From the Booker Prize-winning and Women's Prize-shortlisted author of The Silence of the Girls The first novel in Pat Barker's acclaimed 'Life Class' trilogy - an unforgettable story of art and war, f
A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian is bestselling author Marina Lewycka's hilarious and award winning debut novel, now available as a Penguin Essential for the first time. 'Two years after my mo
The Sunday Times Top Ten Bestseller, available as a Penguin Essential for the first time. A castle at the foot of the Carpathian mountains in the 1930s. Two men, inseparable in their youth, meet for t
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
'What I've found does the most good is just to get into a taxi and go to Tiffany's. It calms me down right away, the quietness and the proud look of it; nothing very bad could happen to you there, not
'An exciting writer, sharp and shocking as the knives her characters wield' Sunday TimesLike her namesake Jack Kerouac, J.K. is always on the road, travelling Europe with her typewriter in a pillowcas
Billy Gray was my best friend and I fell in love with his mother.'Alexander Cleave, an actor who thinks his best days are behind him, remembers his first unlikely affair as a teenage boy in a small to
'Are we making a bomb?' 'This is a trust exercise, like in drama,' she says. 'Are we making a bomb as a trust exercise?'Fifteen-year-old Oliver Tate is terrified that his family is falling apart. He f
'Sometimes I feel that I am destined always to be offstage whenever the main action occurs. That God has made me the victim of some cosmic practical joke, by assigning me little more than a walk-on pa
'DO NOT OPEN - DESTROY.'The words on the envelope he has found are written in Kath's hand, but Glyn ignores his wife's instruction and breaks the seal. His life unwinds. For he finds a photograph show
'A monument to crazy love. Magic' New York Times 'The actress arrived in his village the only way one could come directly . . .'In spring 1962 American actress Dee Moray's boat motors into an Italian
'I wanted us to wake to a kingdom of ice where our breath would turn to icicles as it left our lips, and we would walk through tunnels of snow to the outhouses and find birds fallen dead from the air
'Come at once if convenient - if inconvenient come all the same . . .'The note from Sherlock Holmes to Dr Watson cannot be ignored and soon the pair find themselves investigating the curious case of a
'Mr. Holmes, they were the footprints of a gigantic hound!' The death, quite suddenly, of Sir Charles Baskerville in mysterious circumstances is the trigger for one of the most extraordinary cases eve
'WATCH THOU FOR THE MUTANT!' It is many years since God sent the Tribulation to punish the forebears for their sins, and in the rural settlement of Waknuk David Strorm's father decries any and all blasphemies against nature. Little does he realise that David and his cousin Rosalind, have their own secret aberration which would label them as mutants. But as they grow older it becomes more difficult to conceal their differences from the village elders.Soon they face a choice: wait for eventual discovery, or flee to the terrifying and mutable Badlands. . .'An outstanding success' New York Times
Oskar Schell is an inventor, Francophile, tambourine player, Shakespearean actor, jeweler, pacifist. He is nine years old. And he is on an urgent, secret search through the five boroughs of New York t
The Road to Lichfield is the Booker Prize shortlisted first novel by Penelope Lively, published as a Penguin Essential for the first time on the 40th anniversary of its publication. Ann Linton leaves
Any Human Heart is William's Boyd's classic, bestselling novel, now available as a Penguin Essential for the first time. Every life is both ordinary and extraordinary, but Logan Mountstuart's - lived
Anita Brookner's first novel, available as a Penguin Essential for the first time. 'Dr Weiss, at forty, knew that her life had been ruined by literature.' Ruth Weiss, an academic, is beautiful, intell
Twilight is the haunting novel by Nobel Peace prize-winning author Elie Wiesel, available as a Penguin Essential for the first time. Raphael Lipkin hears voices and talks to ghosts. Spending the summe
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
Nick Hornby's internationally bestselling first novel, available as a Penguin Essential for the first time. Do you know your desert-island, all-time, top five most memorable split-ups? Rob does. He ke
Fast, thrilling, compulsively addictive - The Circle is Dave Eggers's timely novel about our obsession with the internet, now available as a Penguin Essential for the first time. When Mae is hired to
The Reluctant Fundamentalist is Mohsin Hamid's thrillingly provocative international bestseller, available as a Penguin Essential for the first time. Shortlisted for the Man Booker prize in 2007 Now a
Zadie Smith's White Teeth is a classic international bestseller and an unforgettable portrait of London, available as a Penguin Essential for the first time One of the most talked about fictional debu
The classic Cold War thriller, published as a Penguin Essential for the first time. Alec Leamas is tired. It's the 1960s, he's been out in the cold for years, spying in Berlin for his British masters,
The classic book that inspired Kes, the famous film, now published as a Penguin Essential for the first time. Barry Hines's A Kestrel for a Knave was published in 1968, and was made into one of the ke
