Penguin books

This is a play with the theme of societal salvation and salvation of the human soul brought out in characters representing the rich versus the poor.

In Africa Dances Gorer takes the reader on an odyssey across West Africa, in the company of one of the great black ballet stars of 1930's Paris. It is a devastating critique of colonial rule, which is shown to be destroying African society while Christian missionaries undermine indigenous morality. Africa Dances captures the rich physical and psychological detail of African village life - from food and architecture to witch doctors, dance and magic.

When a signalman discovers a mutilated body inside a railway tunnel near Groote Park, it seems to be a straightforward case of a man struck by a passing train. But Inspector Vandam of the Middeldorp police isn't satisfied that Albert Smith's death was accidental, and he sets out to prove foul play in a baffling mystery which crosses continents from deepest South Africa to the wilds of northern Scotland, where an almost identical crime appears to have been perpetrated. The Groote Park Murder was the last of Freeman Wills Crofts' standalone crime novels, foreshadowing his iconic Inspector French series and helping to cement his reputation (according to his publishers) as 'the greatest and most popular detective writer in the world'. Like The Cask, The Ponson Case and The Pit-Prop Syndicate before it, here were a delightfully ingenious plot, impeccable handling of detail, and an overwhelming surprise 'curtain' from a masterful crime writer on the cusp of global success.

"Set in Rome, The Time of Indifference tells a deceptively simple story. Five characters are cast loose on the sea of modern life - obsessed with what they want, what they feel they are owed, the wrongs that have been done them, their loneliness. The intrigues of these family members and lovers serve to expose the hollow core of bourgeois society in the early twentieth century, and what Moravia destroys forever in this pitiless novel is the illusion that a world of ever-growing material comfort can ever feed the human soul."--BOOK JACKET.

The younger son of a working-class Jewish family in Montreal, Duddy Kravitz yearns to make a name for himself in society. This film chronicles his short and dubious rise to power, as well as his changing relationships with family and friends. Along the way the film explores the themes of anti-semitism and the responsibilities which come with adulthood. The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz is the story of a young Jewish man from Montreal who learns lessons in life from a series of people who serve as his mentors. As their apprentice, he is given the opportunity to observe their lives and learn from them, and as he does, he carves a course for a life he believes will bring him power and money.

The Confusions of Young Törless (German: Die Verwirrungen des Zöglings Törleß), or Young Törless, is the literary debut of the Austrian philosophical novelist and essayist Robert Musil, first published in 1906. Musil's novel is ostensibly a Bildungsroman, a story of a young disoriented man searching for moral values in society and their meaning for him. The expressionistic novel, based on Musil's personal experiences at a boarding school in Hranice (in Austria-Hungary, now in the Czech Republic) was written according to Musil "because of boredom". In later life, however, Musil denied that the novel was about youthful experiences of his own. Due to its explicit sexual content, the novel at first caused a scandal among the reading public and the authorities of Austria-Hungary. Later, various prefigurings of Fascism were identified in the text, including the characters of Beineberg and Reiting, who seem to be orderly pupils by day but shamelessly abuse their classmate psychologically, physically and sexually by night.

A social history of London from the Early Middle Ages to the present which also serves as a comprehensive guide to its buildings and treasures.

When ancient bones and something resembling an unexploded bomb are found on a London building site, the military and scientists are baffled. As further astounding discoveries are made, the renowned Professor Quatermass begins to unravel a terrifying thread of chaos and terror ...

A continuation of the same characters found in Volume One.

A searing account of George Orwell's observations of working-class life in the bleak industrial heartlands of Yorkshire and Lancashire in the 1930s, The Road to Wigan Pier is a brilliant and bitter polemic that has lost none of its political impact over time. His graphically unforgettable descriptions of social injustice, cramped slum housing, dangerous mining conditions, squalor, hunger and growing unemployment are written with unblinking honesty, fury and great humanity. It crystallized the ideas that would be found in Orwell's later works and novels, and remains a powerful portrait of poverty, injustice and class divisions in Britain.

The Death and Life of Great American Cities was described by The New York Times as “perhaps the most influential single work in the history of town planning. . . . [It] can also be seen in a much larger context. It is first of all a work of literature; the descriptions of street life as a kind of ballet and the bitingly satiric account of traditional planning theory can still be read for pleasure even by those who long ago absorbed and appropriated the book’s arguments.” Jane Jacobs, an editor and writer on architecture in New York City in the early sixties, argued that urban diversity and vitality were being destroyed by powerful architects and city planners. Rigorous, sane, and delightfully epigrammatic, Jane Jacobs’s tour de force is a blueprint for the humanistic management of cities. It remains sensible, knowledgeable, readable, and indispensable.

The Pumpkin Eater is a surreal black comedy about the wages of adulthood and the pitfalls of parenthood. A nameless woman speaks, at first from the precarious perch of a therapist’s couch, and her smart, wry, confiding, immensely sympathetic voice immediately captures and holds our attention. She is the mother of a vast, swelling brood of children, also nameless, and the wife of a successful screenwriter, Jake Armitage. The Armitages live in the city, but they are building a great glass tower in the country in which to settle down and live happily ever after. But could that dream be nothing more than a sentimental delusion? At the edges of vision the spectral children come and go, while our heroine, alert to the countless gradations of depression and the innumerable forms of betrayal, tries to make sense of it all: doctors, husbands, movie stars, bodies, grocery lists, nursery rhymes, messes, aging parents, memories, dreams, and breakdowns. How to pull it all together? Perhaps you start by falling apart.

The Bafut Beagles was the name which Gerald Durrell gave to the pack of Africans and mongrel dogs with which he hunted and captured many of the oddest and most elusive creatures in the Cameroons. His adventures in pursuit of such fauna as flying mice and booming sqirrels were often as strange as the animals themselves.

A small collection of short stories; The Prussian Officer, The Thorn in the Flesh, Daughters of the Vicar, A Fragment of Stained Glass, The Shades of Spring, Second Best, The Shadow in the Rose Garden, Goose Fair, The White Stocking, A Sick Collier, The Christening, Odour of Chrysanthemums

A STANDOUT in the Steinbeck canon, Cup of Gold is edgy and adventurous, brash and distrustful of society, and sure to add a new dimension to the common perception of this all-American writer. Steinbeck's first novel and sole work of historical fiction contains themes that resonate throughout the author's prodigious body of work. From the mid-1650s through the 1660s, Henry Morgan, a pirate and outlaw of legendary viciousness, ruled the Spanish Main. He ravaged the coasts of Cuba and America, striking terror wherever he went. And he had two driving ambitions: to possess the beautiful woman called La Santa Roja, and to conquer Panama, the "cup of gold."

Mysterious showers of meteorites lead Professor Quatermass on a trail to a factory in a deserted village. What awaits him is a worldwide conspiracy that threatens to take over the planet and turn its human population into zombies ...

Celebrated novella of a middle-aged German writer℗s tormented passion for a Polish youth met on holiday in Venice, and its tragic consequences. Powerful evocation of the mysterious forces of death and disintegration in the midst of existence, and the isolation of the artist in 20th-century life. This edition provides an excellent new translation and extensive commentary on many facets of the story.

The Bull from the Sea reconstructs the legend of Theseus, the valiant youth who slew the Minotaur, became king, and brought prosperity to Attica. Chief among his heroic exploits is the seduction of Hippolyta, the Queen of the Amazons, who irrevocably brought about both his greatest joy and his tragic destiny.

In George Bernard Shaw's "The Millionairess, The play follows Epifania, a wealthy woman, and her unconventional challenge to potential suitors: they must transform 150 pounds into 50,000 within six months to win her hand and fortune. Here's a more detailed overview: EPIFANIA'S WEALTH AND CHALLENGES: Epifania's the richest woman in the world, is tired of her spendthrift husband and seeks a new match. Her father, before his death, imposed a condition on her marriage: she would only consider a man who could prove his worth by turning 150 pounds into 50,000 within six months. THE DOCTOR'S CHALLENGE: Coincidentally, an intriguing Egyptian doctor faces a similar challenge from is mother: he can only marry a woman who can prove her ability to make a living with only 35 pence for six months. THE PLOT: The play explores the dynamics of wealth, love, and ambition as Epifania and the doctor navigate their respective challenges, questioning the nature of marriage and societal expectations. THEMES: Shaw uses the play to satirize the pursuit of wealth and the absurdity of social conventions, highlighting the characters' struggles with their own desires and expectations. MAGGIE SMITH and TOM BAKER:The play features Maggie Smith as Epifania and Tom Baker as the doctor.

Someone Like You is a collection of short stories by Roald Dahl. It was published in 1953 by Alfred Knopf. The 18 stories featured are: [Taste]( [Lamb to the Slaughter]( [Man from the South]( [The Soldier]( [My Lady Love, My Dove]( [Dip in the Pool]( [Galloping Foxley]( [Skin]( [Poison]( [Wish]( [Neck]( [Sound Machine]( [Nunc Dimittis]( [Great Automatic Grammatizator]( Claud's Dog - [Ratcatcher]( - [Rummins]( - [Mr Hoddy]( - [Mr Feasey]( ([source](

Humorous golf short stories by an acknowledged master of tickling the funny bone.

Amazon.com Review In this sweeping historical narrative, Barbara Tuchman writes of the cataclysmic 14th century, when the energies of medieval Europe were devoted to fighting internecine wars and warding off the plague. Some medieval thinkers viewed these disasters as divine punishment for mortal wrongs; others, more practically, viewed them as opportunities to accumulate wealth and power. One of the latter, whose life informs much of Tuchman's book, was the French nobleman Enguerrand de Coucy, who enjoyed the opulence and elegance of the courtly tradition while ruthlessly exploiting the peasants under his thrall. Tuchman looks into such events as the Hundred Years War, the collapse of the medieval church, and the rise of various heresies, pogroms, and other events that caused medieval Europeans to wonder what they had done to deserve such horrors.