Non-Secondhand Books

Hailed as the greatest modern lyrical poet of Germany, Rainer Maria Rilke's genius lies in his passion for perfection, artistic integrity and 'willingness to remain a perpetual beginner'. The verse...

'We're not Christians, Christ stopped short of here, at Eboli.' Exiled to a remote and barren corner of Italy for his opposition to Mussolini, Carlo Levi entered a world cut...

Follows a man's thoughts and dreams during a single night. It is also a book that participates in the re-reading of Irish history that was part of the revival of...

Jean Rhys's late, literary masterpiece Wide Sargasso Sea was inspired by Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre, and is set in the lush, beguiling landscape of Jamaica in the 1830s. Born into...

Flann O'Brien's first novel is a brilliant impressionistic jumble of ideas, mythology and nonsense. Operating on many levels it incorporates plots within plots, giving full rein to O'Brien's dancing intellect...

Jim Dixon has accidentally fallen into a job at one of Britain's new red brick universities. A moderately successful future in the History Department beckons. As long as Jim can...

It is the Day of the Dead. The fiesta in full swing. In the shadow of Popocatepeti ragged children beg coins to buy skulls made of chocolate...and the ugly pariah...

Meet Ignatius J. Reilly- flatulent, eloquent and pretty much unemployable . . . The ordinary folk of New Orleans seem to think he is unhinged as well. Ignatius ignores them...

Charles Ryder, a lonely student at Oxford, is captivated by the outrageous and decadent Sebastian Flyte. Invited to Brideshead, Sebastian's magnificent family home, Charles welcomes the attentions of its eccentric,...

The air of Eastwick breeds witches - women whose powerful longings can stir up thunderstorms and fracture domestic peace. Jane, Alexandra and Sukie, divorced and dangerous, have formed a coven....

Set in the volatile Paris summer of 1938, The Age of Reason follows two days in the life of Mathieu Delarue, a philosophy teacher, and his circle in the cafes...

The Hell's Angels erupted into 1960s America, paralysing whole towns with fear. Determined to discover the truth behind the terrifying reputation of these marauding biker gangs, Hunter S. Thompson spent...

In her opulent novel, Eva Luna, Isabel Allende uses exquisite prose to describe the survival of a young Latin American woman whose powers as a storyteller bring her friendship and...

This Faust-like and magical story of the humanization of a middle-aged misanthrope was described in The New York Times as a 'savage indictment of bourgeois society'. But, as the author...

For many people watching football is mere entertainment; to some it's more like a ritual; but to others, its highs and lows provide a narrative to life itself. For Nick...

When sensible, sophisticated Flora Poste is orphaned at nineteen, she decides her only choice is to descend upon relatives in deepest Sussex. At the aptly named Cold Comfort Farm, she...

Fifteen-year-old New Yorker Daisy thinks she knows all about love. Her mother died giving birth to her, and now her dad has sent her away for the summer, to live...

'Junk is not, like alcohol or weed, a means to increased enjoyment in life. Junk is not a kick. It is a way of life.' Burrough's cult classic is a...

William Shakespeare's sonnets are a beautiful expression of a range of human emotions - from love to grief, anger, jealousy and lust. Including the instantly recognisable 'Shall I compare thee...

Flame-haired Grady McNeil is beautiful, rich and defiant. Her privileged society life leaves her wanting, and excitement comes in the form of the highly unsuitable Clyde, a Brooklyn-born, Jewish parking...

This brutal glimpse of Russia under Stalin shocked the world when it first appeared. Discover the importance of a piece of bread or an extra bowl of soup, the incredible...

Jonathan Noel, bank security guard, has spent 30 years protecting himself from people and events. But an encounter with a glaring pigeon upsets his ordered life and flings him into...

Dick and Nicole Diver have turned the French Riviera into the playground of the rich and glamorous. Among their circle is Rosemary Hoyt, the beautiful starlet, who is unaware of...

Wild child Huck has to get away. His violent drunk of a father is back in town again, raising Cain. He won't rest until he has Huck's money. So the...

Out of his smoke-filled rooms in Baker Street stalks a figure to cause the criminal classes to quake in their boots and rush from their dens of iniquity . ....

Emma Bovary is beautiful and bored, trapped in her marriage to a mediocre doctor and stifled by the banality of provincial life. An ardent reader of sentimental novels, she longs...

Eight years ago, Anne rejected the man she loved because her friends and family persuaded her that he wasn't rich or important enough. In all that time, she's never found...

A Room of One's Own grew out of a lecture that Virginia Woolf had been invited to give at Girton College, Cambridge in 1928. Ranging over Jane Austen and Charlotte...

'A brilliantly executed extended essay that reads like a tense political thriller' Sunday Telegraph 24 August 1939- The fate of the world is hanging in the balance. Hitler has ambitions...

New to Penguin Modern Classics, a timeless tale of divided generations and enduring friendship Following a baseball game that nearly became a religious war, two Jewish boys become friends. Danny...

Truman Capote's In Cold Blood is both a masterpiece of journalism and a powerful crime thriller. Inspired by a 300-word article in The New York Times, Capote spent six years...

E. H. Carr's What Is History? is the classic introduction to the theory of history. Exploding the Victorian myth of history as a simple record of fact, Carr draws on...

Simon Winchester's The Surgeon of Crowthorne was an international bestseller and tells an extraordinary true story of murder, madness and an extraordinary friendship in the nineteenth century. It is the...

Paul Davies' The Mind of God is a scientific search for the meaning of the universe. Ranging across the cosmos, Davies explores the origin of the universe, the laws of...

Brian Greene'sThe Fabric of the Cosmosis an astonishing grand tour of the universe and the best layman's guide to current thinking on 'how everything works'. Brian Greene's The Fabric of...

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...

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...

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...