Classics

Larry Darrell is a young American in search of the absolute. The progress of this spiritual odyssey involves him with some of Maugham's most brillant characters - his fiancee Isabel, whose choice between love and wealth have lifelong repercussions, and...

90 classic titles celebrating 90 years of Penguin Books. Trotty Veck, an elderly porter, has read so many newspaper reports about crime and immorality that he believes the working classes are irredeemable. But, on New Year’s Eve, summoned to the...

90 classic titles celebrating 90 years of Penguin Books. Best known for his hardboiled Harlem Detective series, Chester Himes was also a superb literary writer, beginning his creative life by writing short stories in the 1930s while serving jail time...

Selected and introduced by J. M. Coetzee and Alissa Valles, an essential gathering of poetry from one of the twentieth century’s pre-eminent literary voices be courageous when reason fails you be courageousin the final reckoning it is the only...

  A new edition of Tolkien’s Tree and Leaf, complete with his rare translation and commentary of The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth, the Battle of Maldon. Fairy-stories are not just for children, as anyone who has read Tolkien will know...

The final novel of Hermann Hesse, for which he won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1946, The Glass Bead Game is a fascinating tale of the complexity of modern life as well as a classic of modern literature   Set in the 23rd...

Since its publication in 1905 The House of Mirth has commanded attention for the sharpness of Wharton's observations and the power of her style. Its heroine, Lily Bart, is beautiful, poor, and unmarried at 29. In her search for a husband with money and...

This is a story of mothers and daughters and finding home, set in an unforgettable building and a near-future world, from the bestselling author of Tiger's Wife. Perfect for fans of Emily St. John Mandel's Sea of Tranquility and Tom...

First published in 1952 and immediately hailed as a masterpiece, Invisible Man is one of those rare novels that have changed the shape of American literature. For not only does Ralph Ellison's nightmare journey across the racial divide tell...

These four novellas—Family Happiness, The Kreutzer Sonata, The Cossacks, and Hadji Murad—each unique in form, show Tolstoy at his creative height. This edition uses the acclaimed Maude translations, (except for Family Happiness,...

BY THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF THE GROUP. 'A jagged diamond of a book' OBSERVER. 'A woman of intellect and style' CELIA MCGEE, NEW YORK TIMES. 'Timeless, brilliant and frighteningly insightful' DAILY MAIL. Told...

This smash bestseller about privileged Vassar classmates shocked America in the sixties and remains “juicy . . . witty . . . brilliant” (Cosmopolitan). At Vassar, they were known as “the group”—eight...

90 Classic titles celebrating 90 years of Penguin Books. Razor-sharp, pugnacious and blackly funny, Wang Xiaobo’s essays established him as one of China’s most popular – and subversive – writers. From the political power of...

90 classic titles celebrating 90 years of Penguin Books. ‘As for me I have one ambition only: to invent stories, very beautiful stories’ Gothic, expansive and truly spellbinding, Karen Blixen’s short stories offer incisive psychological...

90 classic titles celebrating 90 years of Penguin Books.I am a ridiculous man. They call me mad now. That would be a promotion in rank. A delusional man whose strange dream changes his life; a self-justifying husband who causes his wife’s suicide;...

90 classic titles celebrating 90 years of Penguin Books.Many years ago there lived an Emperor who was so terribly fond of beautiful new clothes that he spent all his money on dressing elegantly... Jewels in storytelling, these magical fairytales by Hans...

In this collection of short stories, drawing heavily from the author's own experiences as a medical graduate on the eve of the Russian Revolution, Bulgakov describes a young doctor's turbulent and often brutal introduction to his practice in the backward...

A dark, fantastical satire of Communist utopianism by the author of The Master and Margarita. Lauded Russian author and playwright Mikhail Bulgakov’s A Dog’s Heart (sometimes translated as The Heart of a Dog) is...

Eleven stunning stories that explore the most intimate and transforming moments of existence, from Nobel Prize–winning author Alice Munro, “one of the foremost practitioners of the short story” (Michiko Kakutani, The New York...

'people get out of prison, and when they get out, and their name is Edmond Dantès, they take their revenge!' Falsely accused of treason, the young sailor Edmond Dantès is arrested on his wedding day and imprisoned in the island fortress of...