Summer Reads

Jacqueline Woodson's National Book Award and Newbery Honor winner is a powerful memoir that tells the moving story of her childhood in mesmerizing verse.A President Obama "O" Book Club pickRaised in South Carolina and New York, Woodson always felt...

(Available after 3-20 days) When Lucy planned a summer trip to Florence, she didn't expect to have to go single. Or for the hotel manager to cheat her out of her river-view room. And especially not for a broody, handsome stranger to offer to swap rooms...

(Available ater June 30th, 2023)A love like ours doesn’t just disappear. Even if she had...Jacob Cole is on a career high. With his renowned architectural skill, he landed the contract of a lifetime. Designing the most prominent building in the LA...

(Avalable after 3-20 days)"Sarah Kay is a fearsomely open and generous talent. In this collection she will give you moments so intimate and beautifully rendered you will come to know them as your own. An unalloyed joy from beginning to end." - Lin-Manuel...

Great title poem plus "Kubla Khan," "Christabel," and twenty more sonnets, lyrics, and odes, including Sonnet: To a Friend who asked how I felt when the Nurse first presented my Infant to me, Frost at Midnight, The Nightingale, The Pains of Sleep, To...

Covering the entire output of an archetypal - and tragically short-lived - romantic genius, the Penguin Classics edition of The Complete Poems of John Keats is edited with an introduction and notes by John Barnard.Keats's first volume of poems, published...

When Blasted was first produced at the Royal Court in 1995 it was hailed jointly as a masterpiece and a 'disgusting piece of filth' (Daily Mail). Subsequently that play, and the others that followed, have been produced all over the world. This anthology...

This unique anthology collects more than 100 poems by Louisa May Alcott, drawn from works published over the course of her career. One of the only published collections of her poetry, it provides invaluable insights into a lesser known part of Louisa May...

(Available after May 30th, 2023)In 2004, late in her legendary career, Ágota Kristóf wrote this slim dagger of a memoir about being a refugee after fleeing Hungary in 1956   Narrated in a series of stark, brief vignettes, The Illiterate is Ágota...

Beowulf is the greatest surviving work of literature in Old English, unparalleled in its epic grandeur and scope. It tells the story of the heroic Beowulf and of his battles, first with the monster Grendel, who has laid waste to the great hall of the...

Bursting with energy and playful wit, Northanger Abbey tells the story of Catherine Morland and the gothic romances that fill her head and cloud her judgement. A shimmering example of Jane Austen’s supreme craft, this is an enduring English classic...

As relevant now as when it was first published, Elizabeth Gaskell's North and South skilfully weaves a compelling love story into a clash between the pursuit of profit and humanitarian ideals. This Penguin Classics edition is edited with an introduction...

'In Persuasion, Jane Austen is beginning to discover that the world is larger, more mysterious, and more romantic than she had supposed' Virginia WoolfJane Austen's moving late novel of missed opportunities and second chances centres on Anne Elliot, no...

A powerful depiction of a woman's fight for domestic independence and creative freedom, from the youngest of the Brontë sistersGilbert Markham is deeply intrigued by Helen Graham, a beautiful and secretive young woman who has moved into nearby Wildfell...

One of the BBC's '100 Novels That Shaped Our World'The Hound of the Baskervilles gripped readers when it was first serialised and remains one of Sherlock Holmes's greatest and most popular adventures.Could the sudden death of Sir Charles Baskerville have...

A panoramic satire of English society during the Napoleonic Wars, Vanity Fair is William Makepeace Thackeray’s masterpiece. At its center is one of the most unforgettable characters in nineteenth-century literature: the enthralling Becky Sharp, a...

“There it lay, the great pearl, perfect as the moon.” A Penguin Classic One of Steinbeck’s most taught works, The Pearl is the story of the Mexican diver Kino, whose discovery of a magnificent pearl from the Gulf beds means the promise of a...

E.M. Forster’s beloved novel of forbidden love, culture clash, and the confines of Edwardian society Visiting Florence with her prim and proper cousin Charlotte as a chaperone, Lucy Honeychurch meets the unconventional, lower-class Mr. Emerson and his...

E. M. Forster’s meticulously observed drama of class warfare exploring the conflict inherent within English society—the inspiration for the award-winning two-part play The Inheritance, now on Broadway“Only connect…” A chance acquaintance brings...

The classic boyhood adventure tale, updated with a new introduction by noted Mark Twain scholar R. Kent Rasmussen. Nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American ReadA consummate prankster with a quick wit, Tom Sawyer...