We talk about sex more and more, but are we more liberated?The first part of Michel Foucault's landmark account of our evolving attitudes in the west shows how the nineteenth century, far from suppres
THE INSPIRATION FOR THE NEW NETFLIX SERIES DEBUTING THIS HALLOWE'EN The best-known of Shirley Jackson's novels and a major inspiration for writers like Neil Gaiman and Stephen King, The Haunting of Hi
This box set of the 50 books in the new Penguin Modern series celebrates the pioneering spirit of the Penguin Modern Classics list and its iconic authors. Including avant-garde essays, radical polemic
'The sap had dried up; the sap, the incentive, the fever, the desire to do, to act, to act the fool, make love, create'A middle-aged woman breaks with her handsome young lover; a placid husband is sus
'As you are well aware, we never loved each other in your lifetime. Both of us pretended.' Simenon explores the complexity of parent child relationships and the bitterness of things left unsaid in thi
'Hey, you with the beard!' A coiffured con man travels across Russia's rural backwaters, buying the souls of dead serfs from their owners to make his fortune, in Gogol's exuberant, bravura masterwork:
'He scampered over rooftops, swam in deep water, leapt from balconies.' Set in the vanished world of the shtetl of nineteenth-century eastern Europe, this spellbinding fable tells the story of Yasha:
After Franz Kafka's death, in perhaps the most important of all acts of literary disobedience, his executor refused to agree to Kafka's wish that his great mass of unpublished fiction be destroyed. Th
Zuleika Dobson, great beauty and second-rate conjurer, leaves a trail of broken hearts behind her wherever she goes. When she arrives at Oxford to stay with her grandfather, the Warden of Judas Colleg
Saved, rescued, fished-up, half-drowned, out of the deep, dark river, dry clothes, hair shampooed and set... Set in a 1930s Paris of shabby hotel rooms, seedy bars and drunken encounters, Jean Rhys's
The Help is the phenomenal international bestseller (that inspired the Oscar nominated film) by Kathryn Stockett, published as a Penguin Essential for the first time Enter a vanished and unjust world:
'The train ran on without a driver, on and on, like some mindless, unseeing beast...' One of Zola's darkest and most violent works - a tense thriller of political corruption and a graphic exploration
'I slept very comfortably with half a dozen smoke-dried human skulls suspended over my head' Alfred Russel Wallace left to explore the islands of southeast Asia an obscure naturalist; he returned eigh
'He said that Shamil had ordered Hadji Murat to be taken dead or alive....' In 1851, at the age of twenty-two, Tolstoy joined the Russian army and travelled to the Caucasus as a soldier. The four year
'When you have caught the rhythm of Africa, you find that it is the same in all her music.' From the moment Karen Blixen arrived in Kenya in 1914 to manage a coffee plantation, her heart belonged to A
'I cannot make you understand. I cannot make anyone understand what is happening inside me. I cannot even explain it to myself.' This collection of new translations brings together the small proportio
"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I h
A brilliant new translation by Christine Donougher of Victor Hugo's thrilling masterpiece, with an introduction by Robert Tombs. Les Miserables (literally, 'The Wretched') is the basis for both the lo
'She bared her poor curst arm'A jealous lover's curse and an ingenious party trick feature in these two suspenseful stories set in Hardy's imaginary Wessex. One of 46 new books in the bestselling Li
'We are bought and sold like apes or monkeys, to be the sport of women, fools, and cowards, and the support of rogues . . .' Spy, traveller and pioneering female writer Aphra Benn's story of an Africa
'A ghastly groan and a shudder..'From the pioneer of horror fiction, this tale of a clergyman tormented by a demonic creature is one of the greatest Victorian ghost stories. One of 46 new books in t
'Reader, if you're ready, so am I.' These witty vignettes, set in Charlotte Brontë's imaginary world of Angria, feature debauched aristocrats, high-society courtesans and the rakish, brooding hero Zam
'We have nothing left in the world but what we can win with our swords.' The remarkable account of Hannibal crossing the Alps with his elephants and winning the Battle of the Trebbia. One of 46 new bo
'Ko-ax, ko-ax, ko-ax! Now listen, you musical twerps, I don't give a damn for your burps!' A biting comedy from the great Ancient Greek playwright. One of 46 new books in the bestselling Little Black
A special edition of le Carré's first post-Cold War novel, to tie in with the new major BBC series starring Hugh Laurie and Tom Hiddleston, with a new afterword by the author At the start of it all, J
The Penguin English Library Edition of Bleak House by Charles Dickens 'Fog everywhere. Fog up the river, where it flows among green aits and meadows; fog down the river, where it rolls defiled among t
The Penguin English Library Edition of The Way of All Flesh by Samuel Butler 'The greater part of every family is always odious; if there are one or two good ones in a very large family, it is as much
The Penguin English Library Edition of Humphry Clinker by Tobias Smollett 'What is the society of London, that I should be tempted, for its sake, to mortify my senses, and compound with such uncleanne
The Penguin Collection offers the perfect introduction to the world of Penguin Books. Ever since the first Penguin paperbacks were published in 1935 by Allen Lane, who claimed 'good design costs no mo
Lady Chatterley's Lover is both one of the most beautiful and notorious love stories in modern fiction. The summation of D.H. Lawrence's artistic achievement, it sharply illustrates his belief that te
The Bhagavad Gita, a scintillating jewel embedded in the great Sanskrit epic Mahabharata, is a dialogue between Krishna and Arjuna set against the background of war. At the beginning of the poem, we l
Crime flourished in eighteenth-century England, thanks to the conspicuous wealth of the upper classes and the lack of any kind of police force. Many people, bound by a life of exhausting poverty, saw
"Trollope did not write for posterity," observed Henry James. "He wrote for the day, the moment; but these are just the writers whom posterity is apt to put into its pocket.
Focuses on the concept of 'precious print', as embodied by Penguin Classics and Fantastic Man. This title explores the myriad advantages of the printed word and image: beautiful typography, high dwell
Johannes is an aesthete, dedicated to creating the possibility of seduction through the careful manipulation of young women. He stealthily pursues the innocent Cordelia until she becomes increasingly
Pozdnyshev and his wife have a turbulent relationship. When her beauty blossoms after the birth of their children, men begin to flock around her, and he becomes increasingly jealous. Convinced his wif
In the communal world of the compound in which he lives, Omovo has many friends and some enemies, but most important of all there is Ifeyiwa, a beautiful young married woman who he loves with an almos
Part of the Penguin Classics campaign celebrating 100 years of Albert Camus, 'A Sea Close By' reveals the writer as a sensual witness of landscapes, the sea and sailing. It is a light, summery day-dre
The Penguin English Library Edition of Washington Square by James Hardy "Why, you must take me or leave me ... You can't please your father and me both; you must choose between us" When timid and plai
The Penguin English Library Edition of Joseph Andrews by Henry Fielding 'Kissing, Joseph, is but a prologue to a Play. Can I believe a young fellow of your Age and Complexion will be content with Kiss
