Classics

Translated by C.E.Detmold. With an Introduction by Lucille Margaret Kekewich. Written in 1513 for the Medici, following their return to power in Florence, The Prince is a handbook on ruling and the exercise of power. It remains as relevant today as it...

Man was born free, and he is everywhere in chains' These are the famous opening words of a treatise that has not ceased to stir debate since its publication in 1762. Rejecting the view that anyone has a natural right to wield authority over others,...

Here's an accusation - Sherlock Holmes never deduced anything. When it comes to language, it all depends on what your definition of 'is' is. And one for the existentialists - you haven't lived until you think about death all the time. Daniel Klein and...

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...

In a perfect world, what is there left to fear? A chilling and thought-provoking sci-fi novel from New York Times bestselling author Neal Shusterman.A dark, gripping and witty thriller in which the only thing humanity has control over is death. In a...

Read this classic exploration of political violence, traditional samurai values and right wing nihilism.Isao is a young, engaging patriot, and a fanatical believer in the ancient samurai ethos. He turns terrorist, organising a violent plot against the...

Following a struggling young writer in nineteenth-century Oslo, Hamsun paints an arresting portrait of a mind descending into despair and delusion in this visceral masterpiece about being starved out of your ideals. With an introduction by Jo...

Tolstoy's epic novel of love, destiny and self-destruction, in a gorgeous clothbound edition from Penguin Classics. Anna Karenina seems to have everything - beauty, wealth, popularity and an adored son. But she feels that her life is empty until the...

'Virginia Woolf wanted to write about the vast unknown uncertain continent that is the world and us in it' Jeanette Winterson, from her introduction to The WavesThe Waves is an astonishingly beautiful and poetic novel. It begins with six children playing...

Discover the most popular of Woolf's books during her lifetime - a powerful portrait of a family coping with changes wrought by the new twentieth century.The Years follows the lives of the Pargiters, a large middle-class London family, from an uncertain...

Cornelius von Baerle lives only to cultivate the elusive black tulip and win a magnificent prize for its creation. But when his powerful godfather is assassinated, the unwitting Cornelius becomes caught up in a deadly political intrigue. Falsely accused...

Camus’s masterpiece on the effects of isolation, claustrophobia and moral recklessness in an Algerian village ravaged by the plague weaves an extraordinary tapestry of life governed by fear. Humane, haunting and timeless, The Plague is a chilling,...

Asle is an ageing painter and widower who lives alone on the southwest coast of Norway. His only friends are his neighbour, Åsleik, a traditional fisherman-farmer, and Beyer, a gallerist who lives in the city. There, in Bjørgvin, lives another Asle, also...

Beautiful, proud Roxana is terrified of being poor. When her foolish husband leaves her penniless with five children, she must choose between being a virtuous beggar or a rich whore. Embarking on a career as a courtesan and kept woman, the glamour of her...

Born to drunken parents in the slums of Paris, Nana lives in squalor until she is discovered at the Theatre des Varietes. She soon rises from the streets to set the city alight as the most famous high-class prostitute of her day. Rich men, Comtes and...

"[Cane] has been reverberating in me to an astonishing degree. I love it passionately; could not possibly exit without it." -- Alice Walker"A breakthrough in prose and poetical writing .... This book should be on all readers' and writers' desks and in...

Originally published in 1926, The Sun Also Rises is Ernest Hemingway's first novel and a classic example of his spare but powerful writing style.A poignant look at the disillusionment and angst of the post-World War I generation, the novel introduces two...

Through a series of connected monologues, The Waves tells the story of six very different friends - Bernard, Louis, Neville, Jinny, Susan and Rhoda - as they progress from childhood to middle age. Interspersed with evocative descriptions of the...

A landmark American drama that inspired a classic film and a Broadway revival—featuring an introduction by David Mamet.A blistering character study and an examination of the American melting pot and the judicial system that keeps it in...

The ancient Sumerian poem The Epic of Gilgamesh is one of the oldest written stories in existence, translated with an introduction by Andrew George in Penguin Classics.Miraculously preserved on clay tablets dating back as much as four thousand years, the...