Showing results by publisher "Penguin Audio" in Contemporary Fiction

Stephen Fry's breathtakingly outrageous debut novel, by turns eccentric, shocking, brilliantly comic and achingly romantic. Adrian Healey is magnificently unprepared for the long littleness of life; unprepared too for the afternoon in Salzburg when he will witness the savage murder of a Hungarian violinist; unprepared to learn about the Mendax device; unprepared for more murders and wholly unprepared for the truth.

A bracing meditation on fame and celebrity, and the redemptive, healing power of art; a portrait of the ravages of disappointment and divorce; a poignant consideration of the rites of fatherhood and manhood; a novel soaked in rage and sex, longing and despair; and a passionate love letter to the world of theatre, A Bright Ray of Darkness showcases Ethan Hawke's gifts as a novelist as never before.

"The bloody victory of the Corleone Family was not complete," begins the final chapter of Mario Puzo's The Godfather, "until a year of delicate manoeuvring established Michael Corleone as the most powerful Family chief in the United States." The Godfather: The Lost Years takes place in the years 1955-65, but it is built upon the story of that "year of delicate political manoeuvring" and how, in winning the battle of that year, Michael Corleone set the stage to lose the war.

The first novel in Jan Karon’s bestselling and beloved Mitford series--now available in a new 20th Anniversary Edition, including an introductory letter by the author It's easy to feel at home in Mitford, North Carolina. In these high, green hills, the air is pure, the village is charming, and...

Barrytown, Dublin, has something to sing about. The Commitments are spreading the gospel of the soul. Ably managed by Jimmy Rabitte, brilliantly coached by Joel "The Lips" Fagan, their twin assault on Motown and Barrytown takes them by leaps and bounds from paris hall to immortality on vinyl. But can The Commitments live up to their name?

The incredible new novel and brand new world from the international bestselling author of the Wool trilogy. The old world is buried. A new one has been forged atop the shifting dunes. Here in this land of howling wind and infernal sand, four siblings find themselves scattered and lost. Palmer has never been the same since his father walked out twelve years ago. His elder sister, Vic, is trying to run away from the past; his younger brothers, Connor and Rob, are risking their lives to embrace it.

In the Depression year of 1931, on the golf links at Krewe Island off Savannah's windswept shore, two legends of the game - Bobby Jones and Walter Hagen - meet for a mesmerizing thirty-six hole showdown. They are joined by another player, a troubled war hero called Rannulph Junah. But the key to the outcome lies not with these golfing titans but with Junah's caddie and mentor, the mysterious, sage and charismatic Bagger Vance - for he is the custodian of the secret of the Authentic Swing...

Grey’s Anatomy meets Scrubs in this brilliant debut novel about a young doctor’s struggle to survive residency, love, and life. Having spent the last twenty-something years with her nose in a textbook, brilliant and driven Norah Kapadia has just landed the medical residency of her...

The Maude is outside. It wants to come in. It wants to sit on your chest. The mentally ill patients in Amberly Secure Unit are highly suggestible. A hallucination can spread like a virus. When unexplained power cuts lead to a series of horrifying incidents, fear spreads from the inmates to the staff. Amidst the growing hysteria, AJ, a senior psychiatric nurse, is desperate to protect his charges.

Caterina Pellegrini is a young Venetian musicologist hired by two competing cousins to find the truthful heir to an alleged treasure concealed by a once-famous, but now almost forgotten, baroque composer. Sworn to secrecy, Caterina can solve the mystery only by searching through the papers contained in the composer’s two chests that have not been opened for centuries. As she delves into all quarters of his life, from professional to personal, she is drawn into one of the most scandalous affairs of the baroque era.

It isn't often you receive a letter from the dead. When Vianne Rocher receives a letter from beyond the grave, she has no choice but to follow the wind that blows her back to Lansquenet, the village in south-west France where, eight years ago, she opened up a chocolate shop.

Ruby Lennox was conceived grudgingly by Bunty and born while her father, George, was in the Dog and Hare in Doncaster telling a woman in an emerald dress and a D-cup that he wasn't married. Bunty had never wanted to marry George, but here she was, stuck in a flat above the pet shop in an ancient street beneath York Minster, with sensible and sardonic Patrica aged five, greedy cross-patch Gillian who refused to be ignored, and Ruby....

The final book in Roddy Doyle's highly acclaimed Barrytown Trilogy focuses on Jimmy Rabbitte Sr, who is facing the vicissitudes of unemployment when his friend Bimbo invites him to become his partner in a new venture: a fish and chip van.

Shortlisted for the 2011 Costa First Novel Award. Winner of the Authors' Club Best First Novel Award. Forty years in the future. The once-great city of Bohane on the west coast of Ireland is on its knees, infested by vice and split along tribal lines. There are the posh parts of town, but it is in the slums and backstreets of Smoketown, the tower blocks of the Northside Rises and the eerie bogs of Big Nothin' that the city really lives.

ONE OF THE WASHINGTON POST'S TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR One of Christian Science Monitor's BEST FICTION OF 2019 "Funny and tender but also provocative and wise. . . One of the most hopeful and insightful novels I've read in years." - Ron Charles, The Washington Post "Serious yet joyous comedy...

With the same brilliant combination of humor and warmth that marked Operating Instructions and Bird by Bird, her two bestselling works of nonfiction, Anne Lamott now gives us an exuberant richly absorbing portrait of a family for whom the joys and sorrows of everyday life are magnified under the...

Angie is 18 years old, and, with the help of a mini skirt, a pair of false eyelashes and a tube of pale pink lipstick, has made herself into a beauty. She's living in London in the Swinging Sixties, and knows she's in the best city in the world at the best possible time. She's got that world at her pretty, white-booted feet as she dances the night away with every handsome bloke on the booming, strobe-lit floor of the Canvas Club.

One small, faded, leather-bound journal. One photograph in a newspaper. These two seemingly small items are set to change lives forever.Just when success seems set fair for Zeph’s writer husband Nick, she discovers that he has been having an affair. Wounded and angry, she turns to her mother for support, only to discover that the past has also come back to haunt Cora, a person who always seemed utterly flawless

Instead of entering the world crying, like other babies, Jubilo was born with a smile on his face. He had a gift for hearing what was in people’s hearts, for listening to sand dunes sing and insects whisper. Even as a young boy, acting as an interpreter between his warring Mayan grandmother and Spanish-speaking mother, he would translate words of spite into words of respect, so that their mutual hatred turned to love. When he grew up, he put his gift to good use in his job as a humble telegraph operator

The truth can kill you…Reuben Maitland runs the UK’s most elite crime squad, working only on the highest-profile cases, tracking down the country’s most vicious criminals. At the cutting edge – controversial, ruthless, effective – the squad have always made enemies. But now they’re in danger. A killer is using their own techniques against them. The hunters have become the hunted.Reuben must find the killer before his team is eradicated. But the more questions he asks, the more complex the answers become.