Classics

The Penguin English Library Edition of Kim by Rudyard Kipling. 'He knew the wonderful walled city of Lahore from the Delhi Gate to the outer Fort Ditch; was hand in glove with men who led lives stranger than anything Haroun al Raschid dreamed of; and he...

The Penguin English Library Edition of Wives and Daughters by Elizabeth Gaskell. "Eh, miss, but that be a rare young lady! She do have such pretty coaxing ways ..." Seventeen-year-old Molly Gibson worships her widowed father. But when he decides to...

O. Henry was a master of the short story and one of the most popular American writers of the twentieth century. This selection of tales from across his writing career ranges from New York apartments to the cattle-lands of Texas, taking in con men,...

The Penguin English Library Edition of Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens. 'A parish child - the orphan of a workhouse - the humble, half-starved drudge - to be cuffed and buffeted through the world, despised by all, and pitied by none' Dark, mysterious...

'They could not have had a more perfect day for a garden party if they had ordered it.' A windless, warm day greets the Sheridan family on the day of their garden party. As daughter Laura takes the reins on party preparations the news of a neighbour's...

'I was neat, clean, shaved and sober, and I didn't care who knew it. I was everything the well-dressed private detective ought to be. I was calling on four million dollars.' Los Angeles Private Investigator Philip Marlowe is hired by wheelchair-bound...

One of the BBC's '100 Novels That Shaped Our World' 'Cannery Row in Monterey in California is a poem, a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light, a tone, a habit, a nostalgia, a dream.' Meet the gamblers, whores, drunks, bums and artists of Cannery...

Set on a South Pacific island under Japanese control, Mailer’s uncompromising study of a band of men in extremis pulsates with brutal energy and whip-smart prose. Based on Mailer's own experience of military service in the Philippines during...

"An absolute treat... Szerb is a master novelist, a comedian whose powers transcend time and language" Nicholas Lezard, Guardian. At an end-of-season London soirée a young Hungarian scholar, Dr János Bátky, is introduced to the Earl...

Welcome to New London. Everybody is happy here. Our perfect society achieves peace and stability by dispensing with monogamy, privacy, money, family and history itself. Now everyone belongs. You can be happy too. All you need to do is take your Soma...

Pandora has looked up to her older brother Edison since they were children. Now she revels in the anonymity of her suburban Iowa life, while her brother basks in the limelight as a New York jazz musician. But when Edison arrives in Iowa, suddenly in need...

A curse. An arranged marriage. A chance to live happily ever after. For as long as Astrid can remember she's been betrothed to a stranger. When tragedy strikes her husband-to-be emerges from the shadows ready to claim her hand in marriage. Unable to...

First published anonymously in 1929, Ursula Parrott's phenomenal bestseller of its day about a woman who has to forge a new path in life as an ex-wife combines dazzling jazz era ambience and the thrill of new found freedom with timeless themes of...

The acclaimed author of Voyage of the Sparrowhawkweaves the beautiful and compassionate tale of two friends dealt a bad hand by fate and desperate to start again on their very own island. What will two children risk to steal an island? From...

"Once upon a time there were just the gods; mortal beings did not yet exist."We are used to thinking of myths containing lines like this simply as stories, and modern myths as made up and fictitious. For the ancient Greeks, however, a myth was unveiled...

Here is twentieth-century woman in close-up, coping with the tragedies and upheavals of women's lives from the First World War to Greenham Common and beyond. This is the ‘edited’ diary of an individual woman, born in 1901, and a story of the...

The most famous anti-war novel ever written. In 1914 a room full of German schoolboys, fresh-faced and idealistic, are goaded by their schoolmaster to troop off to the 'glorious war'. With the fire and patriotism of youth they sign up. What follows is...

Based on the true experiences of Bao Ninh and banned by the communist party, The Sorrow of War is revered as the ‘All Quiet on the Western Front for our era’. Kien’s job is to search the Jungle of Screaming Souls for corpses. He knows...

When Bill Masen wakes up blindfolded in hospital there is a bitter irony in his situation. Carefully removing his bandages, he realizes that he is the only person who can see: everyone else, doctors and patients alike, have been blinded by a meteor...

Jane Austen's Emma is her masterpiece, mixing the sparkle of her early books with a deep sensibility' Observer Emma is young, rich and independent. She has decided not to get married and instead spends her time organising her acquaintances' love affairs...