About a Boy

Will Freeman, 36-jährig, betont lässig, lebt sein optimal sorgenfreies, ruhiges Leben in London. Pure Langeweile treibt den überzeugten Single dazu...

'Can I explain why I wanted to jump off the top of a tower block?' For disgraced TV presenter Martin Sharp the answer's pretty simple: He has, in his own words, 'pissed his life away'. And on New Year's Eve, he's going to end it all.... But not, as it happens, alone. Because first single-mum Maureen, then 18-year-old Jess, and lastly American rock-god JJ turn up and crash Martin's private party. They've stolen his idea - but brought their own reasons. Yet it's hard to jump when you've got an audience queuing impatiently behind you.

In celebration of its 20th anniversary, Penguin presents the unabridged, downloadable audiobook edition of High Fidelity by Nick Hornby, read by Russell Tovey. Nick Hornby's first novel, an international best seller and instantly recognized by critics and readers alike as a classic, helps to explain men to women and men to men. Rob is good on music: he owns a small record shop and has strong views on what's decent and what isn't. But he's much less good on relationships.

The unabridged, downloadable audiobook edition of Nick Hornby's hilarious coming-of-age novel Slam, read by Nicholas Hoult, star of the films About a Boy and Warm Bodies, as well as Channel 4's Skins. 'There was this time when everything seemed to have come together. And so obviously it was time to go and screw it all up.' Sam is sixteen and a skater. Just so there are no terrible misunderstandings: skating = skateboarding.

On the 75th anniversary of its publication, this outstanding work of literature is more crucial and relevant today than ever before. Cloning, feel-good drugs, anti-aging programs, and total social control through politics, programming and media: has Aldous Huxley accurately predicted our future? With a storyteller's genius, he weaves these ethical controversies in a compelling narrative that dawns in the year 632 A. F. (After Ford, the deity).

Sixteen-year-old Starr Carter moves between two worlds: the poor neighborhood where she lives and the fancy suburban prep school she attends. The uneasy balance between these worlds is shattered when Starr witnesses the fatal shooting of her childhood best friend Khalil at the hands of a police officer. Khalil was unarmed. Soon afterward, his death is a national headline. Some are calling him a thug, maybe even a drug dealer and a gangbanger. Protesters are taking to the streets in Khalil’s name. Some cops and the local drug lord try to intimidate Starr and her family. What everyone wants to know is: what really went down that night? And the only person alive who can answer that is Starr.

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time is a murder mystery novel like no other. The detective, and narrator, is Christopher Boone. Christopher is fifteen and has Asperger's, a form of autism. He knows a very great deal about maths and very little about human beings. He loves lists, patterns, and the truth.

Lou Clark knows a lot of things. She knows she likes working in The Buttered Bun tea shop, and she might not love her boyfriend Patrick. Will Traynor knows his motorcycle accident took away his desire to live, and now everything feels small and joyless. What Will doesn't know is that Lou is about to burst into his world. And neither of them knows they're going to change the other for all time.

Miles Halter is fascinated by famous last words - and tired of his safe life at home. He leaves for boarding school to seek what the dying poet Francois Rabelais called the "Great Perhaps." Much awaits Miles at Culver Creek, including Alaska Young. Clever, funny, screwed-up, and dead sexy, Alaska will pull Miles into her labyrinth and catapult him into the Great Perhaps.

Looking for Alaska brilliantly chronicles the indelible impact one life can have on another.

Der ebenso charmante wie gewissenlose Prinz des italienischen Fürstentums Guastalla verliebt sich in das bürgerliche Mädchen Emilia Galotti und wird daher seiner Geliebten, der Gräfin Orsina, überdrüssig. Er erfährt, dass Emilias Hochzeit mit dem Grafen Appiani unmittelbar bevorsteht, und versucht vergebens, die Heirat zu verhindern. Sein Kammerherr Marinelli jedoch bereitet einen heimtückischen Anschlag auf Appiani vor, der im Kampf getötet wird.

Sie ist reizbar, rätselhaft und viel älter als er...und sie wird seine erste Leidenschaft. Sie hütet verzweifelt ein Geheimnis. Eines Tages ist sie spurlos verschwunden. Erst Jahre später sieht er sie wieder. Die fast kriminalistische Erforschung einer sonderbaren Liebe und bedrängenden Vergangenheit.

Gerade als alles richtig gut läuft für Sam, lässt seine Ex-Freundin die Bombe platzen: Sie teilt ihm mit, dass sie schwanger ist. Eine Katastrophe für den 18-jährigen Sam. Er kann sich nur an eine Person wenden, an seinen Helden, die Skater-Legende Tony Hawk. Aber sogar der scheint diesmal nicht weiterhelfen zu können.

A dazzling urban satire of modern human relations? An ironic, tragic insight into the demise of the nuclear family? Or the confused ramblings of a pissed thirty-something? The third installment in Bridget Jones' journey, Mad About the Boy, will be out in October 2013.

Penguin presents the unabridged, downloadable audiobook edition of Fever Pitch, by Nick Hornby read by Julian Rhind-Tutt.A s a young boy, growing up in the Home Counties and watching his parents marriage fall apart, Nick Hornby had little sense of home. Then his dad took him to Highbury. Arsenals football ground would become the source of many of the strongest feelings he'd ever have: joy, humiliation, heartbreak, frustration, and hope.

The Greek myths are amongst the greatest stories ever told, passed down through millennia and inspiring writers and artists as varied as Shakespeare, Michelangelo, James Joyce and Walt Disney. They are embedded deeply in the traditions, tales and cultural DNA of the West. You'll fall in love with Zeus, marvel at the birth of Athena, wince at Cronus and Gaia's revenge on Ouranos, weep with King Midas and hunt with the beautiful and ferocious Artemis.