Classics

Also known as Journey to the West, Wu Ch'êng-ên's Monkey is one of the Four Great Classical Novels in Chinese literature, translated by Arthur Waley in Penguin Classics. Monkey depicts the adventures of Prince Tripitaka, a...

They were always in mourning at Carne; the small boys because they must stay and the big boys because they must leave, the masters because respectability was underpaid; and now, as the Lent Half (as the Easter term was called) drew to its end, the cloud...

'She understands Karma, she says: "What I do, I reap."' Her name means sadness, yet Tristessa, a prostitute and morphine addict, lives without cares in her shabby room with a menagerie of pets and an altar to the Virgin Mary. Based on Jack Kerouac's...

With a foreword by Krystal Marquis, author of The Davenports and The Davenports: More Than This. When Fanny Price is taken in by wealthy relatives, she finds herself abused, overlooked and thoroughly unloved. Her only solace is her...

With a foreword by Lauren Asher, author of The Fine Print and Love Redesigned.Craving adventure, seventeen-year-old Catherine Morland leaps at the opportunity to step into the dizzying world of British high society in the resort town of Bath.Adventure...

With a foreword by Alexis Hall, author of Boyfriend Material and A Lady for a Duke Anne and Captain Wentworth fell in love eight years ago. Although Anne broke off their engagement as her father wished, their flame flickers on, however dim...

With a foreword by Ali Hazelwood, author of The Love Hypothesis and Love, Theoretically. Elizabeth Bennet must get married – her family’s status depends on it. But she and Mr Darcy, her suitor, don’t exactly see eye to eye. He’s...

With a foreword by Hannah Grace, author of Icebreaker and Wildfire Left destitute after their father’s death, Elinor and Marianne Dashwood must navigate love, marriage and societal expectations to ensure their security and happiness. But romance...

With a foreword by Tessa Bailey, author of It Happened One Summer and Hook, Line and Sinker. Self-appointed matchmaker Emma Woodhouse is convinced that she’ll never marry. ‘Handsome, clever and rich’, the headstrong Emma...

Gibbons’s pitch perfect parody of rural melodramas introduces one of comic fiction’s great female protagonists and a host of gloriously eccentric and idiosyncratic characters. As Flora Poste sets about organising her country cousins...

“Engaging and revealing, The Letters of Sylvia Plath offers a captivating look into the life and inner thinking of one of the most influential writers of the 20th century.” — Paul Alexander, Washington Post. The...

“The Letters of Sylvia Plath underscores Plath’s jaw-dropping output, her rapid growth from merely talented to singular voice. . . . The result is a comprehensive portrait of the artist as a young woman, ardently — unnervingly...

"I won't rest until everyone in America has read (and fallen in love with) this fabulous author." —Elizabeth Gilbert. The debut novel that redefined the coming-of-age genre, now with an introduction by New York Times bestselling author Maria Semple...

In 1836 the 23-year-old Dickens was invited by his publishers to write `a monthly something' illustrated by sporting plates. Thus the Pickwick Club was born: its supposed `papers' soom outgrew their origins and became a brilliantly comic novel, still...

The picaresque adventures of a collection of bumbling Regency gentlemen, Dickens’s vast comic extravaganza is one of the most astonishing debuts in fiction. Cramming countless hilarious episodes into its capacious, joyfully rambling pages, The...

One of the best-known, most frequently performed of modern plays, A Doll's House richly displays the genius with which Henrik Ibsen pioneered modern, realistic prose drama. In the central character of Nora, Ibsen epitomized the human struggle against the...

8 chilling short stories that straddle the line between horror and erotica, full of passion and intrigue, from legendary 18th century Parisian aristocrat, the Marquis de Sade.“Ghouls and fiends, hapless femmes and dastardly villains; de Sade could...

A brilliant look at colonialism and its effects in Antigua, by the author of Annie John. Lyrical, sardonic, and forthright, A Small Place magnifies our vision of one small place with Swiftian wit and precision. Jamaica Kincaid’s expansive essay...

Shipwrecks, dive bars, possession, and science—this is where contemporary horrors and ancient terrors meet. In Fresh Dirt from the Grave, a hillside is “an emerald saddle teeming with evil and beauty.” It is this collision of harshness...

The Periodic Table is largely a memoir of the years before and after Primo Levi’s transportation from his native Italy to Auschwitz as an anti-Facist partisan and a Jew.It recounts, in clear, precise, unfailingly beautiful prose, the story of the...