Publish with Us

Follow Penguin

Follow Penguinsters

Follow Penguin Swadesh

© 2020 Penguin India

Archives: Books

Kingmakers Year One: A Spicy Dark College Bully Romance (Kingmakers 1)

From the USA Today bestselling author of Brutal Birthright comes a dark college mafia romance series – a genre that has taken BookTok by storm.

Welcome to Kingmakers, the most brutal college in the world.

Bound by blood, torn by love…

In the shadowed halls of Kingmakers, a ruthless mafia university, the offspring of the world’s most feared families come to master the dark arts of influence and intimidation.

Leo, unwaveringly loyal to his childhood friend, Anna, follows her into a world where love is a weapon, trust is a casualty, and survival is the only victory that matters.

But the greatest danger comes from Dean Yenin, a Bratva heir with a vendetta as cold as his heart. Dean plans to destroy Leo and take everything he holds dear, starting with Anna.

Can Leo win back his soulmate? Or is Anna lost forever?

A forbidden friends to lovers romance filled with mystery, suspense, and scathingly sexy bedroom scenes that take place everywhere but the bedroom.

With a gorgeous, redesigned jacket and a limited run featuring sprayed edges (while stocks last!), this is the definitive way to read Sophie Lark’s acclaimed Kingmakers series.

Tropes
Dark College Romance
Friends to Lovers
Mafia Romance
Bully Romance
Forbidden Love
Spicy Romance
High Heat

Hexed (Never After, 6)

A dark contemporary romance from viral BookTok, USA Today and Sunday Times bestselling author Emily McIntire, featuring reimagined characters from popular fairy tales and other stories.

***

He’s the prince of La Cosa Nostra. She’s the witch who steals his heart.

Venesa Andersen has never been good. She wasn’t good enough for her parents, and she isn’t good enough for the gangster uncle who took her in after they died. But she’s cunning. Beautiful. Dutiful to her uncle’s demands. And she doesn’t have time for a moral compass, anyway. When her runaway cousin returns to their coastal southern town, she brings a man with her…and Venesa soon realises he’s the only one who’s ever seen her for her.

There’s just one problem: she can never have him.

Enzo “Loverboy” Marino is a wealthy businessman by day and prince of the underworld by night. Underboss to a notorious mafia syndicate, he answers to no one except his father: the strongest don in the northeast. When he’s tasked with marriage, Enzo doesn’t think twice.

Until he meets his fiancée’s cousin.

Venesa is everything he never knew he wanted, bewitching him with her sultry voice and supple curves. But Enzo learned long ago that for a man like him, life is better without the things you want. When plans unravel and temptation sings its siren song, they’ll both have to choose what’s more important: duty to their families or a forbidden love that was never supposed to be.

Hexed joins the Never After series as a dark and sexy reimagining of a classic tale, twisting it into an enticing new shape for mature readers.

Tropes
Fractured Fairy Tale
Forbidden Love
Mafia Romance
Dark Romance
Spicy Romance
The Never After Series:
Hooked
Scarred
Wretched
Twisted
Crossed
Hexed

Crossed (Never After, 5)

A dark contemporary romance from viral BookTok and USA Today bestselling author Emily McIntire, featuring reimagined characters from popular fairy tales and other stories.

***

He is righteousness. She is sin.

Father Cade Frédéric is a holy man. Brought up in the streets of Paris, he has dedicated his life to the church. But there’s a monster that lingers just beneath the surface. A sickness. One that bleeds darkness and feeds on the damned.

When he’s tasked to become the priest in Festivalé, Vermont, a town both beautiful in architecture and riddled with despair, his sickness sings, demanding he rid the place of evil.

Amaya Paquette is Festivalé’s beautiful mystery. She spends her days caring for her younger brother and her nights transforming into Esmeralda, dancing for greedy eyes and shameless lips. Although she longs for love, she shies away from companionship, afraid of being abandoned again.

When Father Cade lays eyes on Amaya, he finds himself ensnared, convinced she’s using witchcraft to lure him to her. He can’t eat. Can’t breathe. Can’t think unless it’s of her.

And temptation is a devastating mistress.

She’s his weakness, so he decides he’ll be her demise…even if it means killing the only woman he might ever love.

Crossed joins the Never After series as a dark and sexy reimagining of a classic tale, twisting it into an enticing new shape for mature readers.

Tropes
Fractured Fairy Tale
Morally Grey MC
Dark Romance
Bully Romance
Spicy Romance
Forbidden Love

The Never After Series:
Hooked
Scarred
Wretched
Twisted
Crossed
Hexed

Playing Possum: How Animals Understand Death

How animals conceive of death and dying—and what it can teach us about our own relationships with mortality

When the opossum feels threatened, she becomes paralyzed. Her body temperature plummets, her breathing and heart rates drop to a minimum, and her glands simulate the smell of a putrefying corpse. Playing Possum explores what the opossum and other creatures can teach us about how we and other species understand mortality, and demonstrates that the concept of death, far from being a uniquely human attribute, is widespread in the animal kingdom.

With humor and empathy, Susana Monsó tells the stories of ants who attend their own funerals, chimpanzees who clean the teeth of their dead, dogs who snack on their caregivers, crows who avoid the places where they saw a carcass, elephants obsessed with collecting ivory, and whales who carry their dead for weeks. Monsó, one of today’s leading experts on animal cognition and ethics, shows how there are more ways to conceive of mortality than the human way, and challenges the notion that the only emotional reactions to death worthy of our attention are ones that resemble our own.

Blending philosophical insight with new evidence from behavioral science and comparative psychology, Playing Possum dispels the anthropocentric biases that cloud our understanding of the natural world, and reveals that, when it comes to death and dying, we are just another animal.

The Inheritance : A dark, twisty tale of family, power and murder

“Insanely readable with a brilliant setting and characters that jump off the page. I absolutely loved The Inheritance!” — Lisa Jewell

Most family reunions end in tears. This one will end in murder.

Meet the Agarwals, who have gathered on a private, luxury island off the west coast of Scotland for a much-anticipated family reunion.

Raj, the patriarch and a business tycoon, is about to announce to his wife and three children the succession plan for his multimillon-dollar Delhi-based company. Shalini, the fragile matriarch, is ready to have her husband to herself after years of sacrifice to the family business. Myra, the golden child, owner of the island and host of the reunion, is, unbeknownst to her family, on the brink of bankruptcy. Aseem, the son and supposed heir, is torn between his love for his wife and his duty to family. Aisha, the youngest, a party girl whose antics are legendary, can’t pass up an opportunity to wreak havoc. And then there’s Zoe, Aseem’s wife, the outsider whose #InstaPerfect life is built on a foundation of lies.

They’ve all got secrets they would die to protect. Who will survive this high-stakes reunion, and who will become a victim of their own greed? One thing is certain: this family gathering will shatter more than just their illusions of unity.

The Extraordinary Lives 10 Books Boxset: A Treasury of 10 Brilliant Biographies for kids | Black-and-White Illustrations | Ages 7+ | Stephen Hawking, Anne Frank, Mahatma Gandhi, and More!)

A collection of 10 books in the bold non-fiction series Extraordinary Lives, perfect for readers age 7+. This is a series of books on people who have lived extraordinary lives and done amazing things.

This boxset edition of the Extraordinary Lives series brings together the incredible stories of some of the world’s most inspiring individuals.

Packed full of inspirational stories, fantastic facts and dynamic illustrations, Extraordinary Lives shines a light on important modern and historical figures from all over the world.

This Collection Includes:
• The Extraordinary Life of Michelle Obama
• The Extraordinary Life of Malala Yousafzai
• The Extraordinary Life of Anne Frank
• The Extraordinary Life of Greta Thunberg
• The Extraordinary Life of Stephen Hawking
• The Extraordinary Life of Neil Armstrong
• The Extraordinary Life of Mahatma Gandhi
• The Extraordinary Life of Alan Turing
• The Extraordinary Life of Nelson Mandela
• The Extraordinary Life of Steve Jobs

Key Features:
– Beautifully illustrated books
– Empowering and educational stories
– Perfect gift for every curious child

With beautiful black-and-white illustrations, this treasury of fascinating real-life stories will inspire and delight curious children aged 7+ and is the perfect addition to any bookshelf.

GeoTechnoGraphy

In an era defined by rapid technological change, a seismic shift is underway. From the rise of digital platforms that mediate our interactions—with markets, with governments and perhaps most importantly with each other as citizens— to the growing tension between our online personas and our real-world identities, the forces of technology, geography and society are colliding in ways we are only beginning to understand.

Even as technology opens up new opportunities for civic engagement, it simultaneously disrupts the very foundations of societal cohesion. The digital age has given rise to a new stage for global drama—one where surveillance, the weaponization of information and the erosion of trust in national and multilateral institutions are playing out in real time. But as these forces evolve, so too must our understanding of how individuals and societies can navigate them.

Will digital societies endure, or are they doomed to collapse under the weight of their own contradictions? Can democracy as we know it survive in a world where power is increasingly concentrated in the hands of a few tech giants? And as nations grapple with the changing dynamics of governance, how will international norms, laws and institutions adapt?

In GeoTechnoGraphy, Samir Saran and Anirban Sarma offer a compelling analysis of the forces reshaping the modern world. Drawing on groundbreaking research and incisive insights, they examine how the convergence of geography and technology—geotechnography—is redefining power and writing new rules for its exercise.

The Sour Mango Tree

The Sour Mango Tree is a homage to a life less ordinary. Palya Lankesh was an author, journalist, screenplay writer, poet and translator. His multi-faceted and prolific oeuvre encompasses essays scripts and stories, among much else. This volume is a translation of his memoir, Hulimavina Mara which includes his prose and poetry and is a rare glimpse into the mind of the maverick. Twenty-five years after Lankesh left us, this volume enables us to truly appreciate the significance of his legacy.

Hedgewar (Founder of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh)

Hedgewar chronicles the untold story of the enigmatic founder of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), whose vision for India’s cultural revival continues to shape the nation’s socio-political landscape. Through meticulous research and vivid storytelling, this biography traces Hedgewar’s journey from an orphaned child in colonial India to the mastermind behind one of the world’s most secretive organizations.

Set against the backdrop of a country grappling with colonial rule, rising communal tensions, and the complexities of modernity, this book opens a window to Hedgewar’s philosophy of cultural nationalism, his challenges with contemporaries like Gandhi, Nehru and Savarkar, and his transformative leadership. It explores his inner struggles to make sense of his own critique of Hindu society.

More than a biography, this work is a window into the labyrinth of India’s civilizational ethos, offering a nuanced perspective on the RSS’s origins and its impact on India today. Hedgewar: A Definitive Biography is a must-read for those seeking to understand modern India’s complexities through the life of one controversial, yet extraordinary man.

The Sufi Storyteller

Layla is a scholar of women’s histories and stories. Her life is a carefully constructed set of routines in her small American liberal arts college, but all of that is about to change…

Mira is a renowned Sufi storyteller who is running from a terrible past. When she learns that the murdered woman in the library was carrying a note from the killer addressed to her, she is presented with an opportunity to break a cycle of trauma and hurt. To confront her past, she must disclose the truth to Layla.

Together they enter the realm of Story, but can Layla find the forgiveness in her heart necessary to lead them to the answers they are looking for?

This contemporary murder mystery takes readers from small town America to the mountains of Afghanistan.

error: Content is protected !!