English.

The Penguin Writers' Guides series provides authoritative, succinct and easy-to-follow guidance on specific aspects of written English. Whether you need to brush up your skills or get to grips with something for the first time, these invaluable Guides will help you find the best way to get your message across clearly and effectively. Many of us are spending more and more time using emails, especially at work. This practical guide steers you through all the basics and netiquette' of emailing strangers, business contacts and colleagues: from setting up an email account, presentation and formatting of your emails to how to avoid offensive blunders and the legal issues surrounding this kind of writing. It offers indispensable guidance for simple and direct writing — including cultural differences, appropriate language and common pitfalls — so that your emails give the best possible impression.

Power napping, the Oprah effect, girl power — these are just some of the recent figures of speech to have entered our language. The perfect guide to the idiosyncrasies of the English language, this best-selling dictionary has been completely revised for its second edition and includes hundreds of new idioms. It provide clear and concise definitions and explains how the idioms should be used. At the same time the dictionary's thematic arrangement makes it possible not only to study and compare all the idioms in a given subject area, but to match the right one to the right occasion. * Gives full explanations of some 4,000 phrases * Entries are grouped according to theme: for example, colours (white as a sheet), elements (air-kissing), life and death (as pale as death), clothes (verbal handbagging), war and peace (eco-warrior) * Offers a clear example of usage for each idiom, using everyday speech * Provides background information on the origins of certain expressions, such as like the measles, nutty as a fruitcake and malapropisms and spoonerisms

This new, completely revised edition of The Penguin Guide surveys the key classical recordings issued and reissued on CD over the past two decades, many of which have dominated the catalogue because of their sheer excellence, irrespective of their recording dates. Now DVDs have also been added, with their extra video dimension, as well as the sound-enhanced SACDs. If you want to be sure of acquiring the finest available version of any major classical work (including DVDs of opera and ballet) you will find it listed and assessed in these pages — often with alternatives of comparable excellence and price. For those just embarking on a classical CD collection, there is invaluable advice on which works to sample.

Paul Sheldon. He’s a bestselling novelist who has finally met his biggest fan. Her name is Annie Wilkes and she is more than a rabid reader—she is Paul’s nurse, tending his shattered body after an automobile accident. But she is also his captor, keeping him prisoner in her isolated house. Now Annie wants Paul to write his greatest work—just for her. She has a lot of ways to spur him on. One is a needle. Another is an ax. And if they don’t work, she can get really nasty.

The accolades and acclaim are endless for William Gibson's coast-to-coast bestseller. Set in the post-9/11 present, Pattern Recognition is the story of one woman's never-ending search for the now.

Emma is the culmination of Jane Austen's genius, a sparkling comedy of love and marriage. Emma Woodhouse is introduced to us as 'handsome, clever and rich' and, according to Jane Austen, a heroine 'which no one but myself would like'. Yet such is Emma's spirited wit that, despite her superior airs and egotism, few readers have failed to succumb to her charm. The comedy turns on Emma's self-appointed role as energetic match-maker for her sweet, silly friend immune to the charms of the male sex. Her emotional coming of age is woven into what Ronald Blythe has called 'the happiest of love stories, the most fiendishly difficult of detective stories and a matchless repository of English wit'.

A complete collection of short fiction by one of the masters of twentieth-century American literature.

«Steeplechase jockey Christmas «Kit» Fielding has had more than his share of close calls both on and off the course. But trouble hits close to home when a grudge between his family and his sister's in-laws turns into a blood feud.»

A high-class, transcontinental horse-racing junket should be an idyllic getaway for the super-rich. But one passenger on this train is a sociopath, a genius at blackmail and criminal corruption—and he plans to take everyone for everything they've got.

When cocktail waitress Sookie Stackhouse sees a naked man on the side of the road, she doesn't just drive on by. Turns out the poor thing hasn't a clue who he is, but Sookie does. It's Eric the vampire—but now he's a kinder, gentler Eric. And a scared Eric, because whoever took his memory now wants his life.

When Jim Hawkins uncovers the key to a pirate’s treasure map he sets out on a quest to find the buried treasure with the help of pirate captain Long John Silver. Artist Tim Hamilton brings the pirates and villains to life in this graphic novel adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic.

A celebrated writer pens an irresistible, candid, and eloquent account of her pursuit of worldly pleasure, spiritual devotion, and what she really wanted out of life.

As consultant to the Regional Preternatural Crime Investigation Unit, Anita's called in on what appears to be a case involving a serial killer — a vampire serial killer — who may be preying on strippers. She's sure that none of the local vamps are responsible — but her judgment may be clouded by a conflict of interest. For she is, after all, the consort of Jean-Claude, the ever-intoxicating Master Vampire of the City — something that both her human friends and her ex, the alpha werewolf Richard, are quick to point out. Surrounded by suspicion, overwhelmed by her attempts to control the primal lusts that continue to wrack her as a result of her passionate contacts with vampire, werewolf, and the shapeshifter Micah, Anita does something unprecedented. She calls for help...

As the Resistance attempts to overthrow their vampiric alien masters, elite Cat force member David Valentine embarks on a terrifying journey in search of a long-lost weapon that will guarantee their victory — and the end of the Kurian Order's domination of Earth.

Returning to the Ozark Territories, freedom fighter David Valentine is shocked to find it overrun by vampiric Kurians under the command of the merciless Consul Solon. In a desperate gambit, Valentine leads a courageous group of soldiers on a mission to drive a spike into the gears of the Kurian Order. Valentine stakes life, honor, and the future of his home in a rebellion that sparks the greatest battle of his life.

For nearly seventy years, readers have been delighted by the adventures of Christopher Robin and his lovable friends. Paired with the perfectly suited drawings of Ernest H.Shepard, A.A.Milne's classic story continues to captivate children of all ages.

Includes both Nikolay Gogol's short fiction and famous drama. The stories gathered here range from comic to tragic and describe the isolated lives of low-ranking clerks, lunatics and swindlers. They include Diary of a Madman, Nevsky Prospect, and The Overcoat.

From the reign of the Tsars in the early 19th century to the collapse of the Soviet Union and beyond, the short story has long occupied a central place in Russian culture. Included are pieces from many of the acknowledged masters of Russian literature — including Pushkin, Turgenev, Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, and Solzhenitsyn — alongside tales by long-suppressed figures such as the subversive Kryzhanowsky and the surrealist Shalamov. Whether written in reaction to the cruelty of the bourgeoisie, the bureaucracy of communism or the torture of the prison camps, they offer a wonderfully wide-ranging and exciting representation of one of the most vital and enduring forms of Russian literature.