In the deep glens of Massachusetts, in the wild hills of Vermont, and in Australia's sandy wastes, unfathomable things lurk. Things that shine with an unnatural light, that speak and buzz strangely in
Haunting, terrifying and hilarious, The Day of the Oprichnik is a dazzling novel and a fierce critique of life in the New Russia Moscow 2028: Andrei Danilovich Komiaga, oprichnik, member of the czar's
'The ultimate Camp statement: it's good because it's awful.'These two classic essays were the first works of criticism to break down the boundaries between 'high' and 'low' culture, and made Susan Son
'A work of rare brilliance' The TimesCharmer, fabulist and tailor to Panama's rich and powerful, Harry Pendel loves to tell stories. But when the British spy Andrew Osnard - a man of large appetites,
One of the three seminal works of Japanese literature, a beautiful collection of poems and tales that offers an unparalleled insight into ancient JapanAlong with the Tale of Genji and One Hundred Poet
Growing up in the world of the 'five towns' of industrial England, with their furnaces and chimneys, huddled red-brown streets, prayer meetings and small-minded bigotry, Anna is dominated by her miser
'What has risen may sink, and what has sunk may rise...' Mad, macabre tales of demonic spirits, hideous rites, ancient curses and alien entities lurking beneath the surface of rural New England, from
Revealing that Conrad actually hated sailing and Emily Bronte was so tough she was known as 'The Major', among many other stories of eccentricity, drunkenness and even murder, this book uses unusual a
Exploring issues of colonialism, faith and the limits of comprehension, E.M. Forster's A Passage to India is published as a Penguin Essential for the first time. When Adela Quested and her elderly com
No one is better equipped in the struggle for wealth and worldly success than the alluring and ruthless Becky Sharp, who defies her impoverished background to clamber up the class ladder. Her sentimen
The last of John le Carre's espionage novels to feature his most enduring and well-loved character, George Smiley, and a gripping feat of narrative brilliance, The Secret Pilgrim is published in Pengu
Two soldiers travel across Italy at the height of summer, passing through Genoa, Rome and Naples. One of the soldiers is blind, graceful, gleefully vicious and wears a prosthetic arm; the other, twent
Charles Dickens describes in Night Walks his time as an insomniac, when he decided to cure himself by walking through London in the small hours, and discovered homelessness, drunkenness and vice on th
Taking its title from T.S. Eliot's modernist poem The Waste Land, Evelyn Waugh's A Handful of Dust is a chronicle of Britain's decadence and social disintegration between the First and Second World Wa
Channelling a razor-sharp satire through the everyday mishaps of the immortal comic character Mr Pooter, George and Weedon Grossmith's The Diary of a Nobody is edited with an introduction and notes by
Lost during the author's lifetime, it is an intense portrait of friendship and brotherhood and a meditation on the desire to escape society, following the fortunes of two men as they impulsively decid
A reticent personnel manager living with his mother, Mr Newman shares the prejudices of his times and of his neighbours - and neither a Hispanic woman abused outside his window nor the persecution of
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
The author who most epitomises the decadent jazz age and 'the lost generation' of post-World War One America, Fitzgerald remains a best-selling author worldwide. Collected here in this covetable and m
A man's mother can be a terrible burden sometimes. For Tarry Flynn - poet, farmer and lover-from-afar of beautiful young virgins - the responsibility of family, farm, poetic inspiration and his own un
In "The Metamorphoses", Ovid draws on Greek mythology, Latin folklore, and tales from Babylon and the East to create a series of narrative poems, linked by the common theme of transformation. This is
Orphaned Jane Eyre grows up in the home of her heartless aunt, where she endures loneliness and cruelty, and at a charity school with a harsh regime. This troubled childhood strengthens Jane's natural
Grady beautiful, rich, flame-haired, defiant is the sort of girl people stare at across a room. But her privileged society life of parties, debutantes and dresses leaves her wanting more. And exciteme
Nedra and Viri are a married couple whose favoured life is centred around dinners, ingenious games with their children, enviable friends and near-perfect days passed skating on a frozen river or sunni
The Twentieth Anniversary Edition As a young boy, growing up in London and watching his parents' marriage fall apart, Nick Hornby - author of High Fidelity, About a Boy and The Complete Polysyllabic S
Fair, elegant, and ambitious, Clare is married to a white man unaware of her African American heritage and has severed all ties to her past. Clare's childhood friend, Irene, just as light-skinned, has
The townspeople of Oran are in the grip of a deadly plague, which condemns its victims to a swift and horrifying death. Fear, isolation and claustrophobia follow as they are forced into quarantine. Ea
In Utopia, Thomas More gives us a traveller's account of a newly discovered island where the inhabitants enjoy a social order based on natural reason and justice, and human fulfilment is open to all.
'There must be another life, here and now, she repeated. This is too short, too broken. We know nothing, even about ourselves'The Years is the story of the Pargiter family - their intimacies and estra
Thomas Hardy's haunting study of guilt and lost love, now in a beautiful new hardcover edition designed by Coralie Bickford-SmithIn a fit of drunken anger, Michael Henchard sells his wife and baby dau
Charlie, a brilliant and beautiful young actress, is lured into 'the theatre of the real' by an Israeli intelligence officer. Forced to play her ultimate role, she is plunged into a deceptive and deli
Charlie, a brilliant and beautiful young actress, is lured into 'the theatre of the real' by an Israeli intelligence officer. Forced to play her ultimate role, she is plunged into a deceptive and deli
There were two kinds of landscape characteristic of the inner planets of the Sun: the purposeful and the desolate.' The planet Quinta is pocked with ugly mounds and covered by a spiderweb-like network
'But no, she's abstract, is a birdOf sound in the air of air soaring,And her soul sings unencumberedBecause the song's what makes her sing.'Dramatic, lyrical and ranging over four distinct personae, t
The hilarious 1980s political satire by Jonathan Coe, published as a Penguin Essential for the first time. It is the 1980s and the Winshaw family are getting richer and crueller by the year: Newspaper
'He too began to chase the great pierrot through the corridors of the château...' A novel of desperate yearning and vanished adolescence, the story of Meaulnes and his restless search for a lost, ench
'What matters is to live everything. Live the questions for now.' This title features profound and lyrical letters the author wrote to a young friend with advise on writing, love, sex, suffering and t
Defeated and embittered by a country which treats him as a non-being, the 'invisible man' retreats into an underground cell, where the author smokes, drinks, listens to jazz and recounts his search fo
The townspeople of Oran are in the grip of a deadly plague, which condemns its victims to a swift and horrifying death. Fear, isolation and claustrophobia follow as they are forced into quarantine. Th
The Penguin English Library Edition of Barchester Towers by Anthony Trollope 'What! to come here a stranger, a young, unknown, and unfriended stranger, and tell us, in the name of the bishop his maste
