Classics

'The task of the benevolent person is surely to diligently seek to promote the benefit of the world and eliminate harm to the world'The Mòzi is among the founding texts of the Chinese philosophical tradition, presenting China's earliest ethical,...

The Lives of the Caesars include the biographies of Julius Caesar and the eleven subsequent emperors: Augustus, Tiberius, Gaius Caligula, Claudius, Nero, Galba, Otho, Vitelius, Vespasian, Titus, Domitian. Suetonius composed his material from a variety of...

One of The Telegraph's Best Fiction Books of 2011.“Vladimir Sorokin is one of Russia's greatest writers, and this novel is one of his best . . . A joy to read—more entertaining, dynamic, engaging, and deeply hilarious than a dystopian novel...

At a time when constitutional issues are assuming a greater importance in public life than they have held for perhaps 25 years, it seems a particularly apt moment to re-publish Walter Bagehot's classic analysis of the constitution. Major changes to the...

Loosely based on the author's own experiences, The Riddle of the Sands takes readers back to the early days of the twentieth century, when Britain shared a tense rivalry with the Kaiser's Germany. Tempted by the idea of duck shooting, Carruthers is lured...

This selection of writings from the sixth and seventh century AD provides a powerful insight into the early history of the Christian Church in England and Ireland. From Bede's Life of Cuthbert and Lives of the Abbots of Wearmouth and Jarrow to the...

A beautiful hardback edition to mark the 80th anniversary of one of the best-loved novels ever written. A gothic tale of love, secrets and jealousy. WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY SARAH PERRY 'One of the most influential novels of the twentieth century,...

"Mountain," Baldwin said, "is the book I had to write if I was ever going to write anything else." Go Tell It On The Mountain, first published in 1953, is Baldwin's first major work, a novel that has established itself as an American classic. With...

A discrete advertisement in The Times, addressed to "those who appreciate wisteria and sunshine," is the prelude to a revelatory month for four very different women. High above a bay on the Italian Riviera stands the medieval castle San Salvatore...

The Golden Ass is a unique, entertaining, and thoroughly readable Latin novel - the only work of fiction in Latin to have survived in its entirety.It tells the story of Lucius, whose curiosity and fascination for sex and magic result in his...

One of the BBC's '100 Novels that Shaped the World' A Hay Festival and The Poole VOTE 100 BOOKS for Women Selection.A hilarious and merciless parody of rural melodramas and one of the best-loved comic novels of all time, Cold Comfort Farm by...

A classic of fantastic literature, Leonora Carrington's The Hearing Trumpet is the occult twin to Alice in Wonderland, published with an introduction by Ali Smith in Penguin Modern Classics.One of the first things ninety-two-year-old Marian Leatherby...

A missing plane resurfaces – and so do long-submerged secrets… An RAF Dakota, presumed lost at sea during World War Two, has just been discovered at the bottom of a drained lake over twenty years later – complete with the skeletal...

James Bond, the secret service’s most lethal agent, is a marked man. Deep inside the Soviet Union, a plot is taking shape. Under the fiendish Colonel Rosa Klebb, the Russian counter-intelligence organisation SMERSH are laying a trap that will not...

Who stole George Matthews’ life? ‘Doctor, I think I’m losing my mind…’. When a wealthy young man turns up at respected psychiatrist Dr George Matthews’ office uttering these words, it changes his safe existence...

To catch a criminal, he must become one. Jonathan Pine, night manager of a luxury Swiss hotel, has a secret. He knows that the guest he awaits, billionaire trader Richard Roper, is ‘the worst man in the world.’ And he knows why. Pine will do...

Private Detective Lew Archer doesn’t believe in coincidences… A forest fire has mysteriously broken out in the hills above southern California. Meanwhile, Lew Archer has been asked by a desperate mother to find her six-year-old son. Instead,...

Judge Dee is about to step into the shoes of a dead man… Most people would refuse the job of Magistrate at the lonely port town of Peng-lai – especially as the last occupant of the post has been found poisoned in his library, his papers...

What if you woke up to discover everyone thought you were somebody else? Pregnant and abandoned, all Helen Georgesson has is five dollars and a one-way ticket to San Francisco. Then she is involved in a train crash, and regains consciousness only to...

Can an ace detective outwit a thief with many faces? They call him ‘Gold Mask’: a fiendishly clever master of disguise whose crime spree has shocked Tokyo. The dogged detective Akechi Kogoro is on the trail, and soon the two become locked in...