The Penguin English Library Edition of The Man Who Was Thursday by G. K. Chesterton '"A man's brain is a bomb," he cried out, loosening suddenly his strange passion and striking his own skull with vio
In a fit of drunken anger, Michael Henchard sells his wife and baby daughter for five guineas at a country fair. Over the course of the following years, he manages to establish himself as a respected
Matthew's parents are worried. At eleven, he's much too old to have an imaginary friend, yet they find him talking to and arguing with a presence that even he admits is not physically there. This pres
When a society becomes more affluent, does it lose other values? Are the skills that education and literacy gave millions wasted on consuming pop culture? Do the media coerce us into a world of the su
William James's strong beliefs in a pragmatic theory of truth - that truth is only as relevant as its effect on us - lead to these absorbing essays on fact and belief. Within them is a fascinating the
Set in the 1930s, this is a novel on American politics. It traces the rise and fall of Willie Stark, who resembles the real-life Huey "Kingfish" Long of Louisiana. Stark begins his political career as
A comic masterpiece that has never been out of print since it was first published in 1889, Jerome K. Jerome's Three Men in a Boat includes an introduction and notes by Jeremy Lewis in Penguin Classics
A group of people have little in common except that they are all hopelessly lonely. A young girl, a drunken socialist and a black doctor are drawn to a gentle, sympathetic deaf mute, whose presence ch
Her grand attempt to tell what she felt was the story of Jane Eyre's 'madwoman in the attic', Bertha Rochester, Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea is edited with an introduction and notes by Angela Smith i
Presents the diary of a teenage girl, who along with her family in Amsterdam, in the summer of 1942 was forced into hiding by Nazis. This title presents an intimate record of tension and struggle, ado
Richard Hannay has just returned to England after years in South Africa and is thoroughly bored with his life in London. But then a murder is committed in his flat, just days after a chance encounter
Tristao Raposo, a nineteen-year old black child of the Rio slums, spies Isabel Leme, an eighteen-year-old upper-class white girl, across the hot sands of Copacabana Neach, and presents her with a ring
A preacher called Deke O'Malley's been selling false hope: the promise of a glorious new life in Africa for just $1,000 a family. But when thieves with machine guns steal the proceeds - and send one m
'They no longer hold themselves up with all their might, but sink a little and at that moment appear totally human' Of the very first rank of prose stylists, Robert Musil captures a scene's every tell
`The story of his chronic stomach ailment was the story of his life. Yet all his livelong days he was obliged to bolt down the braised porkolt gravies, soupy goulashes and watery broths bathing the si
Some crooks have tried to snatch the plump son of a business tycoon, and have accidentally made off with his playmate instead. But they're not changing their plan: a payment is to be delivered to them
In Greenmantle (1916) Richard Hannay, hero of The Thirty-Nine Steps, travels across war-torn Europe in search of a German plot and an Islamic Messiah. He is joined by three more of Buchan's heroes: Pe
Abandoned to his fate when his English parents die in the African jungle, a baby boy is rescued and reared by a loving ape foster mother. Conquering the savage laws of the wilderness, Tarzan grows int
Mozart is creative, brilliant and charming. But is he also a thief? Making his way to Prague for the opening of Don Giovanni, the great composer playfully tries to steal an orange from a Bohemian fam
Harry White is the man other men want to be: admired by his peers, talented, rich, and desired by countless women. His steady rise to a position of unprecedented influence in a New York investment fir
Mr Marble is in serious debt, desperate for money to pay his family's bills, until the combination of a wealthy relative, a bottle of Cyanide and a shovel offer him the perfect solution. In fact, his
Victor, a ghostwriter, is just about to have an affair with Marta, a married woman, when - in the bedroom, half-undressed - she drops dead in his arms. He panics and slips away. But Marta's family are
Her grand attempt to tell what she felt was the story of Jane Eyre's 'madwoman in the attic', Bertha Rochester, Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea is edited with an introduction and notes by Angela Smith i
Sally is big and pampered. She's married to Richard. But she loves Jerry. Jerry loves Sally, but he's also still in love with his wife Ruth. Who's been sleeping with Richard ...As a hot, feverish summ
The woman's place of power within each of us is neither white nor surface; it is dark, it is ancient, and it is deepThe revolutionary writings of Audre Lorde gave voice to those 'outside the circle of
Alec Leamas is tired. 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
The first novel in the Great Plains trilogy, this is an ode to the American Midwest and the immigrants who transformed it To the anger of her brothers, it is Alexandra who is entrusted to manage their
'He felt a sudden deep pity for the finger joint that lay there on the dresser, a few drops of blood gathering around the white bone.'A deliberately severed finger, a junky's Christmas miracle and a T
'It was what we call in the trade a potato...' Tales of low-lifes and grifters trying to make ends meet in pre-War Germany. Penguin Modern: fifty new books celebrating the pioneering spirit of the ico
Considered a classic at the time of its publication in 1910, A Shepherd's Life is a rare account of the lives of those who lived on and worked the land in nineteenth-century rural Britain. A masterful
'I'll never understand the fucking Army.' Prew won't conform. He could have been the best boxer and the best bugler in his division, but he chooses the life of a straight soldier in Hawaii under the f
The Penguin English Library Edition of Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe 'I walk'd about on the shore, lifting up my hands, and my whole being, as I may say, wrapt up in the contemplation of my delivera
The Penguin English Library Edition of Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne 'I am got, I know not how, into a cold unmetaphorical vein of infamous writing, and cannot take a plumb-lift out of it for my
The Penguin English Library Edition of Howards End by E. M. Forster 'The poor cannot always reach those whom they want to love, and they can hardly ever escape from those whom they love no longer. We
The Penguin English Library Edition of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Brontë 'She looked so like herself that I knew not how to bear it' In this sensational, hard-hitting and passionate tale of m
A mummy is stolen from a small town museum along with some Roman coins and a soaking wet man collapses in fourteen year old Peter Furneaux's living room bleeding from the head. What was a suspected st
Gaskell's best known work is set in a small rural town, inhabited largely by women. This is a community that runs on cooperation and gossip, at the very heart of which are the daughters of the former
The Picture of Dorian Gray was a succes de scandale. Early readers were shocked by its hints at unspeakable sins and the book was later used as evidence against Wilde at the Old Bailey in 1895. Enth
It was the war to end all wars, the global struggle that would finally make the world safe for democracy - at any cost. But one American soldier has paid a price beyond measure. And within the disfigu
This investigation of religion by greatest psychoanalyst of the twentieth-century explores the role faith can take in the life of man, what it can mean to us and why as a species we are inclined towar
