My name is Blue—insert a mood-related joke here—and I’m a femme fatale in training. My goal is to join the CIA. Unfortunately, I have a tiny issue with birds, and the closest I’ve come to my dream is working for a government agency that’s disturbingly up-to-speed on everyone’s sexts, rants in private Facebook groups, and secret family chocolate-chip cookie recipes. I know I’m a spy cliché, that agent who works at a desk but craves fieldwork. However, I have a plan: I’m going to infiltrate the secretive Hot Poker Club, where I’ve spotted a mysterious, sexy stranger who I’m convinced is a Russian spy. And once I'm in? All I have to do is seduce the presumed spy without falling for him, so I can expose his true identity and prove my femme fatale bona fides to the CIA. I never lose concentration at work, so that'll be an absolute breeze for me. Oh, and did I mention he's sexy? I’m doing it for my country, not my ovaries, I pinky swear. WARNING: Now that you’ve finished reading this, your device will self-destruct in five seconds. NOTE: This is a standalone, raunchy, slow-burn romantic comedy featuring a quirky, spy-movie-obsessed heroine, a scorching hot maybe-Russian, several terrifying tales about birds, and lots of text debates about the relative cuteness of animals. If any of the above is not your cup of tea, run far, far away. Otherwise, buckle up for a laugh-out-loud, feel-good ride.

When the anti-terror organization S.H.I.E.L.D. asks for his help in battling the forces of HYDRA, millionaire industrialist Tony Stark, a.k.a. Iron Man, falls victim to the schemes of two women who discover his fatal flaw.

A New York Review Books Original Whether you call her a coldhearted grifter or the soul of modern capitalism, there’s no question that Aimée is a killer and a more than professional one. Now she’s set her eyes on a backwater burg—where, while posing as an innocent (albeit drop-dead gorgeous) newcomer to town, she means to sniff out old grudges and engineer new opportunities, deftly playing different people and different interests against each other the better, as always, to make a killing. But then something snaps: the master manipulator falls prey to a pure and wayward passion. Aimée has become the avenging angel of her own nihilism, exacting the destruction of a whole society of destroyers. An unholy original, Jean-Patrick Manchette transformed the modern detective novel into a weapon of gleeful satire and anarchic fun. In Fatale he mixes equal measures of farce, mayhem, and madness to prepare a rare literary cocktail that packs a devastating punch.

The femme fatale appears with unceasing regularity in the texts of major poets of the nineteenth century. She symbolises an intractable mystery, a refusal to be defined and a fierce attempt to exist outside the established gender system. Soft-Shed Kisses: Re-visioning the Femme Fatale in English Poetry of the 19th Century interrogates the construction and use of the fatal woman motif in the poetry of canonical male writers of the times, both Romantic and Victorian. Subsequent chapters investigate a variety of poems by John Keats, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Alfred Tennyson, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Charles Algernon Swinburne in which the femme fatale surfaces as the most important character. Close-readings of poetry are enriched by an examination of the same motif in visual art, set against the vivid cultural background of the Victorian era.

Irene Adler is the only woman ever to have outwitted Sherlock Holmes... and the one who has come closest to stealing his heart. She has competed (and sometimes cooperated) with the famous fictional detective over six popular and acclaimed novels, featuring her daring investigations across the Continent. All along, the beautiful and brilliant American diva-turned-detective has managed to conceal her background and history, even from her dashing barrister husband, Godfrey Norton, and her devoted companion and biographer, English spinster Nell Huxleigh. But she has had some help along the way to do this, from such unlikely sources as the Baron de Rothschild, Sarah Bernhardt, and Bram Stoker, as well as the soon-to-be-infamous Nellie Bly, a daring American journalist who helped Irene hunt Jack the Ripper. Now Nellie has wired Irene some astounding news, news that will shake her world: Irene's mother is the target of an assassin. Irene's past is shrouded in secrecy, and at first she is unwilling to divulge anything that would link her to America. But a series of bizarre killings in New York City draws her reluctantly back to her native country, where she must race with a murderer to find her mother, a woman of mystery who may turn out to be the most notorious woman of the nineteenth century. As Irene forges a trail into her own hidden past, Nellie Bly draws another ace investigator across the Atlantic to join in the hunt for a serial killer, the last man on earth Irene Adler wants to discover anything about her shocking past... Sherlock Holmes. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

A daredevil prince wants to pay me mega-bucks to train him to hold his breath underwater for ten minutes? Sign me up. Except I’m a magician, not a stunt consultant. My record-beating dive without air was a trick. Of course, I can’t tell that to my client, the royally hot Anatolio Cezaroff, a.k.a. Tigger. Not if I want to be able to pay my rent. Also, I’m not exactly comfortable around germs. All germs, including those lurking on uber-attractive men. So falling for my gorgeous client is out of the question, and I fully intend to keep my distance. That is, until he offers to train me in bed. NOTE: This is a standalone, raunchy, slow-burn romantic comedy featuring a movie-obsessed, germaphobic heroine who's dying to be a famous magician, a scorching hot Ruskovian prince who loves to live on the edge, and two oversized dogs who may or may not have caused said prince's wardrobe malfunction. If any of the above is not your cup of tea, run far, far away. Otherwise, buckle in for a laugh-out-loud, feel-good ride.

A selection of Maupassant's brilliant, glittering stories set in the Parisian beau monde and Normandy countryside. Introducing Little Black Classics: 80 books for Penguin's 80th birthday. Little Black Classics celebrate the huge range and diversity of Penguin Classics, with books from around the world and across many centuries. They take us from a balloon ride over Victorian London to a garden of blossom in Japan, from Tierra del Fuego to 16th-century California and the Russian steppe. Here are stories lyrical and savage; poems epic and intimate; essays satirical and inspirational; and ideas that have shaped the lives of millions. Guy de Maupassant (1850-1893). Maupassant's works available in Penguin Classics are A Parisian Affair and Other Stories, Bel-Ami and Pierre and Jean.