Joseph Delaney used to be an English teacher, before becoming the best-selling author of the Spook's series, which has been published in 30 countries and sold over 4.5 million copies worldwide. The first book, The Spook's Apprentice, was adapted into a major motion picture starring Jeff Bridges and Julianne Moore.

Joseph Delaney

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Gervase Phinn

For eleven-year old James Joseph Johnson (or Jimmy for short) life is not always straightforward. In fact, things can be quite complicated, and don't always turn out as he'd planned . . . 
 
Born in 1946, Jimmy lives with his Mum and Dad in a shiny red brick terraced house in South Yorkshire near the steel works. Sometimes the air is thick and metallic tasting, with bits of soot floating around like little black snowflakes. Despite all this, Jimmy wouldn't want to live anywhere else. 
 
His very best friend, Ignatius Plunkett, is a scrawny boy with a sharp beak of a nose, ears like jug handles and a mop of jet black hair. Micky is his rather 'posh' friend from the big houses down the road. The boys get into a few scrapes in the year leading up to the eleven-plus exams, but will they come out on top in the end? 
 
Will Jimmy survive a week looking after Butch, the temperamental, barrel-bodied bull terrier? Will the truth about the trip to buy Dad's tripe ever come out? What really happens to Jimmy's Mum's coffee and walnut cake, and will the mystery of the missing locket ever get solved?

A Load of Old Tripe

Henry James

The stories in this collection were written mostly between 1888 and 1897, a time when Henry James&rsquo;s writing was concerned with the art of fiction and the position of the artist in society. The motif and title story, &lsquo;The Figure in the Carpet&rsquo;, is an inspired joke, a masterpiece of double-entendre that demands the reader&rsquo;s undivided love and attention and continues to baffle its critics. Also included are &lsquo;The Author of Beltraffio&rsquo;, an absorbing story of family infighting, authorship and tragedy, and &lsquo;The Private Life&rsquo;, a spirited tale that considers the contrast between the artist alone and at work. While many of these stories appear to be elaborate Jamesian games, all employ irony and humour to allegorize artistic creation.

The Figure in the Carpet and Other Stories

Cyprian Ekwensi

'"Forget all your fears now. Have a fling this night"' 
 
Untrustworthy, charming Fussy Joe spins stories and breaks hearts in this rollicking story set in the 'sensational city' of 1960s Lagos. 
 
Penguin Modern: fifty new books celebrating the pioneering spirit of the iconic Penguin Modern Classics series, with each one offering a concentrated hit of its contemporary, international flavour. Here are authors ranging from Kathy Acker to James Baldwin, Truman Capote to Stanislaw Lem and George Orwell to Shirley Jackson; essays radical and inspiring; poems moving and disturbing; stories surreal and fabulous; taking us from the deep South to modern Japan, New York's underground scene to the farthest reaches of outer space.

Glittering City

Colm Tóibín

'I imagined lamplight, shadows, soft voices, clothes put away, the low sound of late news on the radio. And I thought as I crossed the bridge at Baggot Street to face the last stretch of my own journey home that no matter what I had done, I had not done that.' 
 
In the captivating stories that make up The Empty Family Colm Tóibín delineates with a tender and unique sensibility lives of unspoken or unconscious longing, of individuals, often willingly, cast adrift from their history. 
 
From the young Pakistani immigrant who seeks some kind of permanence in a strange town to the Irish woman reluctantly returning to Dublin and discovering a city that refuses to acknowledge her long absence each of Tóibín's stories manage to contain whole worlds: stories of fleeing the past and returning home, of family threads lost and ultimately regained.

The Empty Family

Stories

Joseph Conrad

'It was as if the sea, breaking down the wall protecting all the homes of the town, had sent a wave over her head' 
 
One of Conrad's most powerful, gripping stories 
 
Introducing Little Black Classics: 80 books for Penguin's 80th birthday. Little Black Classics celebrate the huge range and diversity of Penguin Classics, with books from around the world and across many centuries. They take us from a balloon ride over Victorian London to a garden of blossom in Japan, from Tierra del Fuego to 16th century California and the Russian steppe. Here are stories lyrical and savage; poems epic and intimate; essays satirical and inspirational; and ideas that have shaped the lives of millions. 
 
Joseph Conrad (1857-1924). Conrad's Heart of Darkness, Lord Jim, Nostromo, The Secret Agent, The Secret Sharer and Other Stories, Typhoon and Other Stories and Under Western Eyes are available in Penguin Classics.

To-morrow

Sinéad Moriarty

A SPECIAL SHORT STORY FROM THE WINNER OF THE IRISH BOOK AWARD FOR POPULAR FICTION 2015 - A STANDALONE PREQUEL TO THE NO 1 BESTSELLING THE WAY WE WERE 
 
It's Valentine's Day and Alice's house is a sea of elaborate cards and billowing heart-shaped balloons. These gifts are not from her husband, Ben, but from a gaggle of boys madly in love with their fifteen-year-old daughter. 
 
After nearly two decades together, Alice and Ben barely have time for romance. Their roles are clear: Alice is a busy GP who also keeps their home and girls on track. Ben has the more exciting if demanding career as a surgeon. 
 
Much as she knows Ben loves his family, Alice feels he is restless and preoccupied. But what is causing him to neglect her and their daughters? 
 
Then, at a Valentine's dinner with friends, a dramatic revelation causes Alice to see Ben in a new light - and to wonder if they still have a future together. Because it is clear - their family cannot stay the way they are. 
 
Praise for The Way We Were: 
 
'Heartfelt and deeply moving ... I couldn't put it down.' Susan Lewis 
 
'Intriguing and thought provoking ... a great read.' Katie Fforde 
 
'Gripping and thought-provoking - I was desperate to discover how it would pan out!' Paige Toon

The Way We Are

J. D. Salinger

In May of 1942, Buddy Glass, second son of the eccentric Glass family, comes home on leave from military service. He is back in New York City to attend the wedding of his eldest brother, Seymour. But the celebration is overcast by a sense of suspended weight, a strange and muted dread. Perhaps everyone is aware, on some level, of what is to come. And in the years after the tragedy, Buddy is haunted by memories of Seymour, turning over in his mind everything that came to pass with his unhappy older brother. 
 
In two communicating stories from his acclaimed Glass series, J. D. Salinger unfolds a subtle and poignant story of family tragedy.

Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters; Seymour - an Introduction

Kate Riordan

Marjorie knows that James has had affairs in the past. She knows that when he works late, he can't attend a party, he seems to be deep in thought, his heart, mind or body might be with another woman. But that doesn't stop her breath catching in her throat when she sees the letter inked into his diary. A red A - unassuming and yet dominating, all powerful. Unquestionable. 
 
She was a clever, witty and independent woman once. Not someone's second best with a broken spirit. And as Marjorie looks at the red letter A - Amy? Angela? - she realises that it's is time to rediscover herself.

The Red Letter

James Robertson

In 2013, James Robertson wrote a story every day. Each was 365 words long. A year later, on a daily basis, the stories were published on the Five Dials website. Now the 365 stories are gathered in one volume. Some draw on elements of ancient myth and legend, others are outtakes from Scottish history and folklore; there are squibs and satires, songs and ballads in disguise, fairy tales, stories inspired by dreams or in the form of interviews, and personal memories and observations. 
 
 Underpinning them all are vital questions: Who are we? What are we doing here? What happens next?

Frank O'Connor

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'Father,' I said, feeling I might as well get it over while I had him in a good humour, 'I had it all arranged to kill my grandmother.' 
 
Praised as Ireland's Chekhov, Frank O'Connor was a modern master of the short story. From an amateur brass band divided by partisanship to English soldiers who befriend their Irish captors, and from a child's comic confession to the end of a small-town friendship, these four humorous and tragic stories refract universal truths through the prism of 20th-century Ireland. 
 
This book contains The Cornet-Player Who Betrayed Ireland, Guests of the Nation, A Story by Maupassant, and First Confession.

The Cornet-Player Who Betrayed Ireland

William Trevor

A remarkable collection of twelve new stories,mostly set in Ireland,which was greeted with universal acclamation when published in hardcover in 1996. The title story is a small, sad masterpiece, about a woman holidaying alone in an Italian hotel. 
 
&quot;A dazzling collection of short stories&quot; SUNDAY TIMES

After Rain

Throughout his life, Henry James was drawn to the short story form for the freedom and variety it offered. The nineteen stories in this selection span James's career, from brief tales to longer works, all exploring his concerns with the old world and the new, money, fame and art. 'Daisy Miller', the work that first brought him fame, depicts a bold, unsophisticated American girl abroad, and 'In the Cage' portrays a young telegraphist's romantic fantasies about customers who send telegrams from her post office. In 'The Birthplace' a Stratford tour guide embellishes the Shakespeare legend, while in the late masterpiece 'The Jolly Corner', an elderly American returns from Europe and encounters a strange apparition. Haunting, witty and beautifully drawn, James's tales are as complex and resonant as his novels.

Selected Tales

Benedict Kiely

'Do the Irish have, in relation to anybody else, any special capacity for the short story?' 
 
In this collection of thirty-eight short stories covering many generations and moods of Irish writing, this question is emphatically answered in the affirmative. These mercurial, intoxicating, witty and sometimes sad stories range from Lady Gregory's moving retelling of an ancient love story through to the extraordinary and prolific William Trevor.

The Penguin Book of Irish Short Stories

'Did she know and if she knew would she speak?' 
 
The story of an unsolved literary mystery that explores what James referred to as "troubled artistic consciousness" 
 
Introducing Little Black Classics: 80 books for Penguin's 80th birthday. Little Black Classics celebrate the huge range and diversity of Penguin Classics, with books from around the world and across many centuries. They take us from a balloon ride over Victorian London to a garden of blossom in Japan, from Tierra del Fuego to 16th-century California and the Russian steppe. Here are stories lyrical and savage; poems epic and intimate; essays satirical and inspirational; and ideas that have shaped the lives of millions. 
 
Henry James (1843-1916). James's works available in Penguin Classics are The Portrait of a Lady, 
The Europeans, What Maisie Knew, The Awkward Age, The Figure in the Carpet and Other Stories, The Turn of The Screw, The Aspern Papers and Other Tales, The Wings of The Dove, Washington Square, The Tragic Muse, Daisy Miller, The Ambassadors, The Golden Bowl, Selected Tales, Roderick Hudson, The Princess Casamassima and The American.

The Figure in the Carpet

Salley Vickers

'A wonderful book. Salley Vickers spins a spellbinding account of a family in distress' Elizabeth Strout on 'Cousins' 
 
Spring, 1918. Nine-year-old Charlotte Tye wakes up unusually early the night before her brother's wedding, and steals out down the familiar track leading from her house to the seashore. There, she meets a local man, standing alone amid the eider ducks, who carries a mysterious message for her... 
 
Read more about three generations of the Tye family from the First World War to the present day in the first two chapters of Salley Vickers' powerful new novel, 'Cousins', included in this e-book.

The Message from Lindisfarne

M. R. James

'The lower jaw was thin - what can I call it? - shallow, like a beast's; teeth showed behind the black lips...' 
 
M. R. James is the master of the English ghost story, whose tales are inhabited not by ethereal spirits, but by terrifying, palpable forces of evil. In these four stories figures appear in paintings, demonic voices are heard, books awaken ancient horrors - and ordinary objects and situations are transformed into inescapable nightmares. 
 
This book includes Canon Alberic's Scrap-Book, The Mezzotint, The Rose Garden and The Stalls of Barchester Cathedral.

Canon Alberic's Scrap-Book

Paul Theroux

A family watches, horrified, as their patriarch transforms into the wise-cracking lead of an old-timey minstrel show. An art collector gleefully destroys his most valuable pieces. A young artist devotes himself to a wealthy, malicious gossip, knowing that it's just a matter of time before she turns on him. 
 
In this new collection of short stories, Paul Theroux explores the tenuous leadership of the elite and the surprising revenge of the overlooked. He shows us humanity possessed, consumed by its own desires, always with his carefully honed eye and the subtle idiosyncrasies that bring his characters to life.

Mr Bones

Twenty Stories

Andrew Fox

A young man rushes to the bedside of his ex, knowing the baby she's having is not his own. Travelling colleagues experience an eerie moment of truth when a fire starts in their hotel. A misdirected parcel sets off a complex psychodrama involving two men, a woman and a dog ... 
 
Andrew Fox's clever, witty, intense and thoroughly entertaining stories capture the passions and befuddlements of the young and rootless, equally dislocated at home and abroad. Set in America and Ireland - and, at times, in jets over the Atlantic - Over Our Heads showcases a brilliant new talent.

Over Our Heads

Brian Friel

'A fake! A quack! A charlatan! Get a grip on yourself, woman! We’ll say another rosary and then I’ll leave you home.’ 
 
Stories of Ireland is a brilliant, colourful compendium of mid-century Irish experience from one of Ireland’s greatest ever writers, Brian Friel. Demonstrating all of Friel’s peerless instinct for voice, scene, and the uncanny mystery found in the everyday, these tales tell of beauty, struggle and discovery: from the drowning of a man in the bog-black waters of Lough Keeragh, to the camaraderie of teenage potato gathers in County Tyrone, and from the careful work of the German War Graves Commission in Glenn na fuiseog, to trawlermen’s talk of sunken gold off the coast of Donegal. 
 
Selected by Friel himself, and introduced by acclaimed author Louise Kennedy, this delightful, heartful collection truly offers some of the best stories ever written.

Stories of Ireland

Joshua Ferris

'He reflected in future retrospect on the evening and foretold every gesture, every word. "I can't do it," he said. "I can predict everything that will happen from the moment they arrive to the little kiss on the cheek goodbye and I just can't goddamn do it."' 
 
The Dinner Party immerses us in the comic and strange realities of modern life, as we journey through the lives of the unlovable, the unloved, and those who love too much: Jack, who nervously tries to befriend the surly removal man by buying him a latte and a croissant; Sarah, who endlessly imagines how her evening would have been better had she only chosen a different restaurant; Joe, who spends a night alone at the office and surreptitiously starts to rearrange his colleagues' belongings. 
 
These are stories about the infinite possibilities of a person's life, from an agonizingly funny and original writer.

The Dinner Party

J. Hendry

'In this collection the heretical principle has been adopted that if a writer is Scots, something of the Scottish spirit must inevitably emerge from his work.' 
 
In the twenty stories collected here we are given a multi-faceted view of Scotland, the Scots and the Scottish short story. With stories ranging from Roman Britain through the trials of those at home during the Second World War to a country and people determined to assert their independence.

The Penguin Book of Scottish Short Stories

Amor Towles

THE SUNDAY TIMES AND NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER 
 
FROM THE BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF A GENTLEMAN IN MOSCOW 
 
'Feels more mythically New York than a Woody Allen storyboard painted by Edward Hopper' THE TIMES 
 
'Storytelling of the highest order' IRISH TIMES 
 
'Towles is a craftsman' NEW YORK TIMES 
 
Millions of Amor Towles fans are in for a treat as he shares some of his shorter fiction: six stories based in New York City and a novella set in Golden Age Hollywood. 
 
The New York stories, most of which take place around the year 2000, consider the fateful consequences that can spring from brief encounters and the delicate mechanics of compromise that operate at the heart of modern marriages.Told from seven points of view, 'Eve in Hollywood' describes how one of Towles’s most beloved characters, the indomitable Evelyn Ross from Rules of Civility, crafts a new future for herself—and others—in a noirish tale that takes us through the movie sets, bungalows and dive bars of 1930s Los Angeles.Written with his signature wit, humour and sophistication, Table for Two is another glittering addition to Towles’s canon of stylish and transporting fiction.

Table For Two

James Joyce

'Snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves.' 
 
From a child grappling with the death of a fallen priest, to a young woman's dilemma over whether to elope to Argentina with her lover, to the dance party at which a man discovers just how little he really knows about his wife, these fifteen stories bring the gritty realism of existence in Joyce's native Dublin to life.

Dubliners

William Trevor's new collection of stories is his first since the highly acclaimed AFTER RAIN. It contains a dozen new stories, mostly set in Ireland, that show Trevor at the height of his powers. With understatement and precision he writes about the lonely and the sad, about those that barely have control over their lives and those who have something to hide. In 'Three People' a father waits for the proposal for his daughter that will never come; in 'Against the Odds', a con-woman has businessthat takes her all across the Six Counties; and in the poignant title-story, a youngest son returns home for his father's funeral and stays to run the farm.

The Hill Bachelors

Roald Dahl

In William and Mary, Roald Dahl, one of the world's favourite authors, tells a sinister story about the darker side of human nature. Here, a wronged woman takes revenge on her dead husband . . .

William and Mary (A Roald Dahl Short Story)

Elizabeth Strout

Anything is Possible tells the story of the inhabitants of rural, dusty Amgash, Illinois, the hometown of Lucy Barton, a successful New York writer who finally returns, after seventeen years of absence, to visit the siblings she left behind. 
 
Reverberating with the deep bonds of family, and the hope that comes with reconciliation, Anything Is Possible again underscores Elizabeth Strout's place as one of America's most respected and cherished authors.

Anything is Possible

Franz Kafka

Drawing directly on original manuscripts, this collection comprises the major short stories published after Kafka&rsquo;s death. It includes The Great Wall of China, Blumfeld, An Elderly Bachelor, Investigations of a Dog and his great sequences of aphorisms, with fables and parables on subjects ranging from the legend of Prometheus to the Tower of Babel. Allegorical, disturbing and possessing a dream-like clarity, these writings are quintessential Kafka.

The Great Wall of China

Read stories inspired by the four Underground lines that run around and through areas of London - part of a series of twelve books tied to the twelve lines of the London Underground, as Tfl celebrates 150 years of the Tube with Penguin. 
 
Family, passion and fashion come together in four tales: 
 
The Circle Line: From Lucy Wadham, the bestselling author of The Secret Life of France, an autobiographical tale of bohemians, punk, the King's Road in the 1970s and family. 
 
The Metropolitan Line: Richard Mabey, one of Britain's leading nature writers, looks in A Good Parcel of English Soil at the relationship between city and country, and how this brings out the power of nature 
 
The East London Line: London is a centre of cutting-edge fashion - here, the creators of 'the best fashion mag out there', Fantastic Man, tell the story of London style through the history of the button-down shirt. 
 
The Waterloo &amp; City Line: Leanne Shapton, author of Important Artifacts and Personal Property from the Collection of Lenore Doolan and Harold Morris and Swimming Studies, creates an authorly and artistic response to travel, work and being a passenger.

Circles and Diagonals: Penguin Underground Lines

Circle, Metropolitan, East London Line, Waterloo & City

Michiko Aoyama

THE GLOBAL BESTSELLER 
 
The Top Ten Times bestseller 
A Time Magazine Book of the Year 
'An undeniable page-turner' New York Times 
Shortlisted for the Japan Booksellers' Award 
 
'I ADORED this uplifting, hopeful novel ' Daily Mail 
'It made me laugh and cry and feel comforted' 5***** Reader review 
'A tribute to the transformative power of books and libraries' Irish Times 
 
An inspirational tale of the love, comfort and growth you can find in the pages of a good book. 
_________________ 
What are you looking for? 
 
So asks Tokyo's most enigmatic librarian, Sayuri Komachi. But she is no ordinary librarian. 
 
Sensing exactly what someone is searching for in life, she provides just the book recommendation to help them find it. 
 
We meet five visitors to the library, each at a different crossroads: 
 
- The restless retail assistant eager to pick up new skills 
- The mother faced with a demotion at work after maternity leave 
- The conscientious accountant who yearns to open an antique store 
- The gifted young manga artist in search of motivation 
- The recently retired salaryman on a quest for newfound purpose 
 
Can she help them find what they are looking for? 
 
Which book will you recommend? 
_________________ 
 
For fans of The Midnight Library and Before the Coffee Gets Cold, this feel-good Japanese book shows how the perfect book recommendation can change a life. 
 
'I definitely want to visit this library. I feel kinder after this book' 5***** Reader review 
'A quirky slice of feel-good fiction that you could recommend to anyone' Mail on Sunday 
'Wonderful. It made me look for connection in my life' 5***** Reader review 
 
Times bestseller, August 2023 
_________________ 
NOW GET YOUR COPY OF AOYAMA'S LATEST NOVEL TRANSLATED INTO ENGLISH: HOT CHOCOLATE ON THURSDAY

What You Are Looking for is in the Library

Anne Youngson

'An extraordinary new writer' NINA STIBBE 
 
Six short stories full of colourful suspects and complicated motives by the winner of the Paul Torday Memorial prize for debut authors over sixty - perfect for fans of grisly mysteries set in the English countryside 
 
The village cleaning lady who holds everyone's house-keys opens a boot to find some unexpected baggage; a vengeful dinner party host serves more than just a roast to her six guests; hairdresser chat is not just idle gossip as an old man with a history gets a trim; driven to distraction by his new young wife, a man resorts to two grisly acts, in a gripping re-imagining of a famous Irish ballad. 
 
Ripping away the polite façade of small communities, these stories reveal the roiling emotions and frustration that can lead seemingly ordinary people to do bad things. Rich in compassion, pathos and humour, Anne Youngson offers us her dark take on human foibles, pettiness and rivalry in this sparkling, unputdownable collection.

The Six Who Came to Dinner

Stories by Costa Award Shortlisted author of MEET ME AT THE MUSEUM

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