SHORTLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION'Outstanding' - The Guardian'Superb' - The Telegraph'A must read' - Anne Sebba'Lively' - The TimesThey seemed to be polar opposites . . .Augustus: vivid, volatile and promiscuous...

The discovery of minerals beneath our feet has transformed our species. Ochre first prompted humans to express themselves in art; tin and copper helped instigate the Bronze Age and later the Industrial Revolution; silver kick-started the engines of...

'Unflinchingly candid and extraordinarily powerful' DAILY TELEGRAPH ‘Dominic Gregory hasn’t just delivered a survey of courage and determination – Lifeboat at the End of the World is a hymn to human decency, and that...

'A great read; I'm so pleased it exists in the world.’ Chris van Tulleken Unpacking the truth about what’s on your plate – and what it’s doing to your health Everyone is talking about ultra-processed food (UPF) and its impact on...

The ancient Roman empire was the supreme arena, and to rule as a Caesar was to stand as an actor upon the great stage of the world. No biographies invite us into the lives of the Caesars more vividly or intimately than those by Gaius Suetonius...

'Presently I heard a slight groan, and I knew it was a groan of mortal terror ... the low stifled sound that arises from the bottom of the soul.'Stories about murder, mystery and madness, portraying the author's feverish imagination at its creative...

'I could see that she was still terribly afraid, but I didn't soften anything; instead, seeing that she was afraid I deliberately intensified it.'In this short story, Dostoyevsky masterfully depicts desperation, greed, manipulation and suicide...

'... ever-present, phantom thing;My slave, my comrade, and my king'Some of Emily Brontë's most extraordinary poemsIntroducing Little Black Classics: 80 books for Penguin's 80th birthday. Little Black Classics celebrate the huge range and...

Dorothy Parker, more than any of her contemporaries, captured the spirit of her age in her writing. The decadent 1920S and 1930s in New York were a time of great experiment and daring for women. For the rich, life seemed a continual party, but the...

Kingsley Amis's witty campus novel, Lucky Jim is a comedy that skewers the hypocrisies and vanities of 1950s academic life. This Penguin Modern Classics edition contains an introduction by David Lodge. Jim Dixon has accidentally fallen into a job at one...

Seven Pillars of Wisdom is the autobiographical account of T.E. Lawrence - also known as 'Lawrence of Arabia' - of his service in the Arab Revolt during the First World War, published in Penguin Modern Classics. Although 'continually and bitterly...

With delicacy of perception and memory, humour and pathos, Carson McCullers spreads before us the three phases of a weekend crisis in the life of a motherless twelve-year-old girl. Within the span of a few hours, the irresistible, hoydenish Frankie...

A daring work of experimental, Modernist genius, James Joyce's Finnegans Wake is one of the greatest literary achievements of the twentieth century, and the crowning glory of Joyce's life. The Penguin Modern Classics edition of includes an...

Both a gripping tale of adventure and a poetic meditation, Antoine de Saint Exupéry's Wind, Sand and Stars is the lyrical autobiography of an aviation pioneer, from the author of The Little Prince. This Penguin Modern Classics edition is...

'We're not Christians, Christ stopped short of here, at Eboli.' Exiled to a remote and barren corner of Italy for his opposition to Mussolini, Carlo Levi entered a world cut off from history and the state, hedged in by custom and sorrow, without comfort...

Flora Thompson's immortal trilogy, containing "Lark Rise", "Over To Candleford" and "Candleford Green", is a heartwarming portrayal of country life at the close of the 19th century. This story of three closely related Oxfordshire communities - a hamlet,...

'It was as if a curtain had fallen, hiding everything I had ever known,' says Anna Morgan, eighteen years old and catapulted to England from the West Indies after the death of her beloved father. Working as a chorus girl, Anna drifts into the demi-monde...

From one of the major innovators of New Journalism, Norman Mailer''s The Fight is the real-life story of a clash between two of the world''s greatest boxers, both in and out of the ring, published in Penguin Modern Classics.Norman...

A portrait of New York City, drawn by describing the interconnected lives of dozens of people - bankers, chefs, bums, cabdrivers and others. Written in an impressionistic style, with vivid descriptions and bursts of overheard conversation, it has...

An autobiographical work that describes firsthand the great tectonic shifts in English society following the First World War, Robert Graves's Goodbye to All That is a matchless evocation of the Great War's haunting legacy, published in Penguin...