Modern Fiction (post 1945)

The book that shocked a generation and introduced Kathy Acker as the enfant terrible of the 1980s literary underground This is a book about feminism, capitalism, sex, punk, youth, the...

The Spy tells the unforgettable story of a woman who dared to break the conventions of her time, and paid the price. When Mata Hari arrived in Paris she was...

Spanning two centuries, Nicole Alexander's compelling novel is a story of love and faith, destiny and betrayal, in a land as richly diverse as the secrets it keeps. In the...

The Riders, the novel that brought Tim Winton his first Booker Prize shortlisting, charts an odyssey across Europe, a transfixing journey through the underworld of every lover's nightmare. Fred Scully...

New edition When attractive, impulsive English widow Lidia takes a holiday in Italy, she causes a scandal by marrying Gino, a dashing and highly unsuitable Italian twelve years her junior....

Rediscover H.G. Wells - what does he mean to you? Mr Polly is an ordinary middle-aged man who is tired of his wife's nagging and his dreary job as the...

Le Carre shows espionage at its best and worst in this novel, new to Penguin Modern Classics When the Department - faded since the war and busy only with bureaucratic...

Le Carre's ingenious mysery, featuring his most famous recurring character, George Smiley Stella Rode has twice disturbed the ancient cloisters of Carne School- firstly by being the wrong sort, with...

The final novel featuring Smiley, Le Carre's most enduring character, and a gripping feat of narrative brilliance The Cold War is over and Ned has been demoted to the training...

A tale of wasted love, and beauty, by Japan's literary master Shimamura is tired of the bustling city. He takes the train through the snow to the mountains of the...

New to Penguin Modern Classics, as part of our Achebe relaunch Ezeulu, headstrong chief priest of the god Ulu, is worshipped by the six villages of Umuaro. But he is...

Reissuing in Penguin Modern Classics as part of our Paul Bowles relaunch, with a new introduction by Paul Theroux 'The Sheltering Sky is a book about people on the edge...

"Nothing but the darkness, and all around them destruction, and before them nothing but the fire--a bastard people, far from God, singing and crying in the wilderness!" First published in...

Jorge Luis Borges was a literary spellbinder whose tales of magic, mystery and murder are shot through with deep philosophical paradoxes. This collection brings together many of his stories, including...

Anais Nin's classic exploration of love and sex in 1930s Paris The brilliant tale of Anais Nin's true love affair with Henry Miller, and her ambiguous, charged relationship with his...

NADJA is a Surrealist romance, and has come to be known as a book which defined that movement's attitude towards life. With its blend of intimate confession and sense of...

A heartbreaking stunner of a novel from the UK's biggest-selling writer of women's fiction "I employ this thing called The Shovel List." "A shovel...?" "No. A Shovel List. It's more...

She is Britain's most successful and loved female writer. And this is her biggest paperback yet. June the first, a bright summer's evening, a Monday . . . And into...

Dickens' last completed novel portraying a dark, macabre London Our Mutual Friend centres on an inheritance - Old Harmon's profitable dust heaps - and its legatees, young John Harmon, presumed...

That Eye, the Sky is Tim Winton's luminous novel about a boy's vision of the world beyond, and about finding a way through cataclysm. That Eye, the Sky is Tim...

Nobel Prize-winning author Toni Morrison is one of the finest novelists of our times. Discover Toni Morrison's most iconic work in this Pulitzer-prize winning novel that exemplifies her powerful and...

The gripping new thriller from the number-one Sunday Times bestselling author of The Thirst. THE NO.1 SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER He's the best cop they've got. When a drug bust turns...

The ingenious, hilarious new novel from award-winning writer Elif Batuman - 'It's a novel about being young and stupid that's both wise and clever - and it's a treat' Evening...

**Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature** The brilliant new collection of stories by the winner of the 2009 Man Booker International Prize **Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature**...

A chillingly powerful dystopian vision from one of Europe's greatest writers No food, no water, no government, no obligation, no order. Discover a chillingly powerful and prescient dystopian vision from...

The first title in the acclaimed Inspector Wallander series. One frozen January morning at 5am, Inspector Wallander responds to what he believes is a routine call out. When he reaches...

The exquisitely told, tragic tale of thwarted love that will stop you in your tracks Discover the exquisitely told tragic tale of thwarted love behind the major new film adaptation...

A wonderful, epic story that tells the history of the greatest city in the world, from Roman times to the present day. A grand, epic story that tells the history...

Re-jacketed in a stunning new series style for 2023, Saturday is a gripping novel centering around the London anti-war protest in 2003 from the Booker prize-winning Sunday Times-bestselling Ian McEwan....

THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER Rediscover the extraordinary love story of Clare and Henry The pair met when Clare was just six and Henry thirty-six, and were married when Clare was twenty-two...

'An excellent story-teller, intense and skilful in planning and bringing off his effects' Daily Telegraph In these early Hemingway stories, which are partly autobiographical, men and women of passion live,...

'This book has one of the most charismatic narrators I've ever met' J K Rowling 'This book has one of the most charismatic narrators I've ever met' J K Rowling...

'Wondrous - brilliantly inventive, full of dazzling set pieces. Not simply the most original novel I've read in years - it's also one of the best' The Times OVER TEN...

An assault on the senses, part murder mystery, part metaphysical speculation; a fable for our times as catchy as a rock song blasting from the window of a sports car....

Hemingway's classic portrait of the pageantry of bullfighting Ernest Hemingway's classic portrait of the pageantry of bullfighting. 'I was trying to learn to write, commencing with the simplest things, and...

'A brilliantly inventive novel... Malouf puts on a dazzling literary display in this arresting, original, lyrical work' Wall Street Journal In the first century AD, Publius Ovidius Naso, the most...

Four modern classics by the great South African writer, J. M. Coetzee, re-released with stylish new covers and accompanied by introductions from some of Australia's brightest writing talents. There was...

How do you eradicate contempt, especially when that contempt is founded on nothing more substantial than differences in table manners, variations in the structure of the eyelid? Shall I tell...

The irony does not escape him: that the one who comes to teach learns the keenest of lessons, while those who come to learn learn nothing. J. M. Coetzee's Booker...

'A daring and colourful novel. A superb observer of the human race' New York Times Book Review Hugo Baumgartner is a man who doesn't belong anywhere. He's a Berlin Jew...

A diabolically funny and macabre novel by the brilliantly wacky Kurt Vonnegut - now rejacketed with brilliant, witty new look for the backlist 'Black satire of the highest polish' Guardian...

'A great writer who spoke brilliantly to a whole generation. Prophet-like' Alec Guinness Discover Graham Green's prescient political masterpiece 'The novel that I love the most is The Quiet American'...

Virginia Woolf's final novel, now in Penguin Black Classics Outwardly a novel about life in a country-house in whose grounds there is to be a pageant, Between the Acts is...

A playful mock 'biography' of a chameleonic historical figure, written for Virginia Woolf's intimate friend Vita Sackville-West. Orlando has always been an outsider . . . His longing for passion,...

Kate Chopin's groundbreaking depiction of a woman who dares to defy the expectations of society in the pursuit of her desire When The Awakening was first published in 1899, charges...

A new hardback edition of Fitzgerald's brilliant and most famous novel Jay Gatsby is the man who has everything. But one thing will always be out of his reach ......

In this nightmare vision of a not-too-distant future, fifteen-year-old Alex and his three friends rob, rape, torture and murder - for fun. Alex is jailed for his vicious crimes and...

with an introduction by Lorna Sage Innovative, startlingly perceptive and aglow with colour, these fifteen stories were written towards the end of Katherine Mansfield's tragically short life. Many are set...