Nabokov's early novel about a chess-playing genius, reissuing in Modern Classics as part of the Nabokov relaunch
Vladimir Nabokov's early novel is the dazzling story of the coarse, strange yet oddly endearing chess-playing genius Luzhin. Discovering his prodigious gift in boyhood and rising to the rank of International Grandmaster, Luzhin develops a lyrical passion for chess that renders the real world a phantom. As he confronts the fiery, swift-swooping Italian Grandmaster Turati, he brings into play his carefully devised defence. Making masterly play of metaphor and imagery, The Defense is the book that, of his early works, Nabokov felt 'contains and diffuses the greatest warmth'.
The compelling and heartrending new novel from the award-winning author of Norwegian By Night and How To Find Your Way In The Dark
We will lie, cheat, steal, fight, sin... Whatever it takes to survive.
The bombing of Rome in 1943 leaves fourteen-year-old Massimo orphaned and with no choice but to set out on a journey to discover any remaining relatives in Naples. A chance meeting with the mysterious and charismatic Pietro Houdini will deliver both of them to the doors of the abbey of Monte Cassino, a centuries-old haven of contemplation, learning and art. But war has no time for such niceties and before long the abbey is threatened by the relentless Allied advance. In the face of the coming cataclysm, Pietro and Massimo must do what they can to save the monastery's priceless art from oblivion.
To do so, they must learn to dissemble, to disguise, to outwit, all skills that evidently Pietro has in spades, but as their cherished haven edges ever closer to war, it becomes clear that Massimo is not without a surprise or two either...
The Curse of Pietro Houdini is a sweeping tale of resilience, hope and survival which is at once an action-packed adventure heist, an imaginative chronicle of forgotten history and a philosophical coming-of-age story, perfect for fans of All the Light We Cannot See, City of Lies and A Thousand Splendid Suns.
A Harvard professor shows how we can become better talkers - and why effective conversation will help us all thrive
Conversation is at the heart of our relationships and our decision-making. From meeting a colleague to saying goodnight to our loved ones, our days are filled with verbal communication -- but the science of everyday conversation is little known. We may spend time thinking about difficult exchanges, but research shows that there’s room to improve seemingly easy interactions too.
In Talk, Harvard professor Alison Wood Brooks shows how simple changes in how we communicate can enhance our relationships, our performance at work and our lives; who we talk to affects our happiness; and how to talk across differences. Her original research, based on thousands of conversations from sales calls to speed dating, provides fascinating insights - for instance, the way that certain questions affect dating success, and the role of jokes in reaching leadership positions.
Learning to converse even a little more effectively can make a big difference. Through her original TALK framework – Topics, Asking, Levity and Kindness – Wood Brooks will give you the tools that her MBA students say transforms their lives. Bringing together psychology, linguistics, sociology and neuroscience, Talk will show how we can use science to help us enrich our lives, one conversation at a time.
From acclaimed critic, novelist and academic W. G. Sebald, author of Austerlitz and The Rings of Saturn, a collection of essay on the Austrian writers who meant so much to him
As a German in self-chosen exile from his country of birth, Sebald found a particular affinity with these writers from a neighbouring nation. The traumatic evolution of Austria from vast empire to diminutive Alpine republic, followed by its annexation by Germany, meant that concepts such as ‘home/land’, ‘borderland’ and ‘exile’ occupy a prominent role in its literature, just as they would in Sebald’s own.
Through a series of remarkable close readings of texts by Bernhard, Stifter, Kafka, Handke, Roth and more, Sebald charts both the pathologies which so often drove their work and the seismic historical forces which shaped them. This sequence of essays will be a revelation to Sebald’s English-language readers, tracing as they do so many of the themes which animate his own literary writings, to which these essays form a kind of prelude.
The beloved Australian classic, published in a stunning Penguin Clothbound Classics edition for the first time
Miles Franklin’s debut novel follows the vivacious and rebellious sixteen-year-old Sybylla Melvyn – closely modelled on Franklin herself – as she fights to break free of restrictive bush life. Growing up on her parents’ outback farm, Sybylla is desperate to read, write, sing and achieve great things. Yet her aspirations for a ‘brilliant career’ are persistently thwarted, first by the arduous demands of rural family life, and later by the shackles of a proposed conventional marriage to the wealthy Harold Beecham. With only her brilliant, conflicted mind to guide her, Sybylla is forced to define a life on her own terms.
My Brilliant Career is acclaimed for capturing the spirit of Australia at the turn of the twentieth century. The struggles of its fiery, precocious protagonist shine a light on the emergent women’s rights and suffrage movement during this period, and memorably evoke the intensity of youth.
One of philosophy's finest minds looks back over a life in thought
'Who would have guessed that a philosopher's life could be so full of adventures?'
Daniel C. Dennett, philosopher and cognitive scientist, has spent his career considering consciousness. I've Been Thinking traces the development of Dennett's own intellect and instructs us how we too can become good thinkers.
Dennett's restless curiosity leads him from his childhood in Beirut to Harvard, and from Parisian jazz clubs to 'tillosophy' on his tractor in Maine. Along the way, he encounters and debates with a host of legendary thinkers, and reveals the breakthroughs and misjudgments that shaped his paradigm-shifting philosophies. Thinking, Dennett argues, is hard, and risky. In fact, all good philosophical thinking is inevitably accompanied by bafflement, frustration and self-doubt. It is only in getting it wrong that we, very occasionally, find a way to get it right.
This memoir by one of the greatest philosophers of our time will speak to anyone who seeks a life of the mind with adventure and creativity.
Unlock a better understanding of your brain, body and environment to eat well and lose weight, forever.
‘One of Britain’s top weight-loss experts’ This Morning
For years we’ve been told that successful weight loss is a simple matter of willpower and calorie control. But this argument fails to take into account how our brains and bodies respond to food – in particular, to the ultra-processed foods that seem inescapable in modern life.
Bariatric surgeon and Sunday Times bestselling author Dr Andrew Jenkinson gives us a game-changing blueprint to free us from our biological impulses. Even though our brains are hardwired to seek out quick rewards in salty and sugary foods, he demonstrates how to escape our default behaviours to create long-lasting change.
With cutting edge metabolic science, mental reprogramming strategies, easy lifestyle changes and even delicious recipes, maintaining a healthy weight never felt so good.
‘Pern is where dragon riding was conceived, and fifty years later, Anne McCaffrey’s epic tale remains a masterpiece of adventure, intrigue, and romance!’ Danielle L. Jensen, New York Times bestselling author of A Fate Inked in Blood
‘Anne McCaffrey's Pern novels are truly foundational books. The seeds of every dragonrider story are here, if not of every take on magical bonding. They carried me away as a young reader, and I hope they'll do so for new readers now.’ Naomi Novik, author of the Temeraire series
Lessa and her golden queen dragon may have given their world a fighting chance against the deadly Thread by bringing several hundred dragons and their riders forward in time, but this has also caused other problems to arise. The Oldtimers, as they are known, are having a difficult time adjusting to their more modern world, and tensions are rising. Worse, Threadfall is becoming more unpredictable, which makes it harder to combat.
Inspired by Lessa’s example, brown dragonrider F’nor hatches a bold plan to cut through these growing tensions by destroying the Thread at its source: the mysterious Red Star. But his quest to go where no man—or dragon—has gone before will risk not only his life, but the heart of a woman who has already lost far more than she can bear.
Don’t miss the original trilogy from Anne McCaffrey’s beloved Dragonriders of Pern series:
DRAGONFLIGHT • DRAGONQUEST • THE WHITE DRAGON
VOLUME 1 in the DRAGONRIDERS OF PERN
‘The world building opened my eyes to what fantasy could be; the characters introduced me to women in roles of power; and the romances left my young heart aflutter. No series has ever captured my imagination so completely as Pern did.’ Susan Dennard, New York Times bestselling author of the Witchlands Series
\"Anne McCaffrey, one of the queens of science fiction, knows exactly how to give her public what it wants\" - THE TIMES
‘Anne McCaffrey’s Pern books forever changed how readers looked at dragons—not just fearsome beasts to be slain, but bonded warrior partners...books that shaped a generation and more of fantasy writers.’ Cassandra Clare, No. 1 New York Times bestselling author
\"Read Dragonflight and you're confronted with McCaffrey the storyteller in her prime...\" - SFX
On a beautiful world called Pern, Lessa is an outcast survivor—her parents murdered, her birthright stolen—a fierce young woman who has never stopped dreaming of revenge. That is, until an ambitious young dragonrider, F’lar, offers her something even greater: the chance to lead Pern at his side by Impressing a golden dragon with whom she will share a telepathic bond more intimate than any human connection. Although there is also her intense relationship with F’lar himself.
But Lessa’s fierceness and courage will be put to the test when an ancient scourge returns to the land: a deadly silver spore that falls from the sky, destroying all it touches. Only dragons can fight this Thread, and there are not enough dragons to protect all of Pern. Lessa and her dragon may hold the key to their world’s salvation . . . but executing her daring plan may be costlier than she ever envisioned.
Don’t miss the original trilogy from Anne McCaffrey’s beloved Dragonriders of Pern series:
DRAGONFLIGHT • DRAGONQUEST • THE WHITE DRAGON
An old sanatorium. A terrifying murder. Six suspects and a case that never closed . . . Discover the new locked-room mystery by the Sunday Times bestselling author
Once a hospital dedicated to treating tuberculosis, The Akureyri Sanatorium now sits haunted by the ghosts of its past. But a single wing remains open, housing six employees.
When one of the hospital's nurses, Yrsa, is found brutally murdered, it sets in motion a series of terrifying events.
Despite just six suspects, the case remains unsolved two decades later. Until young criminologist, Helgi Reykdal, attempts to put the mysteries of the hospital’s past to rest . . .
A heartland World War II family drama centring around the Castell family from acclaimed WW2 historian James Holland
A Times 2024 Best Summer Read
The village of Alvesdon has been home to the Castells for generations. But the year is 1939 and the peace and tranquillity there is about to be shattered once more by the stormclouds of war in Europe. As three generations of the family gather, they must all face the prospect of their lives being transformed beyond recognition the moment Britain declares war on Germany.
When the inevitable happens and Britain finds itself at war, the younger members of the family and farm workers are called up to fight and those who remain must battle to keep the home fires burning and the farm afloat. The gentle certainties of rural life are replaced by the urgent clamour of war, in the air, at sea and on land, where events unfold with dizzying rapidity and unexpected consequences.
Stretching from the glorious summer of 1939 to the Battle of Britain the following year, acclaimed historian James Holland paints a compelling and immersive fictional portrait of how the war changed everything. For one family and for a community, their way of life can never really be the same again…
Jane Smith is back to defend her most troublesome client against another triple homicide accusation.
Jane Smith is running out of time . . .
Her repeat client, Rob Jacobson, is the unluckiest of the unlucky. No sooner is he accused of killing a family of three in the Hamptons than a second family is gunned down.
He says he's being set up – again. Despite the odds, Jane believes him.
Now she must mount the most complex investigation of her career. But she’s facing her own battle too. A terminal medical condition.
The defence may never rest.
In a ruined and hostile landscape, in a future few have been unlucky enough to survive, a community exists in a giant underground silo.
Inside, men and women live an enclosed life full of rules and regulations, of secrets and lies.
To live, you must follow the rules. But some don't. These are the dangerous ones; these are the people who dare to hope and dream, and who infect others with their optimism.
Their punishment is simple and deadly. They are allowed outside.
Jules is one of these people. She may well be the last.
Perdido, Alabama, has scarcely recovered from the floods that devasted the community. Now a scheme to build a levee is dogged by a series of mysterious events: unpredictable currents in the river, worrying disappearances. Meanwhile in the Caskey family, Marie-Love, the matriarch, continues her machinations against Elinor, her strange daughter in law. Plots, unholy alliances, sacrifices - in the struggle between them, nothing is off limits. In Perdido, the changes will be profound; the consequences irreversible.
Impossible puzzles, shocking twists and addictive romance combine in this unmissable new chapter in the #1 bestselling INHERITANCE GAMES saga - guaranteed to keep you hooked until the very last page . . .
A RUTHLESS GAME. SEVEN MYSTERY PLAYERS. LOVE AND LIVES ARE AT STAKE.
Welcome to the Grandest Game, a life-changing competition run by billionaire Avery Grambs and the four infamous Hawthorne brothers.
LYRA tells herself she’s only playing for the money – not for answers about her father’s death and certainly not to confront the infuriating, enigmatic GRAYSON Hawthorne. Facing off against Lyra are GIGI, Grayson’s half-sister, who is determined to prove herself, and ROHAN, who has few morals, a dangerous skill set, and no future – unless he wins the game.
Swept away to a luxury private island, Lyra, Gigi and Rohan must do whatever it takes to best one another, a cast of formidable rivals, and a game that only the sharpest minds can conquer. As sparks fly and the challenges push the players to their limits, it becomes clear that everyone has secrets, ad the past won’t stay buried forever.
WHO HAS WHAT IT TAKES TO WIN?
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