Because of the boyhood trauma of seeing his mother make love to another man in the presence of his dying father, Mizoguchi becomes a hopeless stutterer. Taunted by his schoolmates, he feels utterly alone untill he becomes an acolyte at a famous temple in Kyoto, where he develops an all-consuming obsession with the temple`s beauty. This powerful story of dedication & sacrifice brings together Mishima`s preoccupations with violence, desire, religion & national history to dazzling effect. ...

Jack Mc Nulty is a `temporary gentleman`, an Irishman whose commission in the British army in the Second World War was never permanent. In 1957, sitting in his lodgings in Accra, he urgently sets out to write his story. He feels he cannot take one step further, or even hardly a breath, without looking back at all that has befallen him. He is an ordinary man, both petty & heroic, but he has seen extraordinary things. He has worked & wandered around the world
- as a soldier, an engineer, a UN observer
- trying to follow his childhood ambition to better himself. & he has had a strange & tumultuous marriage. Mai Kirwan was a great beauty of Sligo in the 1920s, a vivid mind, but an elusive & mysterious figure too. Jack married her, & shared his life with her, but in time she slipped from his grasp. A heart-breaking portrait of one man`s life
- of his demons & his lost love
- The Temporary Gentleman is, ultimately, a novel about Jack`s last bid for freedom, from the savage realities of the past & from himself.



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When important information is leaked from inside the Venetian Questura, Commissario Guido Brunetti is entrusted with the task of uncovering which of his colleagues is responsible. But before Brunetti can begin his investigation, he is surprised by the appearance in his office of a friend of his wife`s, who is fearful that her son is using drugs. A few weeks later, Tullio Gasparini, the woman`s husb&, is found unconscious with a serious head injury at the foot of a bridge, & Brunetti is drawn to pursue a possible connection to the boy`s behaviour. But the truth is not straightforward. Following various contradictory leads, Brunetti navigates his way through a world of mysterious informants, underground deals & secret longstanding scam networks, all the while growing ever more impressed by the intuition of his fellow Commissario, Claudia Griffoni, & by the endless resourcefulness of Signorina Elettra, Vice-Questore Patta`s secretary & gate-keeper. With Gasparini`s condition showing no signs of improvement, & his investigations leading nowhere, Brunetti is steadied by the embrace of his own family & by his passion for the classics. He turns to Sophocles`s Antigone in an attempt to understand the true purpose of justice, &, in its light, he is forced to consider the terrible consequences to which the actions of a tender heart can lead. ...

Important information is leaking from inside the Venetian Questura, & Commissario Guido Brunetti is tasked with uncovering the culprit. But before Brunetti can begin his investigation, a friend of his wife’s comes asking for his help, fearful that her son is using drugs. A few weeks later, the woman’s husband is found unconscious at the foot of a bridge. Following various contradictory leads, Brunetti navigates his way through Venice`s underworld in an attempt to understand who is responsible for the vicious attack. But as he gets closer to discovering what happened, Brunetti is faced with a difficult truth: sometimes, it’s the best intentions that lead to the darkest of consequences... ...

Cesare is a seventy-seven-year-old widower & cynical troublemaker. He has lived his whole life by his own rules & has no intention of changing now. Aside from an intermittent fling with a nurse called Rossana, he spends his days avoiding the old cat lady next door & screening calls from his children. But when the enigmatic Emma moves in next door with her strange & sinister husb&, Cesare suspects there is more to their relationship than meets the eye. He enlists the other residents to help him investigate & soon discovers a new & unexpected sense of purpose that leads him to risk everything for a future he had never thought possible. Laced with humour & pathos in equal measure, this is a delightful book to savour, for young & old alike. ...

In Kenya`s ` Happy Valley` no one paid too much attention to the privileged colonial set as they farmed their estates, partied until dawn & indulged in extra-marital affairs. Not until Josslyn Hay, Earl of Erroll, was shot dead at the wheel of his Buick in the early hours of 24 January 1941. Some said the good-looking womaniser had it coming. He was a philanderer who could have had any number of enemies who wanted revenge. Ageing Jock Delves Broughton stood trial for Erroll`s murder but was acquitted & the mystery remained unsolved
- until now. American heiress Alice de Janze had been conducting a clandestine affair with Joss for years. Married into French aristocracy, her stunning beauty was to prove a fatal lure to men of adventure. Previously tried by a French court for shooting one of her lovers, scandal followed her wherever she went. She arrived in Kenya as a newly married Countess in the 1920s, but by 1941 she had turned forty & the years of partying had taken their toll. Pushed aside by Erroll for younger lovers, Alice was thrown into desperation, resulting in Errol`s murder & her own tragic demise. The Temptress not only solves the mystery of Josslyn Hay`s murder with the utmost conviction
- it eloquently paints a portrait of a volatile, captivating woman.

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Britain`s culinary Moses brings us the new foodie rules to live by, celebrating what & how we eat. The Ten Commandments may have had a lot going for them, but they don`t offer those of us located in the 21st Century much in the way of guidance when it comes to our relationship with our food. & Lord knows we need it. Enter our new culinary Moses, the legendary restaurant critic Jay Rayner, with a new set of h&-tooled commandments for this food-obsessed age. He deals once & for all with questions like whether it is ever okay to covet thy neighbour`s oxen (it is), eating with your hands (very important indeed) & if you should cut off the fat (no). Combining reportage & anecdotes with recipes worthy of adoration, Jay Rayner brings us the new foodie rules to live by. ...

With a touch of Bill Bryson`s humour, this wacky, fun book takes readers on a fascinating journey to parts of the world that few people visit. The Ten-Letter Countries is a story of a unique blend of countries visited by David based solely on their spelling... David Jenkins is The Alphabet Traveller. Having previously made an 85 000 mile journey to visit all countries in the world whose names are made up of four letters, David is now off to explore 12 countries which all have ten letters to their name. He heads to Bangladesh in search of the elusive Bengal tiger but disaster strikes quickly & worse is to follow. After a bungled attempt to break into a Luxembourg jail he sets off to cross the Stans of Central Asia by horse, jeep & bicycle only to stumble upon the world`s most notorious heroin trail. Assaulted by customs officials & hi-jacked at gunpoint, he manages to escape across the mountains & make it safely over the Steppes in a Lada full of vodka. To a land of oil, pelicans & naked men beating themselves with branches. He follows the Silk Road & the spread of Islam to the deserts of Mauritania & makes the rail journey of a lifetime through the mountains of tiny Montenegro. In the sparkling Indian Ocean he uncovers the sinister side of the seductive Seychelles, finds himself at the helm of an aircraft over the islands of Mozambique & takes a razor attack in his stride to enjoy the wacky wildlife of magical Madagascar... David Jenkins hitchhiked to France the day he left school & has trotted the globe ever since. He has waited tables in Switzerl&, sprayed crops in Israel, crewed yachts around the Pacific & cleaned urinals at Sydney Cricket Ground. He became a professor in Japan & then ran a business school in Rio de Janeiro before setting up his own company delivering newspapers across Africa. Now based in Cambridge, David`s first book The Four-Letter Countries, was widely featured in the national media. ...

When the mysterious & beautiful young widow Helen Graham becomes the new tenant at Wildfell Hall rumours immediately begin to swirl around her. As her neighbour Gilbert Markham comes to discover, Helen has painful secrets buried in her past that even his love for her cannot easily overcome. ...

The Penguin English Library Edition of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Bronte ` She looked so like herself that I knew not how to bear it` In this sensational, hard-hitting & passionate tale of marital cruelty, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall sees a mysterious tenant, Helen Graham, unmasked not as a `wicked woman` as the local gossips would have it, but as the estranged wife of a brutal alcoholic bully, desperate to protect her son. Using her own experiences with her brother Branwell to depict the cruelty & debauchery from which Helen flees, Anne Bronte wrote her masterpiece to reflect the fragile position of women in society & her belief in universal redemption, but scandalized readers of the time. The Penguin English Library
- 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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