Penguin All My Cats Hrabal Bohumil

'As I crammed the cream horn voraciously into my mouth, at once I heard Francin's voice saying that no decent woman would eat a cream puff like that' • In a quiet town where not much happens, Maryska, the flamboyant brewer's wife, stands out. She cuts her skirt short so that she can ride her bicycle, her golden hair flying out behind her. She butchers pigs. She drinks and eats with relish. And when the garrulous ranconteur Uncle Pepin comes to visit the locals are scandalized even further, in Bohumil Hrabal's affecting, exuberant portrayal of a small central European community between the wars

A classic of postwar literature, a small masterpiece of humour, humanity and heroism from one of the best Czech writers • For twenty-two-year-old Milos, bumbling apprentice at a sleepy Czech railway station, life is full of worries: his burdensome virginity, his love for the pretty conductor Masha, the scandalous goings-on in the station master's office. Beside them, the part he will come to play against the occupying Germans seems a simple affair, in Bohumil Hrabal's touching, absurd masterpiece of humour, humanity and heroism • Closely Watched Trains, which became the award-winning Jiri Menzel film of the 'Prague Spring', is a masterpiece that fully justifies Hrabal's reputation as one of the best Czech writers of the twentieth century

In Joe and Kate Keller's family garden, an apple tree - a memorial to their son Larry, lost in the Second World War - has been torn down by a storm. But his loss is not the only part of the family's past they can't put behind them. Not everybody's forgotten the court case that put Joe's partner in jail, or the cracked engine heads his factory produced which caused it and dropped twenty-one pilots out of the sky

All Souls is a compelling black comedy of Oxford life by Javier Marias, whose highly-anticipated new novel The Infatuations is published in 2013. This Penguin Modern Classics edition features a new Introduction by John Banville, author of The Sea • The pretty young tutor Clare Bayes attracts many eyes at an Oxford college dinner, not least those of a visiting Spanish lecturer (desperate to escape his conversation with an obese economist about an eighteenth-century cider tax). As they begin an affair, meeting in hotel bedrooms away from the eyes of Clare's husband, the Spaniard finds himself increasingly drawn into the strange world of Oxford, 'one of the cities in the world where the least work gets done', in a story of lust, loneliness, vanity and memory

'When I play with my cat, how do I know she is not passing time with me rather than I with her?' Montaigne • There is no real evidence that humans ever 'domesticated' cats. Rather, it seems that at some point cats saw the potential value to themselves of humans. John Gray's wonderful new book is an attempt to get to grips with the philosophical and moral issues around the uniquely strange relationship between ourselves and these remarkable animals • Feline Philosophy draws on centuries of philosophy, from Montaigne to Schopenhauer, to explore the complex and intimate links that have defined how we react to and behave with this most unlikely 'pet' • At the heart of the book is a sense of gratitude towards cats as perhaps the species that more than any other - in the essential loneliness of our position in the world - gives us a sense of our own animal nature

At 95, the legendary Mel Brooks continues to set the standard for comedy across television, film, and the stage. Now, for the first time, this EGOT (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, Tony) winner shares his story in his own words • Here are the never-before-told, behind-the-scenes anecdotes and remembrances from a master storyteller, filmmaker, and creator of all things funny • From The Producers to Blazing Saddles, Young Frankenstein to Anxiety and more, All About Me! offers fans fascinating and hilarious insight into Mel Brooks's outstanding collection of boundary-breaking work. Filled with tales of struggle, achievement and camaraderie, Brooks shares riveting details about his upbringing, his career and his many close friendships and collaborations including those with Gene Wilder, Alfred Hitchcock, and the great love of his love, Anne Bancroft

The irrisistable, uplifting and big-hearted story of surviving in a modern family • 'A wonderful read' Elizabeth Strout • 'Literary sunshine' New York Times • 'A gorgeous and witty storyteller' Elizabeth Gilbert, author of City of Girls • 'The world will love it' Ann Patchett • The instant New York Times Bestseller • After Astrid Strick - a widowed, 68-year-old mother of three living in upstate New York - witnesses an accident, she resolves to live more honestly. Starting with the mistakes she made in raising her family • But are her kids, tangled in their own messy adult lives, really ready to be treated like grown ups? • Charming, uplifting and well-observed, All Adults Here is the delightful story about the wonders and woes of modern family life • Praise for All Adults Here • 'Perfectly pitched summer reading' Stylist • 'Smartly observant, wryly witty, big-hearted

A golden Cadillac big enough to cross the ocean has been seen sailing along the streets of Harlem. A hit-and-run victim's been hit so hard she got embedded in the wall of a convent. A shootout with three heistmen dressed as cops has left an important politician in a coma - and a lot of money missing. And Grave Digger Jones and Coffin Ed Johnson are the ones who have to piece it all together • All Shot Up is chaotic, bloody - and completely unforgettable. Chester Himes wrote detective fiction darker, dirtier and more extreme than anyone else dared

Anna Funder, winner of the Samuel Johnson Prize and author of Stasiland, offers a thrilling tale and powerful love story that tells the heroic and tragic true story of the German resistance in World War II in All That I Am • When Hitler comes to power in 1933, a tight-knit group of friends and lovers become hunted outlaws overnight. United in their resistance to the madness and tyranny of Nazism, they must flee the country • Dora, passionate and fearless, her lover, the great playwright Ernst Toller, her younger cousin Ruth and Ruth's husband Hans find refuge in London. Here they take breath-taking risks in order to continue their work in secret • But England is not the safe-haven they think it to be, and a single, chilling act of betrayal will tear them apart

Saul David's All The King's Men is a thrilling history of the British Redcoat from the English Civil War to Waterloo • Between 1660 and 1815 British supremacy on foreign soil was near total. Central to this success was the humble redcoat soldier who showed heroism in battle and stoicism in peace, despite appalling treatment. This is their story: of brutal discipline and inedible food, of loyalty and low pay, of barracks and battlefield - of victory, defeat, life and death

The first girl came back • The next might not be so lucky • A girl is taken from the streets of Oxford. But it's unlike any abduction DI Fawley's seen before • Faith Appleford was attacked, a plastic bag tied over her head, taken to an isolated location . . . and then, by some miracle, she escaped • What's more, when DC Erica Somer interviews Faith, she quickly becomes convinced that Faith knows who her abductor is. Yet Faith refuses to press charges. Without more evidence, it's looking like the police may have to drop the case • But what happens if Faith's attacker strikes again? • The fourth twisty, up-all-night thriller from the Sunday Times bestselling Cara Hunter. For fans of Shari Lapena, Claire Douglas and Lisa Jewell

From the author of the globally bestselling, multi-million-copy classic, The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, comes its astonishing and powerful sequel • Gretel Fernsby is a quiet woman leading a quiet life. She doesn't talk about her escape from Germany seventy years ago or the dark post-war years in France with her mother. Most of all, she doesn't talk about her father, the commandant of one of the most notorious Nazi concentration camps • But when a young family moves into the apartment below her, Gretel can't help but befriend their little boy, Henry, though his presence brings back painful memories. One night, she witnesses a violent argument between his parents, which threatens to disturb her hard-won peace • For the second time in her life, Gretel is given the chance to save a young boy