Penguin Juve! 100 Years of an Italian Football Dynasty Sykes Herbie

A classic of Italian literature, this epic and unforgettable novel recounts one man's long and turbulent life in revolutionary Italy • At the age of eighty-three and nearing death, Carlo Altoviti has decided to write down the confessions of his long life. He remembers everything, from his unhappy childhood in the kitchens of the Castle of Fratta to revolutionary fighting in Naples and romantic entanglements during the siege of Genoa. Throughout, Carlo lives only for his twin passions in life: his dream of a unified, free Italy and his undying love for the magnificent but inconstant Pisana. Peopled by a host of unforgettable characters - including drunken smugglers, saintly nuns, scheming priests, Napoleon and Lord Byron - this is an epic historical novel that tells the remarkable and inseparable stories of one man's life and the history of Italy's unification

In three thousand years of history, China has spent at least eleven centuries at war. The Roman Empire was in conflict during at least 50 per cent of its lifetime. Since 1776, the United States has spent over one hundred years at war. The dream of peace has been universal in the history of humanity. So why have we so rarely been able to achieve it? • In A Political History of the World, Jonathan Holslag has produced a sweeping history of the world, from the Iron Age to the present, that investigates the causes of conflict between empires, nations and peoples and the attempts at diplomacy and cosmopolitanism. A birds-eye view of three thousand years of history, the book illuminates the forces shaping world politics from Ancient Egypt to the Han Dynasty, the Pax Romana to the rise of Islam, the Peace of Westphalia to the creation of the United Nations

In The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage Sydney Padua transforms one of the most compelling scientific collaborations into a hilarious set of adventures • Meet two of Victorian London's greatest geniuses... Ada Lovelace, daughter of Lord Byron: mathematician, gambler, and proto-programmer, whose writings contained the first ever appearance of general computing theory, a hundred years before an actual computer was built. And Charles Babbage, eccentric inventor of the Difference Engine, an enormous clockwork calculating machine that would have been the first computer, if he had ever finished it • But what if things had been different? The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage presents a delightful alternate reality in which Lovelace and Babbage do build the Difference Engine and use it to create runaway economic models, battle the scourge of spelling errors, explore the wider realms of mathematics and, of course, fight crime - for the sake of both London and science

Why are people successful? For centuries, humankind has grappled with this question, searching for the secret to accomplishing great things. In this stunning new book, Malcolm Gladwell takes us on an invigorating intellectual journey to show us what makes an extreme overachiever • He reveals that we pay far too much attention to what successful people are like, and too little attention to where successful people are from: their culture, their family, and their generation. Gladwell examines how the careers of Bill Gates and the performance of world-class football players are alike; what top fighter pilots and The Beatles have in common; why so many top lawyers are Jewish; why Asians are good at maths; and why it is correct to say that the mathematician who solved Fermat's Theorem is not a genius

Zachary Cloudesley is gifted in a remarkable way. But not all gifts are a blessing • Leadenhall Street, London, 1754 • Raised amongst the cogs and springs of his father's workshop, Zachary Cloudesley has grown up surrounded by strange and enchanting clockwork automata. He is a happy child, beloved by his father Abel and the workmen who help bring his father's creations to life • He is also the bearer of an extraordinary gift; at the touch of a hand, Zachary can see into the hearts and minds of the people he meets • But then a near-fatal accident will take Zachary away from the workshop and his family. His father will have to make a journey that he will never return from. And, years later, only Zachary can find out what happened • A beautifully crafted historical mystery of love and hope, and the adventure of finding your place in the world

Horace Rumpole - witty, eloquent, dishevelled and cynical - is one of fiction's best-loved barristers-at-law. In these twenty classic tales, Rumpole battles through the Old Bailey, whether defending various members of an incompetent South London crime family, taking on haute-cuisine chefs and showfolk or mocking the pomposity of his own profession, all the while being held in check by his wife, Hilda: the wonderful, fearsome She Who Must Be Obeyed • These collected stories, in Penguin Modern Classics for the first time, are a definitive introduction to one of the wisest and wittiest characters in British comic writing and a reminder of what justice should really be about. With a new introduction by Sam Leith, former literary editor of the Daily Telegraph and contributor to the Evening Standard, Guardian and Spectator

'Four years of war turned Ypres into a ghost town. Not a leaf grew on a tree. Scarcely one stone stood upon another. From the battered ramparts the eye swept clean across a field of rubble to the swamp-lands beyond . . .' • The Third Battle of Ypres, ending in a desperate struggle for the ridge and little village of Passchendaele, was one of the most appalling campaigns in the history of warfare. A million Tommies, Canadians and Anzacs assembled at the Ypres Salient in summer of 1917, mostly raw young troops keen to do their bit for King and Country. This book tells their tale of mounting disillusion amid mud, terror and increasingly desperate attacks, yet it is also a story of immense courage, comradeship, high spirits and hope • In Passchendaele, Lyn Macdonald lets over 600 soldiers speak for themselves

Two rival spies. One fake marriage. What could possibly go wrong • When rumours of an assassination plot against the Queen begin to circulate, Alice is immediately assigned to the case • However, she won't be working alone • Enter Daniel Bixby. Unflappable master spy and Alice's greatest rival • Together they must assume the identity of husband and wife in order to gain access to the traitor party • Alice is determined to remain professional. This is work after all • But when an attraction starts to grow there may be more at stake than just the throne

One of the greatest of all horror writers, Edgar Allan Poe (1809-49) also composed pioneering tales that seized upon the scientific developments of an era marked by staggering change. In this collection of sixteen stories, he explores such wide-ranging contemporary themes as galvanism, time travel and resurrection of the dead. 'The Unparalleled Adventure of One Hans Pfall' relates a man's balloon journey to the moon with a combination of scientific precision and astonishing fantasy. Elsewhere, the boundaries between horror and science are elegantly blurred in stories such as 'The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar', while the great essay 'Eureka' outlines Poe's own interpretation of the universe. Powerfully influential on later authors including Jules Verne, these works are essential reading for anyone wishing to trace the genealogy of science fiction, or to understand the complexity of Poe's own creative vision

Borges' first collection of stories (1935). In his writing, Borges always combined high seriousness with a wicked sense of fun. Here he reveals his delight in re-creating (or making up) colorful stories from the Orient, the Islamic world, and the Wild West, as well as his horrified fascination with knife fights, political and personal betrayal, and bloodthirsty revenge. Spark-ling with the sheer exuberant pleasure of story-telling, this collection marked the emergence of an utterly distinctive literary voice

"As Romeo and Juliet found to their cost, marriage is never just about two people falling in love, it is about families." • Sisters Vera and Nadezhda must aside a lifetime of feuding to save their widowed, tractor-obsessed Ukrainian father from the voluptuous, wealth-obsessed Valentina. With her proclivity for green satin underwear and boil-in-the-bag cuisine, she outmanoeuvres the sisters at every turn • But their campaign to oust Valentina unearths family secrets, uncovers fifty years of European and Ukrainian history, and sends them back to roots they'd much rather forget

'Come at once if convenient - if inconvenient come all the same . . .' • The note from Sherlock Holmes to Dr Watson cannot be ignored and soon the pair find themselves investigating the curious case of an aged professor whose sudden strange alteration in behaviour terrifies everyone from his daughter and her fiance to the family dog. This and eleven other cases which confound clients or perplex the police are tackled by Holmes and Watson in the final collection of the duo's detecting adventures