A professor invites a colleague from the art department to his home to see a painting that he has kept secret for decades. The professor swears it is a Vermeer - why has he hidden this important work for so long ? The reasons unfold in a seies of stories that trace ownership of the painting back to the world War II and Amsterdam, and still further back to the moment of the work's inspiration.

Poetically written, absorbing, harrowing'' The Timesbr>br>''The raw and emotional account of an optician whose family fishing trip suddenly placed him amid the human tragedy of hundreds of drowning migrants is a story that needed to be told'' Fiona Wilson, The Timesbr>br>''An important book ... I cried all the way through'' Tracy Chevalierbr>br>From an award-winning BBC journalist, this moving book turns the testimony of an accidental hero into a timeless story about human fellowship and the awakening of courage and conscience.br>br>''I can hardly begin to describe to you what I saw as our boat approached the source of that terrible noise. I hardly want to. You won''t understand because you weren''t there. You can''t understand. You see, I thought I''d heard seagulls screeching. Seagulls fighting over a lucky catch. Birds. Just birds.''br>br>Emma-Jane Kirby has reported extensively on the reality of mass migration today. In The Optician of Lampedusa she brings to life the moving testimony of an ordinary man whose late summer boat trip off a Sicilian island unexpectedly turns into a tragic rescue mission.>

The Penguin English Library Edition of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain 'I'm unfavorable to killin' a man as long as you can git around it; it ain't good sense, it ain't good morals. Ain't I right?' The original Great American Novel, an incomparable adventure story and a classic of anarchic humour, Twain's masterpiece sees Huckleberry Finn and Jim the slave escape their difficult lives by fleeing down the Mississippi on a raft. There, they find steamships, feuding families, an unlikely Duke and King and vital lessons about the world in which they live. With its unforgettable cast of characters, Hemingway called this 'the best book we've ever had'. The Penguin English Library - 100 editions of the best fiction in English, from the eighteenth century and the very first novels to the beginning of the First World War.

Jedes Jahr, wenn der Herbst naht, wird Annett von einer inneren Unruhe erfasst. Dann macht sich die Narbe an ihrem Arm bemerkbar, dann werden die Erinnerungen an den Sommer 1988 und an die Clique von damals wach. Fünf Freunde, die sich blind vertrauten, bis einer von ihnen zum Verräter wurde. Jetzt, Jahrzehnte später, begreift Annett, dass sie ihren inneren Frieden erst finden wird, wenn sie sich der Vergangenheit stellt. Kurz entschlossen fährt sie nach Wismar. Zurück an die Ostsee, in ihre alte Heimat. Doch je mehr sie dort über die Ereignisse jenes Sommers herausfindet, umso deutlicher wird: Sie hätte die Vergangenheit besser ruhen lassen, denn der Verrat von damals reißt ihr Leben erneut in einen Abgrund … Ein großer Spannungsroman über eine ungesühnte Schuld und die Schatten der Vergangenheit, die eine Familie nach Jahrzehnten einholen.

One of the BBC''s ''100 Novels That Shaped Our World''br>br>The Penguin English Library Edition of Frankenstein by Mary Shelleybr>br>''Never did I behold a vision so horrible as his face, of such loathsome, yet appalling hideousness''br>br>A twisted, upside-down creation myth, Mary Shelley''s chilling Gothic tale lays bare the dark side of science, and the horror within us all. It tells the story of Victor Frankenstein, who plunders graveyards to create a new being from the bodies of the dead - but whose botched creature causes nothing but murder and destruction. Written after a nightmare when its author was only eighteen, Frankenstein gave birth to the modern science fiction novel.br>br>The Penguin English Library - 100 editions of the best fiction in English, from the eighteenth century and the very first novels to the beginning of the First World War.>

A real witch gets the same pleasure from squelching a child as you get from eating a plateful of strawberry and thick cream....