Solaris : The Chain of Chance : A Perfect Vacuum

Science Fiction & Fantasy

Lem, Stanisław

Science Fiction

King Penguin

Welcome to Bullet Park, a township in which even the most buttoned-down gentry sometimes manage to terrify themselves simply by looking in the mirror. In these exemplary environs John Cheever traces the fateful intersection of two men: Eliot Nailles, a nice fellow who loves his wife and son to blissful distraction, and Paul Hammer, a bastard named after a common household tool, who, after half a lifetime of drifting, settles down in Bullet Park with one objective—to murder Nailles's son. Here is the lyrical and mordantly funny hymn to the American suburb—and to all the dubious normalcy it represents—delivered with unparalleled artistry and assurance.

Bullet Park

Literature & Fiction

John Cheever

Literary

The Stories of John Cheever

War Music: An Account of Books 16 to 19 of Homer's Iliad

LOGUE, Christopher

Poetry

Fisher's Hornpipe (King Penguin)

Todd McEwen

Contemporary

Friday, or the Other Island

TOURNIER, MICHEL

A beautiful story set in a fishing village near Bombay. on the life of children and familiary, useful for courses and an understanding of change and tradition in modern India

The Village By the Sea ( an Indian Family story)

ANITA DESAI

British & Irish

The Inventive Peasant Arnaud du Tilh had almost persuaded the learned judges at the Parlement of Toulouse, when on a summer's day in 1560 a man swaggered into the court on a wooden leg, denounced Arnaud, and reestablished his claim to the identity, property, and wife of Martin Guerre. The astonishing case captured the imagination of the Continent. Told and retold over the centuries, the story of Martin Guerre became a legend, still remembered in the Pyrenean village where the impostor was executed more than 400 years ago.Now a noted historian, who served as consultant for a new French film on Martin Guerre, has searched archives and lawbooks to add new dimensions to a tale already abundant in mysteries: we are led to ponder how a common man could become an impostor in the sixteenth century, why Bertrande de Rols, an honorable peasant woman, would accept such a man as her husband, and why lawyers, poets, and men of letters like Montaigne became so fascinated with the episode.Natalie Zemon Davis reconstructs the lives of ordinary people, in a sparkling way that reveals the hidden attachments and sensibilities of nonliterate sixteenth-century villagers. Here we see men and women trying to fashion their identities within a world of traditional ideas about property and family and of changing ideas about religion. We learn what happens when common people get involved in the workings of the criminal courts in the ancien régime, and how judges struggle to decide who a man was in the days before fingerprints and photographs. We sense the secret affinity between the eloquent men of law and the honey-tongued village impostor, a rare identification across class lines.Deftly written to please both the general public and specialists, The Return of Martin Guerre will interest those who want to know more about ordinary families and especially women of the past, and about the creation of literary legends. It is also a remarkable psychological narrative about where self-fashioning stops and lying begins.

Return of Martin Guerre

Humor & Entertainment

Natalie Zemon Davis

Puzzles & Games

Hugging the Shore: essays And Criticism

JOHN UPDIKE

United States

Mount Analogue: A Novel of Symbolically Authentic Non-Euclidean Adventures in Mountain Climbing

René Daumal

See the best price to sell, buy or rent books by the King Penguin publisher. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by King Penguin