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

PublicationStatus

Brand

Format

AgeRange

Series

Imprint

CategoryLabel

Simon Weisz

For the first eighteen years of Simon Weisz’s life his parents were at pains to keep their past concealed from him. All he knew for sure was that they had grown up in Hungary and that they had arrived in Britain after the Second World War. It was only as he reached manhood that they started to confide their carefully guarded secrets to him: that they were Jewish, and that his mother had experienced the appalling horrors of Nazi persecution.In conversations over the following decades, Simon’s mother gradually, often reluctantly, revealed more of her past: from the growing oppression her family had had to endure in the late 1930s, to her deportation first to Auschwitz and then to Ravensbrück, to the brutal death march she withstood from the ruins of Berlin in 1945. As he pieced her testimony together, Simon came to realise how the memories she had fought so hard to suppress continued to haunt her in the form of terrifying flashbacks and moments of extreme frustration and anger. And he started to understand how her concealed trauma had, in turn, shaped his own development and the course of his life.Himmler’s Curtains is both a visceral account of a Holocaust survivor’s experiences, and an impressive study of the impact of suffering on two generations of a family. It also movingly reveals the high psychological price exacted by silence.

Himmler’s Curtains

A Memoir of Loss and Concealment

Hannah Murray

In 2017, Hannah Murray was a successful actor whose career had taken her to Hollywood and given her the opportunity to act with A list stars and Oscar-winning directors. But as the daily costs of acting grew, from the degradations of auditions to repeating violent scenes over and over, Hannah found herself searching for something to make her feel better. One day, a reiki healer promises her a new kind of treatment, a kind of magic, and all of a sudden Hannah’s life is changed. 
 
Back in London, she becomes increasingly involved with the organisation behind the magic, an organisation whose charismatic leader, promises of secret knowledge, and increasingly complex rituals, are seductive, cult-like – and ultimately destructive, as Hannah finds herself on a week-long course from her friends and family - and her sanity falls apart. Detained in hospital, she struggles to understand the difference between what’s real, and what’s imagined. The result is a propulsive, shockingly honest, and extraordinarily intimate portrayal of a mind taken over the edge. 
 
From the outer edges of fame, through Hollywood film sets and London parties, Hannah’s life has slowly moved from that of a successful starlet to that of a young woman seduced by the magical thinking of an organisation that promises health and happiness beyond her wildest dreams, but her reality becomes far more disturbing than she could ever have imagined. 
 
Shocking, intimate and compulsive, The Make-Believe is an ultimately uplifting and inspiring story of empathy, resilience and the power of belief.

The Make-Believe

A memoir of magic and madness

Lyse Doucet

'Ingenious' KAMILA SHAMSIE 
'Incredible' PETER FRANKOPAN 
'Beautiful' RORY STEWART 
 
In 1969, the luxury Hotel Inter-Continental Kabul opened its doors: a glistening white box, high on a hill, that reflected Afghanistan’s hopes of becoming a modern country, connected to the world. 
 
Lyse Doucet first checked into the Inter-Continental on Christmas Eve 1988. In the decades since, she has witnessed a Soviet evacuation, a devastating civil war, the US invasion, and the rise, fall and rise of the Taliban, all from within its increasingly battered walls. The Inter-Con has never closed its doors. 
 
Now, she weaves together the experiences of the Afghans who have kept the hotel running to craft a richly immersive history of their country. It is the story of Hazrat, the septuagenarian housekeeper, of Abida, who became the first female chef after the fall of the Taliban in 2001. And of Malalai and Sadeq, the twenty-somethings who seized every opportunity offered by two decades of fragile democracy – only to see the Taliban come roaring back in 2021. 
 
Through these intimate portraits of Afghan life, the story of a hotel becomes the story of a people.

The Finest Hotel in Kabul

A People’s History of Afghanistan

Robbie Robertson

'Intense, exciting, delirious' THE TIMES 
'Thrilling, beautiful, honest' TELEGRAPH 
'A wild ride' ROLLING STONE 
 
For four decades, Robbie Robertson produced music for Martin Scorsese's films, a relationship that began when Robertson convinced Scorsese to direct The Last Waltz, the iconic film of the Band's farewell performance at the Winterland Ballroom on Thanksgiving 1976. 
 
The closing of the Band's story with that landmark concert thrust Robertson into a new and uncertain world. With his relationship with his bandmates deteriorating and his marriage collapsing, Robertson arrived on Scorsese’s Beverly Hills doorstep only to find his friend in similar straits. Before the night was out, Scorsese had invited him to move in. Both men, already culture-transforming stars before the age of thirty-five, stood at a creative precipice, searching for the beginning of a new phase of life and work. As their friendship deepened into a career-altering collaboration, their shared journey would take them around the world and down the rabbit hole of American culture in the long hangover of the seventies. Buffeted on either side by temptation and paranoia, veering closer to self-destruction than either wanted to admit, together they had devoted themselves to a partnership defined by equal parts admiration and ambition. 
 
With a cast of characters featuring Robert De Niro, Harvey Keitel, Federico Fellini, Sophia Loren, Sam Fuller, Liza Minelli, Tuesday Weld, and many more, Insomnia is an intimate portrait of a remarkable creative friendship between two titans of American arts, one that would explore the outer limits of excess and experience before returning to tell the tale.

Insomnia

Harry Sidebottom

Bestselling author Harry Sidebottom takes readers on a thrilling journey through a day in the life of the most iconic figure of the ancient world: the Roman gladiator 
 
‘Magnificent… Was I not entertained? I absolutely was’ 
Dominic Sandbrook, Times Books of the Year 
 
'Wonderfully panoramic … endlessly informative, rich with unexpected detail but never heavy to read' Literary Review 
 
'Grippingly original' 
Tom Holland 
 
'Blends extensive research with a talent for vivid storytelling to distil 700 years of gladiator history into the 24 hours around match day' 
The Times 
 
*A TIMES AND ECONOMIST BOOK OF THE YEAR* 
 
Dressed in armour and clutching a bloody sword, the Roman gladiator is the most iconic figure of the ancient world. Both fascinating and repulsive to us now, he was in his own time a deeply controversial character, by turns hated and idealized – and always at the heart of Roman culture. But what did he really mean to the Romans? What did they see in the gladiator and the spectacle of the games? And what does he reveal to us today about the Roman way of life? 
 
Brilliantly written and meticulously researched, this book tells the stories of the gladiators and those who observed them – from grand emperors to lowly slaves – illuminating and analysing the all-consuming passion of the Roman Empire for the spectacle of mortal combat. In doing so, it reveals Roman ideas about everything from freedom and servitude to sex and desire, from courage and cowardice to death and the afterlife. 
 
Taking readers on an unforgettable twenty-four-hour adventure – beginning the night before the games and ending the evening after – Those Who Are About To Die gives a blow-by-blow account of what life was really like in the brutally unforgiving arena of the ancient world.

Those Who Are About To Die

Gladiators and the Roman Mind

Bojan Pancevski

A FINANCIAL TIMES BOOK TO LOOK OUT FOR IN 2026 
 
'Totally fascinating... As compelling as a spy thriller' 
SIMON SEBAG MONTEFIORE 
 
'A truly riveting account of the most notorious act of sabotage in modern history' 
PETER FRANKOPAN 
 
'Jaw-dropping... a pearl of a story' 
RORY CARROLL 
 
'All the elements of a fictional thriller... I can already see the blockbuster movie' 
RORY CLEMENTS 
 
The explosive inside story of the most daring act of sabotage in modern history: the bombing of the $20 billion Nord Stream Pipeline. Written by the award-winning Chief European Political Correspondent of the Wall Street Journal 
 
In September 2022, Scandinavian seismologists detected what seemed to be a huge undersea earthquake or volcanic eruption. These signals were caused by several devastating explosions that destroyed Nord Stream, the $20 billion pipeline carrying cheap Russian gas to Europe under the Baltic Sea. The mysterious blasts shifted global geopolitics, disrupted European economies and triggered a manhunt that strained relations within the NATO alliance. 
 
Despite capturing the imagination of millions, the mystery of who blew up the pipeline has so far gone unsolved – was it the CIA? Was it part of the shadow war between Russia and the West? Could Putin himself have been behind it? Drawing on years of first-hand reporting and exclusive access to key players – including the saboteurs, the investigators and high-level intelligence – this deeply reported non-fiction thriller by an award-winning Wall Street Journal correspondent reveals the true story behind one of the most remarkable geopolitical mysteries of our time.

The Nord Stream Conspiracy

The Inside Story of the Explosions That Shook the World

Robin Givhan

BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR 2025: Washington Post, New Yorker, Elle 
 
'Captivating, emotional and illuminating' Tom Ford 
 
'Thoughtful, intelligent, honest and masterfully crafted' Marc Jacobs 
 
'A thrilling journey into the mind of a genius.' Edward Enninful 
 
'A must-read' Elaine Welteroth, bestselling author of More Than Enough 
 
-- 
 
From Pulitzer Prize-winning culture critic Robin Givhan comes a groundbreaking chronicle of the legacy of Virgil Abloh, whose iconic rise to the top of the fashion industry transformed our ideas about the connection between who we are and what we wear 
 
In 2018, shockwaves were sent around the fashion industry when Virgil Abloh was appointed the head of menswear for Louis Vuitton. Despite no formal training in pattern-making or tailoring, Abloh had become the first Black designer to serve as artistic director in the brand’s 164-year history. 
 
Make It Ours tells the story of how that moment came to be and how Abloh came to symbolise and embody the industry’s way forward. Using Abloh’s surprising path to the top of the luxury establishment, Givhan unfolds the larger story of how the cloistered, exclusive fashion world faced a revolution from below in the form of streetwear and designers unafraid to storm the gate, and how a simple t-shirt came to hold as much cultural power as a haute couture gown. 
 
With unparalleled access to Abloh’s family, friends, collaborators, and contemporaries, and featuring a cast of fascinating characters ranging from groundbreaking Black designers like Ozwald Boateng to Abloh’s mercurial but critical employer and mentor Kanye West, Givhan weaves a spellbinding tale of a young man’s rise amidst a cultural moment that would upend a century’s worth of ideas about luxury and taste. This is at once a remarkable biography of a singular creative force and a powerful meditation on fashion and race, taste and exclusivity, genius and luxury.

Make It Ours

Crashing the Gates of Culture with Virgil Abloh

biblio.categories.code

biblio.publicationStatus

biblio.brand

biblio.workEditions.format

biblio.ageRange

biblio.series.seriesName

biblio.imprint.description

biblio.type

About us

About Us (Header 4)

Best-Jane-Austen-quotes_Online-Desktop_Penguin

James-Baldwin

Marian-Keyes

haruki-murakami-320×320-1

Richard-Osman

Malorie Blackman

Lisa-Jewell

Charlie-Mackesy

Authors (Header 3)

Children&#039;s

Company

Discover

Fiction

Non-fiction

Penguin Classics

Penguin Shop (Header 5)

Useful links

Work with us

Search Results

The Fall of the West

Hunt the Villain

Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Fight or Flight (Book 21)

The Mortons

Watch a trailer for The Spook's Blood

A photograph of Ben Barnes in character for Shadow and Bone Netflix series.

Interviews

Shadow and Bone’s Ben Barnes on tear-jerking books and what he’s reading

An image showing a selection of adventure stories for 9-12 year olds on a bright yellow background with orange doodles that include a hashtag, flag, danger sign and speech bubble

Children's reading lists

16 books for 9 to 12-year-olds that love adventures

An image of a selection of books for 9-12s on a blue background with a large splodge and striped print

24 must-read books for 9-12-year-olds

A picture of several different children's books on a pink to blue ombre background; each book has a bright yellow shadow

Reading lists

The 100 best children's books of all time, as chosen by our readers

stemming

Showing results for: ‘joseph delaney’

Filters

Category

Publication Date

Format

Imprint

Follow penguin

Follow ladybird

Follow puffin

Sign up to the Penguin newsletter