From the Booker Prize-winning and Women's Prize-shortlisted author of The Silence of the Girls The first novel in Pat Barker's acclaimed 'Life Class' trilogy - an unforgettable story of art and war, f
Malcolm Polstead's Oxford life has been one of routine, ordinary even. He is happiest playing with his daemon, Asta, in their canoe, La Belle Sauvage. But now as the rain builds, the world around Malc
'For once there had been false idols and asses' heads drawn on the walls...' Sleepers awake in a remote cave and the ancient mystic Simon Magus attempts a miracle, in these two magical, otherworldly t
Good b.o means good "box office." You can smell it from a mile away' The legendary sixties New York pop artist Andy Warhol's hilarious and insightful vignettes and aphorisms on the topics of love, fam
She had lived by delays; she had meant to stop drinking; she had put off the time, and now she had smashed her car. At once harsh and tender, expansive and acutely funny, this is the story of an elder
He needed to hear Africa speak for itself after a lifetime of hearing Africa spoken about by others Electrifying essays on the history, complexity, diversity of a continent, from the father of modern
'So the club rose, the blood came down, and his bitterness and his anguish and his guilt were compounded' Drawing on Baldwin's own experiences of prejudice in an America violently divided by race, the
From the self-described 'black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet', these soaring, urgent essays on the power of women, poetry and anger are filled with darkness and light. Penguin Modern: fifty new boo
'I have lived in important places, timesWhen great events were decided . . .'By turns comical, grouchy and exalted, and including his tragic masterpiece 'The Great Hunger', some of the key poems by th
Everything was dead, everything unreal; the dark mob was made up of stiff lay-figures' One of America's greatest writers explores mob violence, voyeurism and betrayal in these unforgettable tales of C
A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian is bestselling author Marina Lewycka's hilarious and award winning debut novel, now available as a Penguin Essential for the first time. 'Two years after my mo
The Sunday Times Top Ten Bestseller, available as a Penguin Essential for the first time. A castle at the foot of the Carpathian mountains in the 1930s. Two men, inseparable in their youth, meet for t
'It's you who are the dogs...' What makes us happy? For over 800 years the Cynic philosophers of ancient Greece and Rome argued that the answer lay in a simple, self-sufficient life. One of 46 new boo
Gives readers a taste of the Classics' huge range and diversity, with works from around the world and across the centuries - including fables, decadence, heartbreak, tall tales, satire, ghosts, battle
'The pleasure is twice as sweetWhen you cheat a cheat.'An illustrated collection of fables from one of France's most vital writers. One of 46 new books in the bestselling Little Black Classics series,
'...a good bit of spice to give the critlings a flavour, and plenty of treacle to make the mince-meat look rich'Radical Victorian reformer Henry Mayhew walked the streets of London interviewing ordina
'Ye Ice-Falls! Ye that from the mountain's browAdown enormous ravines slope amain -...'A selection of Coleridge's poems, including 'This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison' and 'Frost at Midnight'Introducing L
'Do you see your son, standing over there, in the antechamber? Well, I am going to shoot him.'The story of the great and mad Cambyses, King of Persia, told by part-historian, part-mythmaker Herodotus
'He gave orders that they were not to get any hot glum pudding in flames, for fear the spirits in their innards might catch fire'The Steel Flea is an uproarious and alcohol-soaked shaggy-dog story fro
I blush to say what happened next.'A satirical portrait of a drunken, orgiastic Roman banquet, hosted by the grossly ostentatious Trimalchio. Introducing Little Black Classics: 80 books for Penguin's
'The devil gave the woman a nudge: 'Look at that belt full of money peeping out from under the butcher's shirt!''Written for a local German journal and published in 1811, these fabulous, funny, jewel-
'Mind you, it was a pukka, respectable opium-house, and not one of those stifling, sweltering chandoo-khanas that you can find all over the City.'Kipling first became famous for his pungent, harsh and
'Those husbands that I had,Three of them were good and two were bad.The three that I call 'good' were rich and old...' One of the most bawdy, entertaining and popular stories from The Canterbury Tales
'Nothing more lonely -' A selection of Basho's most magical haiku Introducing Little Black Classics: 80 books for Penguin's 80th birthday. Little Black Classics celebrate the huge range and diversity
'It was as if the sea, breaking down the wall protecting all the homes of the town, had sent a wave over her head'One of Conrad's most powerful, gripping storiesIntroducing Little Black Classics: 80 b
'No, no, I've got your word for it, I've got to die ... you promised me ... you told me ...' Turgenev's accounts of hunting in rural Russia, and the extraordinary characters he meets there. Introducin
'But I, while vineyards ring with the cicadas' scream,Retrace your steps, alone, beneath the burning sun.'Virgil's lyrical, wistful and often witty pastoral poems.Introducing Little Black Classics: 80
'...dreaming of bears, or fire, or water...'The greatest of Elizabethan pamphleteers, Nashe had a magical ability with words, never more so than in The Terrors of the Night, where he mulls over ghosts
'Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heav'n...'In this selection from Milton's great epic poem Paradise Lost, the fallen angels plot their revenge on Heaven after being banished to Hell - and Satan
'O let them be left, wildness and wet'As Kingfishers Catch Fire is a selection of Gerard Manley Hopkins' incomparably brilliant poetry, ranging from the ecstasy of 'The Windhover' and 'Pied Beauty' to
'In two I'll slice the hair-seat / of Helga's kiss-gulper' In this epic tale from the Viking Age that ranges across Scandinavia and Viking Britain, two poets compete for the love of Helga the Fair - w
'The Argonauts were terrified at the sight. But Jason planting his feet apart stood to receive them, as a reef in the sea confronts the tossing billows in a gale.'The tragic, epic love affair that all
'Is it me you love, friend? or the race that made me?'A gothic novella about love, torment and doomed aristocracy, set in the remote mountains of Spain.Introducing Little Black Classics: 80 books for
'Hoodwink'd in faery fancy...'This volume contains a selection of Keats's greatest verse - including his gothic story in verse, 'The Eve of St Agnes', and the mysterious 'Lamia' - exploring themes of
'Woman much missed, how you call to me, call to me...'After the death of his wife Emma, a grief-stricken Hardy wrote some of the best verse of his career. Moving and evocative, it ranks among the grea
'The vessel drove before her bows two billows of liquid phosphorus'A selection of Darwin's extraordinary adventures during the voyage of the Beagle Introducing Little Black Classics: 80 books for Peng
'Then she began to run, and she ran over the sharp stones and through the thorns, and the wild animals bounded past her ...'Four weird, dark and enchanting fairy-tales from the Brothers Grimm.Introduc
'You must be Odysseus, man of twists and turns...'The tales of Odysseus's struggle with a man-eating Cyclops and Circe, the beautiful enchantress who turns men into swine.Introducing Little Black Clas
'But I ran up the broken stairway, and came out suddenly, as if by a miracle, clean on the platform of my San Tommaso, in the tremendous sunshine.'Four personal, sun-drenched sketches of Lawrence's ex
