Non-Secondhand Books

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 spy story, a love story, and a fable for our time Barley Blair is not a Service man- he is a small-time publisher, a self-destructive soul whose only loves...

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...

G. K. Chesterton's surreal masterpiece, edited and with an introduction by Matthew Beaumont Can you trust yourself when you don't know who you are? In a park in London, secret...

Shirley Jackson's masterpiece- the deliciously dark and funny story of Merricat, tomboy teenager, beloved sister - and possible mass murderer Living in the Blackwood family home with only her sister...

The definitive collection of Shirley Jackson's short stories, including 'The Lottery' - one of the most terrifying and iconic stories of the twentieth century An excellent host finds himself turned...

Bawdy and moving, hilarious and reflective - these stories offer the very best of Boccaccio's Decameron in a brilliant, playful new translation This hugely enjoyable volume collects the best stories...

The definitive 25th-anniversary edition of Burroughs's legendary second novel Originally written in 1952 but not published till 1985, Queer is an enigma - both an unflinching autobiographical self-portrait and a...

At long last William S. Burroughs's cult classic and undoubted masterpiece enters Penguin Modern Classics A cultural landmark and the most shocking novel in the English language, Naked Lunch is...

New to Penguin Modern Classics Numbers in the Dark is a collection of short stories covering the length of Italo Calvino's extraordinary writing career, from when he was a teenager...

New to Penguin Modern Classics Florentino Ariza has never forgotten his first love. He has waited nearly a lifetime in silence since his beloved Fermina married another man. No woman...

First time in Penguin Modern Classics In Ponyboy's world there are two types of people. There are the Socs, the rich society kids who get away with anything. Then there...

Ayn Rand's most famous and controversial novel comes to Penguin for the first time Ayn Rand's story of Howard Roark, a brilliant architect who dares to stand alone against the...

First new translation since publication of Albert Camus's story collection The stories of Exile and the Kingdom explore the dilemma of being an outsider - even in one's own country...

'He's a writer who, once you read him, makes you want to read everything he's done' Martin Amis, Sunday Times Prosperous, good-looking and empty inside, 28-year-old advertising executive David Bell...

New translation by Robin Buss Jean-Baptiste Clamence is a soul in turmoil. Over several drunken nights he regales a chance acquaintance with his story. From this successful former lawyer and...

At long last Ken Kesey's 1962 cult classic novel has entered Modern Classics series. Boisterous, ribald, and ultimately shattering, Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is the seminal...

Hartley's classic novel of innocence lost, now reissued with a new jacket When one long, hot summer, young Leo is staying with a school friend at Brandham Hall, he begins...

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...

Arguably Achebe's most important novel, Things Fall Apart has sold over 10 million copies worldwide and been translated into more than fifty languages Okonkwo is the greatest warrior alive, famous...

Steinbeck's last great novel focuses on the theme of success and what motivates men towards it. Reflecting back on his New England family's past fortune, and his father's loss of...

"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...

The classic existentialist novel, now rejacketed in the Penguin Modern Classics eau-de-nil livery Nausea is both the story of the troubled life of a young writer, Antoine Roquentin, and an...

Nabokov's suspenseful whodunit and one of his most acclaimed works The American poet John Shade is dead; murdered. His last poem, Pale Fire, is put into a book, together with...

Translated by Robin Buss The townspeople of Oran are in the grip of a deadly plague, which condemns its victims to a swift and horrifying death. Fear, isolation and claustrophobia...

A stunning new series look for one of the greatest writers of the 20th century in Penguin Modern Classics Drifters in search of work, George and his simple-minded friend Lennie,...

A stunning new series look for one of the greatest writers of the 20th century in Penguin Modern Classics Shocking and controversial when it was first published in 1939, Steinbeck's...

Famously associated with the term 'magical realism', Marquez is probably South America's most famous literary export An acknowledged masterpiece, this is the story of seven generations of the Buendia family...

With prose that is every bit as raw, intense and bitingly honest as the world it depicts, Barry Hines's A Kestrel for a Knave contains a new afterword by the...

In her magnificent novel, Marguerite Yourcenar recreates the life and death of one of the great rulers of the ancient world. The Emperor Hadrian, aware his demise is imminent, writes...

Another addition to Penguin Modern Classics' key Kerouac holdings. THE DHARMA BUMS appeared just one year after the author's explosive ON THE ROAD had put the Beat Generation on the...

"Bellow is one of the giants of the twentieth-century novel. Read Seize the Day and see why" San Francisco Examiner Fading charmer Tommy Wilhelm has reached his day of reckoning...

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...

A superb portrait of a generation of black Americans, this novel established Ralph Ellison as one of the key writers of the twentieth century Ralph Ellison's blistering and impassioned first...

Taking its title from T.S. Eliot's modernist poem The Waste Land, Evelyn Waugh's A Handful of Dust is a chronicle of Britain's decadence and social disintegration between the First and...

The most popular anthology of Jorge Luis Borges's short stories, Fictions is a wildly original and influential collection of fantastic tales, translated from the Spanish with an afterword by Andrew...

Hilarious, intelligent and moving, Pnin is the tale of a generation irrevocably severed from its past Professor Timofey Pnin, previously of Tsarist Russia, is now precariously positioned at the heart...

An extraordinary novel of passion and discovery from Anais Nin, the master of erotic fiction Beautiful, bored and bourgeoise, Sabina leads a double life inspired by her relentless desire for...

'Brilliant ... a panorama of a remarkable talent ... McCullers's finest stories' The New York Times A classic work that has charmed generations of readers, this collection assembles Carson McCullers's...

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...

The Bright Young Things of 1920s Mayfair, with their paradoxical mix of innocence and sophistication, exercise their inventive minds and vile bodies in every kind of capricious escapade, whether it...

The ordinary folk of New Orleans seem to think he is unhinged as well. Ignatius ignores them as he heaves his vast bulk through the city's fleshpots in a noble...

'Rarely has emotional turbulence been so delicately conveyed' The New York Times With delicacy of perception and memory, humour and pathos, Carson McCullers spreads before us the three phases of...

When the downtrodden animals of Manor Farm overthrow their master Mr Jones and take over the farm themselves, they imagine it is the beginning of a life of freedom and...

'The most beautifully executed, the clearest and the most important utterance yet made by the generation Kerouac himself named years ago as 'beat.' - the New York Times On the...

Evelyn Waugh's masterpeice, Brideshead Revisted is an extraordinary mediation on a lost world The most nostalgic and reflective of Evelyn Waugh's novels, Brideshead Revisited looks back to the golden age...

Sartre paid tribute to him in his obituary notice- 'Camus could never cease to be one of the principal forces in our cultural domain, nor to represent, in his own...