Classics

'Who would you say knows himself?'In 399 BCE Socrates was tried in Athens on charges of irreligion and corruption of the young, convicted, and sentenced to death. Like Plato, an almost exact contemporary, in his youth Xenophon (c. 430-c. 354 BCE) was one...

Starting with the most meagre resources, Philip made his kingdom the greatest power in EuropeThe Greek historian Diodorus of Sicily is one of our most valuable sources from ancient times. His history, in forty volumes, was intended to range from...

Sallust was one of the first classical historians to move beyond a dry recitation of fact to paint sharp-edged portraits of the moral and political degeneration of the Roman Republic. Sallust's abrupt and distinctive style is the perfect vehicle for his...

Introduction and Notes by Dr Ella Westland, University of Exeter. Illustrations by George Cruickshank. Dickens had already achieved renown with The Pickwick Papers.With Oliver Twist his reputation was enhanced and strengthened. The novel contains many...

A bone-chilling, beautifully produced new collection of 11 uncanny tales from one of the great American masters of the ghost storyAny lover of dark and unsettling tales will be enthralled by the short stories in this collection, all from the pen of the...

The Law Code of Manu is the most authoritative and the best-known legal text of ancient India. Famous for fifteen centuries it still generates controversy, with Manu's verses being cited in support of the oppression of women and members of the lower...

Seneca's letters to his friend Lucilius are powerful moral essays that also yield illuminating insight into Seneca's personal life and the truly turbulent times in which he lived. One of the great Stoic philosophers, Seneca here guides Lucilius' struggle...

A country house.A murder.A Belgian detective. After the Great War, life can never be the same again. Captain Arthur Hastings is invited to Styles To recuperate from injuries sustained at the Front. It is the last place he expects to encounter murder...

From dope smuggling to unrequited love, a vacationing Poirot is dragged into investigating the murder of a sultry femme fatale on the English Riviera in one of Christie’s most accomplished and satisfying whodunits.  The perfect...

A charity murder game at a Devon house turns into the real thing… Sir George and Lady Stubbs, the hosts of a village fête, hit upon the novel idea of staging a mock murder mystery. In good faith, Ariadne Oliver, the well known crime writer,...

After a relaxing sojourn in Paris Poirot’s little grey cells are ready for action, as a fellow passenger on the plane back to London is murdered with a poisoned dart in this devilishly plotted murder mystery from the Queen of Crime. A woman is...

A simple accident?Or attempted murder? Everyone blamed the dog. When a wealthy spinster trips on the stairs, it seems only natural to assume it was an accident – a rubber ball left there by her lively terrier. And yet the more Emily Arundell...

A dangerous gameA deadly outcome Mr Shaitana has the most unusual hobby: he collects criminals who have evaded justice. Among his dinner guests are four suspected murderers. And, to match them, four experts in crime, including Hercule Poirot. To...

In the Remixed Classics series, authors from marginalized backgrounds reinterpret classic works through their own cultural lens to subvert the overwhelming cishet, white, and male canon. This bittersweet Pride & Prejudice remix follows a trans boy...

The preeminent meditation on plagues and pandemics from the Islamic world, now in English for the first timeA Penguin ClassicSix hundred years ago, the author of this landmark work of history and religious thought—an esteemed judge, poet, and...

For six decades, John le Carré wrote novels that came to define our age. Although they are all bookshelf worthy, perhaps the most notable is Tinker, Tailor, Solider, Spy. If it’s your first journey into the world of le Carré’s...

An eerie, alienating, yet comic and profoundly sympathetic short story collection about Americans in America by one of Indonesia’s most prominent writers, now in an English translation for its fortieth anniversary, with a foreword by Intan...

The best-known book by Cuba’s most important twentieth-century novelist, in its first new English translation in more than sixty years and featuring a new introduction by Leonardo PaduraA Penguin ClassicDissatisfied with his empty, Sisyphus-like...

One of Cuba’s—and Latin America’s—greatest historical novels, about imperial conquest carried out under the guise of liberation, in its first new English translation in sixty years and featuring a new foreword by Alejandro ZambraA...

The dead wreak revenge on the living, paintings come alive, spectral brides possess mortal men and a priest devours human flesh in these chilling Japanese ghost stories retold by a master of the supernatural. Lafcadio Hearn drew on the phantoms and...