Classics

If you can only read one true crime in your life, make it this one. With an intricately woven plot, a deft touch for detail, and enthralling characters, Truman Capote's masterclass of narrative nonfiction has all the story components of a page-turning...

Discover the new Penguin Crime and Espionage seriesFor wise-cracking Private Eye Philip Marlowe, murder is all in a day's work...There are no streets meaner than those of L.A.'s underworld - but luckily one detective has more than his fair share of...

The poems of two of China’s most influential classical poets: Tu Fu, called “China’s Shakespeare” (BBC), and Li Po, the subject of Ha Jin’s The Banished Immortal and “China’s most beloved poet”...

Charles Mason (1728 -1786) and Jeremiah Dixon (1733-1779) were the British Surveyors best remembered for running the boundary between Pennsylvania and Maryland that we know today as the Mason-Dixon Line. Here is their story as re-imagined by Thomas...

"This work may well stand as one of the very best works of the century." —Atlantic Review Acclaimed writer Thomas Pynchon's wild, macabre tale of the twentieth century and of two men—one looking for something he has lost, the other with...

Based on the award-winning memoir by Timothy Conigrave, and adapted for the stage by acclaimed playwright Tommy Murphy, Holding the Man tells a remarkable true-life love story that speaks across generations, sexualities and cultures. The course of...

“A big, sprawling saga of a novel” (San Francisco Chronicle), this epic family drama is a masterwork by the revered author of The Great Santini. Pat Conroy’s classic novel stings with honesty and resounds with drama. Spanning...

Edmund Burke was one of the foremost philosophers of the eighteenth century and wrote widely on aesthetics, politics and society. In this landmark work, he propounds his theory that the sublime and the beautiful should be regarded as distinct and wholly...

Graham Greene's infinitely atmospheric story of forbidden passion and its aftermath in wartime London is a heart-wrenching examination of weakness that turns into a dark, powerful obsession. With an introduction by Monica Ali The love affair between...

"I readOliviamany, many times, bought it for many of my friends, and consider it the inspiration forCall Me by Your Name." —André Aciman"Perfectly captures the breathless excitement of adolescent passion." —Sarah Waters, bestselling...

A beautiful hardcover edition of one of the bestselling classic children's stories in the world—long cherished by children and adults alike.Written during World War II, The Little Prince tells of the friendship between the narrator, an...

From the Nobel laureate and author of Klara and the Sun, a beautiful hardcover edition of one of his most acclaimed novels: a deeply moving and stunningly original love story with a startling twistAs children, Kathy, Ruth, and Tommy...

Among Dostoevsky's later novels, The Adolescent occupies a very special place: published three years after The Devils and five years before his final masterpiece, The Karamazov Brothers, the novel charts the story of nineteen-year-old Arkady – the...

Although dour in appearance and formidable in reputation, Friedrich Nietzsche was an ardent practitioner of the art of poetry—known in twelfth-century Provençal as "the gay science." This extensive collection of prose and verse offers a...

Two of the most important Buddhist tracts from JapanA Penguin ClassicBoth of these works on life’s fleeting pleasures are by Buddhist monks from medieval Japan, but each represents a different worldview. In Essays in Idleness, his lively and...

'Hate is not conquered by hate: hate is conquered by love. This is a law eternal.'Captivating aphorisms illustrating the Buddhist dhamma, or moral system.Introducing Little Black Classics: 80 books for Penguin's 80th birthday. Little Black Classics...

Herman Hesse's classic novel has delighted, inspired, and influenced generations of readers, writers, and thinkers. In this story of a wealthy Indian Brahmin who casts off a life of privilege to seek spiritual fulfillment. Hesse synthesizes disparate...

Published in 1864, Notes from Underground is considered the author's first masterpiece - the book in which he "became" Dostoevsky - and is seen as the source of all his later works. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, whose acclaimed translations of...

One of the most magnificently perceptive memoirs of growing up a Black woman in twentieth century America, the first of Angelou’s seven volumes of autobiography is a spellbinding combination of intense joy and extreme suffering. Recounting her youth in...

THE INSPIRATION FOR THE NEW NETFLIX SERIES DEBUTING THIS HALLOWE'EN.The best-known of Shirley Jackson's novels and a major inspiration for writers like Neil Gaiman and Stephen King, The Haunting of Hill House is a chilling story of the power of fear...