PENGUIN BOOKS – Globolibri.it

Skippy Dies

Arnaldo Ageno — Wed, 14 Jan 2026 11:32:27 +0000

Ruprecht Van Doren is an overweight genius whose hobbies include very difficult maths and the Search of Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence.

Daniel ‘Skippy’ Juster is his roommate. In the grand old Dublin institution that is Seabrook College for Boys, nobody pays either of them much attention. But when Skippy falls for Lori, the frisbee-playing siren from the girls’ school next door, suddenly all kinds of people take an interest – including Carl, part-time drug-dealer and official school psychopath… A tragic comedy of epic sweep and dimension, Skippy Dies scours the corners of the human heart and wrings every drop of pathos, humour and hopelessness out of life, love, Robert Graves, mermaids, M-theory, and everything in between.

The Complete Fairy Tales

Arnaldo Ageno — Thu, 04 Sep 2025 14:45:17 +0000

A complete collection of enchanting fairy tales from the acclaimed poet and playwright Oscar Wilde
Celebrated as the writer of The Picture of Dorian Gray and The Importance of Being Earnest, Oscar Wilde is equally beloved for his fairy tales, written ‘partly for children and partly for those who have kept the childlike faculties of wonder and joy’. With warmth, tenderness and quiet wit, these fables have moved and delighted for generations. In far-off kingdoms and ocean realms, in the company of giants and nightingales, Wilde speaks of heartbreak and redemption, of cruelty and compassion, of love lost, of love gained, of love everlasting.

Rediscover here the complete stories from The Happy Prince and The House of Pomegranates, Wilde’s two fairy tale collections.

Slam

Arnaldo Ageno — Wed, 03 Sep 2025 08:57:44 +0000

Sam is sixteen and a skater. Just so there are no terrible misunderstandings: skating = skateboarding.

There’s no ice. Life is ticking along nicely for Sam: his mum’s got rid of her rubbish boyfriend, he’s thinking about college and he’s met someone. Alicia.Then a little accident happens.

One with big consequences for someone just finding his way in life. Sam can’t run (let alone skate) away from this one. He’s a boy facing a man’s problems and the question is – has he got what it takes to confront them?

The Secret History

Arnaldo Ageno — Wed, 27 Aug 2025 12:43:20 +0000

Everything, somehow, fit together; some sly and benevolent Providence was revealing itself by degrees and I felt myself trembling on the brink of a fabulous discovery, as though any morning it was all going to come together—my future, my past, the whole of my life—and I was going to sit up in bed like a thunderbolt and say oh! oh! oh!’Under the influence of a charismatic classics professor, a group of clever, eccentric misfits at a New England college discover a way of thought and life a world away from their banal contemporaries. But their search for the transcendent leads them down a dangerous path, beyond human constructs of morality.

Bloody Awful in Different Ways

Arnaldo Ageno — Thu, 14 Aug 2025 12:33:44 +0000

I’m fizzing. I love not being his son. Yes. I can feel it in my whole body. A great thrill – as if an adventure has begun. As if I’m the boy in a book about a boy who finds out his dad is the king of a magical and distant land.

Christmas, 1983. In the aftermath of yet another furious argument, seven-year-old Andrev’s mother lets him in on a secret: his father is, in fact, not his father. And so begins a new kind of childhood, in which fathers come and go, arriving in red Volvos and sweeping his mother off her feet.

Fathers can be magicians or murderers, artists or thieves, and, like growing pains, or the weather, they appear uninvited and leave without warning. Fathers are drawn to his mother like moths to a flame – but even she can’t control how they behave. Vivid and joyful, raw and tender, Bloody Awful in Different Ways is a novel about growing up in the chaos of social change; about how love begins and ends; and above all, about men.

Because after all, you learn an awful lot about this strange species when you have seven fathers in seven years.

Sono elettrizzato. Adoro non essere suo figlio. Sì. Lo sento in tutto il corpo. Un’emozione immensa, come se fosse iniziata un’avventura. Come se fossi il bambino in un libro che racconta la storia di un bambino che scopre che suo padre è il re di una terra magica e lontana.

Natale, 1983. Dopo l’ennesima furiosa discussione, la madre di Andrev, sette anni, gli rivela un segreto: suo padre, in realtà, non è suo padre. E così inizia un nuovo tipo di infanzia, in cui i padri vanno e vengono, arrivando in Volvo rosse e facendo perdere la testa alla madre.

I padri possono essere maghi o assassini, artisti o ladri e, come i dolori della crescita o il tempo, appaiono senza invito e se ne vanno senza preavviso. I padri sono attratti dalla madre come falene dalla fiamma, ma nemmeno lei può controllare il loro comportamento. Vivido e gioioso, crudo e tenero, Bloody Awful in Different Ways è un romanzo sulla crescita nel caos del cambiamento sociale; su come l’amore inizia e finisce; e soprattutto, sugli uomini.

Perché, dopotutto, si impara moltissimo su questa strana specie quando si hanno sette padri in sette anni.

Until August

Arnaldo Ageno — Thu, 07 Aug 2025 15:24:18 +0000

Sitting alone, overlooking the still and blue lagoon, Ana Magdalena Bach surveys the men of the hotel bar. She is happily married and has no reason to escape the world she has made with her husband and children. And yet, every August, she travels here to the island where her mother is buried, and for one night takes a new lover.

Amid sultry days and tropical downpours, lotharios and conmen, Ana journeys further each year into the hinterland of her desire, and the fear that sits quietly at her heart. Constantly surprising and wonderfully sensual, Until August is a profound meditation on freedom, regret, and the mysteries of love, from one of the greatest writers the world has ever known.

A Room with a View

Arnaldo Ageno — Mon, 04 Aug 2025 15:02:44 +0000

“But you do,” he went on, not waiting for contradiction.

“You love the boy body and soul, plainly, directly, as he loves you, and no other word expresses it …”Lucy has her rigid, middle-class life mapped out for her until she visits Florence with her uptight cousin Charlotte, and finds her neatly ordered existence thrown off balance. Her eyes are opened by the unconventional characters she meets at the Pension Bertolini: flamboyant romantic novelist Eleanor Lavish, the Cockney Signora, curious Mr Emerson and, most of all, his passionate son George. Lucy finds herself torn between the intensity of life in Italy and the repressed morals of Edwardian England, personified in her terminally dull fiancé Cecil Vyse.

Will she ever learn to follow her own heart?

The Italians

Arnaldo Ageno — Thu, 31 Jul 2025 13:07:20 +0000

Sublime and maddening, fascinating yet baffling, Italy is a country of endless paradox and seemingly unanswerable riddles. John Hooper’s marvellously entertaining and perceptive book is the ideal companion for anyone seeking to understand contemporary Italy and the unique character of the Italians. Looking at the facts that lie behind – and often belie – the stereotypes, his revealing book sheds new light on many aspects of Italian life: football and Freemasonry, sex, symbolism and the reason why Italian has twelve words for a coat hanger, yet none for a hangover.

Glorious Rivals

Arnaldo Ageno — Wed, 30 Jul 2025 14:41:24 +0000

FIVE PLAYERS REMAIN.
Seven Players arrived on Hawthorne Island to play a billionaire’s game. Now only five remain, and the race to the finish line is on.

MILLIONS OF DOLLARS ARE AT STAKE.
The heat turns up on the competition and between the players and it becomes increasingly clear that no one will emerge from the Grandest Game unscathed.

BUT SO ARE HEARTS AND LIVES.

For there are no coincidences. Everyone is a liar. And someone is watching…

THE GAME IS ON.

Odyssey

Arnaldo Ageno — Mon, 28 Jul 2025 15:45:24 +0000

After the fall of Troy, wily Odysseus, King of Ithaca, sails for home and his steadfast queen Penelope. However, the angry gods curse him to wander the seas for ten long years. Tormented by giants and monsters, tempted by witches and goddesses, Odysseus battles to draw ever closer to home.

Awaiting him is Penelope, defying reports of his death. But this queen endures her own tormentors – an army of young suitors eager to claim her hand and the throne…