For over thirty years Reger, a music critic, has sat on the same bench in front of a Tintoretto painting in a Viennese museum, thinking and railing against contemporary society, his fellow men, artist
Described as a 'riveting read' by Sarah Waters and acclaimed by crime writers such as Andrew Taylor, The Pursued is a dark, gripping 1930s psychological thriller by C. S. Forester, the author of Hornb
However you try to escape it, horror is always there Outside the abbey's armoured walls, the common poor are ravaged by a grisly pestilence known as the 'Red Death', while within, safe and untroubled,
Against a brilliantly observed background of life in the Staffordshire Potteries, ANNA OF THE FIVE TOWNS is both a novel about a gossipy, myopic, savage community and at its heart a young girl dominat
A collection of works of a poet who as chief figure among the Beats, fomented a social and political revolution, yet his groundbreaking verse also changed the course of American poetry with its freewh
Presents stories of abandonment and vengeance, in which extreme situations lead to disturbing conclusions. A missionary is sent to a place so distant he finds his God has no power there; a husband aba
The word 'kama' means the desire for sensual pleasure in Sanskrit, and was considered an essential part of the well-rounded education of a young, urbane gentleman. Treating pleasure as an art, Kama Su
Traces the bleak life of Hugh Person through murder, madness, prison and trips to Switzerland. This novel sinks into the transparent things of the world that surround this one Person, to the silent hi
The Wayward Bus travels through the backroads of the lush California countryside, transporting the lost and the lonely to new destinations. Juan Chicoy is at the wheel, a man of the land, hot-blooded
This selection of John Donne's most powerful prose shows that the man remembered predominantly for his poetry was also a preacher, and a prose writer of extraordinary power. In it, he explores the met
Fez, 1954, and American ex-pat Stenham reluctantly accepts a guide for his night-time walk home through the streets of the Medina. A nationalist uprising is transforming the country, much to the annoy
The short story is one of the most varied and exciting genres in American literature. This collection brings together many of its finest examples from the early nineteenth century to the present. It c
Tells the story of the legendary road trip that Jack Kerouac took before the publication of "On the Road", told through the persona of Jack Duluoz and accompanied by his thinly-disguised Beat cohorts
Sabrina is a firebird blazing through 1950s New York: she is a woman daring to enjoy the sexual licence that men have always known. Wearing extravagant outfits and playing dangerous games of desire, s
An autobiography of Woody Guthrie, founder of modern American folk music. This book presents a cynical, earthy and tragic account of his life in an Oklahoma oil-boom town, of the Depression that follo
Depicting the final years of the Shah in Iran, this book offers a meditation on the nature of revolution and the devastating results of fear. It describes the tyrannical monarch, who, despite his crue
George Smiley, who is a troubled man of infinite compassion, is also a single-mindedly ruthless adversary as a spy.The scene which he enters is a Cold War landscape of moles and lamplighters, scalp-hu
Bassani's six classic books, collected for the first time in English as the epic masterwork they were intended to be. Set in the northern Italian town of Ferrara before, during, and after the Second W
'One of the most sophisticated fictional responses to the war on terror yet published' Guardian An illegal Muslim immigrant arrives in Hamburg with a traumatic past and the key to a fortune held in a
The fifth book in Bassani's Romanzo di Ferrara sequence, and his final novel, The Heron is a taut, poignant portrait of a middle-aged man's reckoning with his life. 'It struggled to keep itself aloft
Back, away from here, drowned people, go. I haven't stolen anyone's place' A selection of poetry from the author of If this is a Man and The Periodic Table. Penguin Modern: fifty new books celebrating
'Like rotting stakes in a forest clearing' The great journalist of conflict in the Third World finds an even stranger and more exotic society in his own home of post-War PolandPenguin Modern: fifty ne
INTENSE SEXUAL DESIRE IS THE GREATEST THING IN THE WORLD' A tale of art, sex, blood, junkies and whores in New York's underground, from cult literary icon Kathy Acker Penguin Modern: fifty new books c
Inspector Maigret finds himself caught in the middle of a husband and wife duo’s case of “he said/she said”—with murderous consequences An unusually quiet day for Inspector Maigret at the Quai des Orf
The moving portrayal of life in the trenches in WW1, now a new film from the director of Suite Française, starring Sam Clafin, Paul Bettany, Stephen Graham and Asa Butterfield Set in the First World
The gap year classic, available as a Penguin Essential for the first time in the year of its 20th anniversary. A devastatingly funny satire on the whole idea of student travel,and particularly the Ind
When Kino, a Mexican pearl-diver finds 'the Pearl of the World' he believes that his impoverished life will be magically transformed. He will marry Juana in the church and their son, Coyotito, will go
Nobel prize winner and author of One Hundred Years of Solitude Gabriel Garcia Marquez tells a tale of an unrequited love that outlasts all rivals in his masterpiece Love in the Time of Cholera, publis
A new, definitive translation of the quintessential Korean classic: the Robin Hood story of a magical boy who joins a group of robber bandits and becomes a kingThe Story of Hong Gildong is arguably th
'The terrorist and the policeman both come from the same basket.' In the only novel Conrad set in London, The Secret Agent communicates a profoundly ironic view of human affairs. The story is woven ar
'It was so hard that the pleasant waters of his little stream should be disturbed and muddied ... that his quiet paths should be made a battlefield: that the unobtrusive corner of the world which been
'It is a most wonderful comfort to sit alone beneath a lamp, book spread before you, and commune with someone from the past whom you have never met...'Moonlight, sake, spring blossom, idle moments, a
New to Penguin Modern Classics, the seminal work of gay literature that sparked an infamous legal trial for obscenity and went on to become a bestseller. The Well of Loneliness tells the story of tomb
The Penguin English Library edition When Dr John Watson takes rooms in Baker Street with amateur detective Sherlock Holmes, he has no idea that he is about to enter a shadowy world of criminality and
Is it possible to die a happy death? This is the central question of Camus's astonishing early novel, published posthumously and greeted as a major literary event. It tells the story of a young Algeri
The Penguin English Library Edition of The Warden by Anthony Trollope 'It was so hard that the pleasant waters of his little stream should be disturbed and muddied ... that his quiet paths should be m
The Penguin English Library Edition of Lady Audley's Secret by Mary Elizabeth Braddon 'Lady Audley uttered a long, low, wailing cry, and threw up her arms above her head with a wild gesture of despair
Jane Austen's timeless works of romantic fiction have earned her a place as one of the most widely read and adored writers in the English language. Now any fan of Austen's sparkling literary satires c
Eight years ago Anne Elliot bowed to pressure from her family and made the decision not to marry the man she loved, Captain Wentworth. Now, circumstances have conspired to bring him back into her soci
Douglas Yandell, a youngish music critic, is enlisted by Kitty Vandervane to keep an eye on her roving husband - the eminent conductor and would-be radical Sir Roy - as he embarks on yet another affai
