Since no one could get enough of the beautiful Penguin English Library books, created by our award-winning designer Coralie Bickford-Smith, we've made some beautiful and sumptuous notebooks that you w
Since no one could get enough of the beautiful Penguin English Library books, created by our award-winning designer Coralie Bickford-Smith, we've made some beautiful and sumptuous notebooks that you w
Victims of a false belief system, women were following strict social convention by loyally conforming to the pretty image of the magazines, and found themselves forced to seek meaning in their lives o
An exploration of the author's parents' lives, his mother's inexplicable suicide in her late fifties and his own bouts of depression. It conjures up the pebble-dashed home of his childhood and the lan
The letters of the eminent naturalist Gilbert White are full of precise, unaffected and delightful observations of the wildlife of his beloved village of Selborne, describing the habits, colours and s
A gangster is murdered during a blistering Manhattan heat wave. City cop Andy Rusch is under pressure to solve the crime and captivated by the victim's beautiful girlfriend. But it is difficult to cat
'Big Daddy' Pollitt, the richest cotton planter in the Mississippi Delta, is about to celebrate his sixty-fifth birthday. His two sons have returned home for the occasion: Gooper, his wife and childre
In Vichy France, 1942, a group of men sit outside an office, waiting to be interviewed. The reason they have been pulled off the street and taken there is obvious enough. They are, for the most part,
Features letters that cover the activities of Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, and Jack Kerouac in the years that gave birth to the "Beat Generation". Written mostly to Ginsberg or Kerouac, this title inclu
During the Second World War Roald Dahl served in the RAF and suffered horrific injuries in an air crash in the Libyan desert. Drawing on his own experience as a fighter pilot, Dahl crafted these ten s
A play written during Brecht's exile to the United States and set in pre-Communist China. It is a parable of a young woman torn between obligation and reality, between love and practicality, and betwe
Sal Paradise, a young innocent, joins his hero Dean Moriarty, a traveller and mystic, the living epitome of Beat, on a breathless, exuberant ride back and forth across the United States. Their search
Ben Turnbull is a 66 year-old retired investment consultant living north of Boston in the year 2020. A recent war between the United States and China has thinned the population and brought social chao
Growing up in Kenya in the early twentieth century, the brothers Matu and Muthegi are raised according to customs that, they are told, have existed since the beginning of the world. But when the 'red'
Henry Bech, the celebrated author of "Travel Light", has been scrutinized, canonized and vilified by critics and readers across the world. This work explores the writing life and what happens when a w
The sixth century was not a peaceful time for the Roman empire. Invaders threatened on all fronties, but they grew to respect and fear the name of Belisarius, the Emperor Justinian's greatest general.
Handsome, worldly and intelligent, Solal holds a position of enviable power in 1930s Geneva. But as Under-Secretary-General of the League of Nations, he has become bitterly disillusioned by internatio
Kicked out of college and harassed by his lawyer, Miles Faber abandons New York and embarks on a defiant pilgrimage across the Caribbean to find the shrine of Sib Legeru, an obscure poet and painter.
The Penguin English Library Edition of The Small House at Allington by Anthony Trollope "What a villain you are ... a villain and a poor weak silly fool. She was too good for you." Engaged t
The Penguin English Library Edition of Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad 'A murmur of dismay and horror ran through the crowd at the sight of that familiar token. The old nakhoda stared at it, and suddenly le
A semi-autobiographical tale of Kerouac's own trip to France, to trace his ancestors and explore his own understanding of the Buddhism that came to define his beliefs.
Yasha the magician - sword swallower, fire eater, acrobat and master of escape - is famed for his extraordinary Houdini-like skills. Half Jewish, half Gentile, a free thinker who slips easily between
Herman Broder, a refugee and Holocaust survivor, has three women in his life: Yadwiga, the loyal Polish peasant who hid him in a hayloft from the Nazis; Masha, his beautiful and neurotic true love; an
Recollects the author's comfortable childhood and adolescence, of his rich, liberal-minded father, his beautiful mother, an army of relations and family hangers-on and of grand old houses in St Peters
Andrés Caicedo's novel Liveforever is a wild celebration of youth, hedonism and the transforming power of music. María del Carmen Huerta lives a respectable middle-class life in Colombia. One day she
'Little jets of wheezing laughter followed one another out of his convulsed body. His eyes, twinkling with cunning enjoyment, glanced at every moment towards his companion's face.' 'When he was quite
It's the 1960s, he's been out in the cold for years, spying in Berlin for his British masters, and has seen too many good agents murdered for their troubles. Now Control wants to bring him in at last
As the First World War reaches its final year, an illicit love affair is beginning between a sixteen-year-old boy and a young woman married to a soldier at the front. They meet secretly in her flat on
Julian Green was born to American parents in Paris in 1900, and spent most of his life in the French capital. Paris is an extraordinary, lyrical love letter to the city, taking the reader on an imagin
Reveals that the metaphors and myths surrounding certain illnesses, especially cancer, add greatly to the suffering of the patients and often inhibit them from seeking proper treatment. By demystifyin
Albinus - rich, married middle-aged and respectable - is an art critic and aspiring filmmaker who lusts after the coquettish young cinema usherette Margot. Gradually he seduces her and convinces himse
Stevie Smith was one of the few 'modern' poets to reach a wide general audience. Bizarre, witty, sad, sometimes caustic, her poems impart a zest for life, and reveal her eye for the marvels of the ord
Written in Paris in the early 1950s, this book created controversy in its analysis of 'modern' society that had allowed itself to be hypnotized by socio-political doctrines, and to accept totalitarian
Spurred on by admiration for his novelist half-brother and irritation at the biography written about him by Mr Goodman ('his slapdash and very misleading book'), the narrator, V, sets out to record Se
While fulfilling his dead father's dream of creating a prosperous farm in California, Joseph Wayne comes to believe that a magnificent tree on the farm embodies his father's spirit. His brothers and t
The Mahabharata is some 3,500 years old and is the longest poem in existence. It is one of the founding epics of Indian culture, yet it is also a highly dramatic and enthralling story. It centres arou
An annotated edition of "Lolita". It attempts to elaborate on the verbal textures and show how they contribute to the novel's overall meaning. It also provides observations on the novel's artifice, ga
