Fiction

Alex Garland's The Beach was published to immediate acclaim, and has since become a bestselling cult classic and a Hollywood blockbuster. Richard, a gap-year student, is introduced to a beautiful...

Roald Dahl's Tales of the Unexpected is a delightfully dark collection of sixteen stories, each with a startling end. Among the unforgettable characters lurk the homicidal wife and her deadly...

Sir Ernest Shackleton's South is one of the greatest survival stories of all time. In 1914, Shackleton led a party of men hoping to be the first to traverse the...

John Mortimer's Rumpole and the Penge Bungalow Murders sees our eponymous hero tackle his first ever case. It is just after the war and two RAF heroes are found shot...

John Updike's Rabbit, Run is a classic story of dissatisfaction and restlessness. Harry 'Rabbit' Angstrom was a star basketball player in high school. Now twenty-six, his life seems full of...

Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest captured the radical anti-establishment mood of 1960s America. Tyrannical Nurse Ratched rules her psychiatric ward with an iron fist and a penchant...

Gerald Durrell's My Family and Other Animals is a charming and comic autobiographical novel. Fleeing the gloomy British climate, the Durrell clan move to Corfu carrying the bare essentials of...

Bill Bryson's Mother Tongue is a hymn to the English language. In examining how a second-rate, mongrel tongue came to be the undisputed language of the globe. Bryson explores English...

Gabriel Garcia Marquez's Love in the Time of Cholera is a brilliantly crafted, beautifully written story of love and the love-sick. Spurned as a young man, Florentino Ariza has a...

Nancy Mitford's Love in a Cold Climate is a wickedly funny satire, brilliantly lampooning upper-class society. When Polly, a beautiful aristocrat, declares her love for her married, lecherous uncle -...

D. H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover scandalized the world when it was first published in paperback, and helped put Penguin Books on trial. The powerful depiction of the sexual liaison...

Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre to this day entrances readers with its passionate portrayal of a woman struggling to make a life for herself in a cruel and indifferent world. As...

Nick Hornby's High Fidelity is the brilliant story of one man's journey of self-discovery. When Rob - a thirty-five-year old record shop owner and music obsessive - is dumped by...

Roald Dahl's Going Solo is the marvellous account of his life as a young man. He describes getting his first job in Africa and his wartime exploits as an RAF...

Jonathan Safran Foer's Everything is Illuminated won the Guardian First Book Award in 2002. It tells the story of a young man who goes to the Ukraine in search of...

Anais Nin's Delta of Venus is a stunning collection of sexual encounters from the queen of literary erotica. From Mathilde's lust-filled Peruvian opium den to the Hungarian baron driven insane...

Peter Mayle's A Year in Provence is the much-loved account of an English couple living their dream abroad. When they buy a 200-year-old farmhouse in the South of France, Peter...

Evelyn Waugh's A Handful of Dust is a satirical depiction of the 'sterile' generation between the wars. It tells the story of bored Lady Brenda Last, who abandons her husband's...

Throughout history, some books have changed the world. They have transformed the way we see ourselves - and each other. They have inspired debate, dissent, war and revolution. They have...

Discover the Mysteries of The Waterhole Embark on a captivating journey with internationally celebrated author and illustrator, Graeme Base. Known for turning children's books into multi-layered experiences. Down to the...

Dive into an enigmatic world crafted by Graeme Base, the acclaimed author and illustrator of Animalia, where you're not just a reader but a detective too. The Grand Celebration Horace...

I wonder if you want to fly, to float about up in the sky? There's magic here for everyone - a picture book that's just for fun.Pamela Allen is a...

A wild chase that takes the Queen, the King, the Admiral, the Captain, the General, the Sergeant and even the little dog through the night.Pamela Allen is a phenomenon in...

Joseph Heller said that if it weren't for his having read The Good Soldier Svejk he would never had written his American novel Catch 22 Hasek's most important work was...

Penguin Classics relaunch. The trial and condemnation of Socrates on charges of heresy and corrupting young minds is a defining moment in the history of Classical Athens. In tracing these...

This definitive three-volume Penguin Classics edition provides a complete and unmodernized text, presenting the History as it appeared to its early readers Edward Gibbon's six-volume History of the Decline and...

Multi-award-winning, a bestseller andmade intoan award-winningfeature film, Looking for Alibrandi has become a modern classic. Melina Marchetta'sstunning debut novel Looking for Alibrandi is one girl's story of her final year...

First time in Modern Classics Born into a Jewish ghetto in Hungary, as a child, Elie Wiesel was sent to the Nazi concentration camps at Auschwitz and Buchenwald. This is...

A detailed and compelling political study of how elite forces shape mass media Contrary to the usual image of the press as cantankerous, obstinate, and ubiquitous in its search for...

The evocative tale of an idyllic childhood in the English countryside. The classic evocative tale of an idyllic childhood in the English countryside Cider with Rosie is a wonderfully vivid...

Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature A landmark in American fiction, Light in August explores Faulkner's central theme- the nature of evil. Joe Christmas - a man doomed, deracinated...

Harry, the black and white dog with a nose for mischeif, is back! Harry and the family have gone to the beach but it's too sunny and he's one hot...

A high concept thriller and genre busting classic, now a major motion picture starring Matt Damon _________________________ A survival story for the 21st century and the international bestseller behind the...

The phenomenal classic that has changed the lives of millions of people around the globe. The phenomenal classic that has changed the lives of millions of people around the globe...

New to Black Classics with a New Introduction by Giles Foden Three men trek to the remote African interior in search of a lost friend - and reach, at the...

Shipwrecked and cast adrift, Lemuel Gulliver wakes to find himself on Lilliput, an island inhabited by little people, whose height makes their quarrels over fashion and fame seem ridiculous. His...

A terrifying vision of scientific progress without moral limits, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein leads the reader on an unsettling journey from the sublime beauty of the Swiss alps to the desolate...

Hidden away in the Record Department of the sprawling Ministry of Truth, Winston Smith skilfully rewrites the past to suit the needs of the Party. Yet he inwardly rebels against...

The portrayal of Stephen Dedalus's Dublin childhood and youth, his quest for identity through art and his gradual emancipation from the claims of family, religion and Ireland itself, is also...

Are you a FREAKONOMIST? Cult bestseller, new buzz word... Freakonomics is at the heart of everything we see and do and the subjects that bedevil us daily- from parenting to...

This is a lightly revised edition of Mattingly's original translation plus a new introduction, new notes, a chronology and further reading, by James Rives The Agricola is both a portrait...

The definitive portrait of the real Socrates Rich in drama and humour, they include the controversial Ion, a debate on poetic inspiration; Laches, in which Socrates seeks to define bravery;...

New to Classics for the Rule of St Benedict, one of the most important written works in the shaping of Western society Founder of a monastery at Monte Cassino, between...

Revised edition The master of ancient Greek comic drama, Aristophanes combined slapstick, humour and cheerful vulgarity with acute political observations. In The Frogs, written during the Peloponnesian War, Dionysus descends...

Part of the Penguin Classics' fresh new editions of Tolstoy's major works - including Antony Briggs' stunning new translation of War and Peace In 1851, at the age of twenty-two,...

A new translation by Helen Constantine of de Laclos's great novel of moral and emotional depravity. Published in 1782, just years before the French Revolution, Les Liaisons Dangereuses is a...

Penguin Classics relaunch. Virgil's Aeneid, inspired by Homer and inspiration for Dante and Milton, is an immortal poem at the heart of Western life and culture. Virgil took as his...

Penguin Classics relaunch. In the summer of 1348, as the Black Death ravages their city, ten young Florentines take refuge in the countryside. They amuse themselves by each telling a...