Classics

When Matthew Lewis’s The Monk was published in 1796, readers were shocked by this gripping and horrific novel. Lewis’s story, which drove the House of Commons—of which he was a member—to deem him licentious and perverse, follows the abbot Ambrosio as he...

‘One of the masters of the short story’ -- Guardian.‘I have to tell you – you see, this is just about the strangest experience I have been through...’These six stories of obsession, secrets, delusions and desires from one of...

A pithy and brilliant introduction to Susan Sontag’s writing on women, gathering early essays on aging, equality, beauty, sexuality, and fascism.Susan Sontag was one of the most formidable, original, and influential thinkers of the last century...

A captivating selection of short stories in the original Japanese alongside their English translationsThis new dual-language edition of ten stories selected from The Penguin Book of Japanese Short Stories celebrates some of the very best Japanese...

'Shirley Jackson's stories are among the most terrifying ever written'  --  Donna TarttThis is the definitive collection of Shirley Jackson's short stories, including 'The Lottery' - one of the most terrifying and iconic stories of the twentieth century,...

'Bulgakov is one of the greatest Russian writers, perhaps the greatest' -- Independent.Written in secret during the darkest days of Stalin's reign, The Master and Margarita became an overnight literary phenomenon when it was finally published it,...

NADJA is a Surrealist romance, and has come to be known as a book which defined that movement's attitude towards life. With its blend of intimate confession and sense of the marvellous, NADJA weaves a myterious and compelling tapestry of daily life as...

Dostoesky's drama of sin, guilt and redemption transmutes the sordid story of an old woman's murder by a desperate student into the nineteenth century's profoundest and most compelling philosophical novel. Grim in theme and setting, the book nevertheless...

I would never have chosen this path, but I am very glad to be who I am, here. The Cancer Journals is an intimate, poetic and invigorating account of the experience of breast cancer, from biopsy to mastectomy, told by the great feminist and activist Audre...

First masculine, then feminine, Orlando begins life as a young sixteenth-century nobleman, then gallops through the centuries to end up as a woman writer in Virginia Woolf's own time. Written for the charismatic, bisexual writer Vita Sackville-West, this...

“With a pinch of John Dickson Carr and a dash of Agatha Christie, solver of impossible crimes” Kosuke Kindaichi returns for another murder mystery (The New York Times)As several bodies are discovered staged in bizarre poses echoing the lyrics...

Translated by Constance Garnett with an introduction by Anthony Briggs. Dostoevsky's fascination for mental breakdown and violence (20 murders in his four main novels) was based on his own life, and these two unmistakably autobiographical works bear this...

Introducing Little Clothbound Classics: irresistible, mini editions of short stories, novellas and essays from the world's greatest writers, designed by the award-winning Coralie Bickford-Smith.Celebrating the range and diversity of Penguin Classics,...

The American poet John Shade is dead; murdered. His last poem, Pale Fire, is put into a book, together with a preface, a lengthy commentary and notes by Shade's editor, Charles Kinbote. Known on campus as the 'Great Beaver', Kinbote is haughty,...

Introducing Little Clothbound Classics: irresistible, mini editions of short stories, novellas and essays from the world's greatest writers, designed by the award-winning Coralie Bickford-Smith.Celebrating the range and diversity of Penguin Classics,...

Italo Calvino's enchanting stories about the evolution of the universe, with characters that are fashioned from mathematical formulae and cellular structures, The Complete Cosmicomics is translated by Martin McLaughlin, Tim Parks and William Weaver in...

'Nabokov can move you to laughter in the way that masters can - to laughter that is near to tears' --Guardian. Lev Ganin is a young officer sharing a boarding house in Berlin with a host of Russian émigrés. Alone in his room, he dreams of...

"Out of the sea, as if Homer himself had arranged it for me, the islands bobbed up, lonely, deserted, mysterious in the fading light." Enraptured by a young woman's account of the landscapes of Greece, Henry Miller set off to explore the Grecian...

One of the great short novels of the twentieth century-in an edition marking the 100th anniversary of the author's birth. An unforgettable psychological novel of obsessive love, The Tunnel was championed by Albert Camus, Thomas Mann, and Graham...

A repackaged edition of the revered author's retelling of the myth of Cupid and Psyche--what he and many others regard as his best novel. C. S. Lewis--the great British writer, scholar, lay theologian, broadcaster, Christian apologist, and bestselling...