Must Read Classics

When the peaceful atmosphere of Barchester is destroyed by a scandal concerning the financial affairs of an almshouse, Septimus Harding, the kindly but unworldly warden who is responsible for the care of the establishment’s twelve elderly...

The original and bestselling leadership book! Sun Tzu's ideas on survival and success have been read across the world for centuries. Today they can still be applied to business, politics and life. The Art of War demonstrates how to win without...

'I am Dracula. And I bid you welcome to my house.'He is deathly pale. His fingernails are cut to sharp points. His teeth protrude menacingly from his mouth in clouds of rancid breath... Yet even Count Dracula's unnerving appearance and the frightened...

Part of the Penguin Essentials series, discover a beautifully designed edition of Evelyn Waugh's British classic featuring cover art by Jim Tierney'I knew Sebastian by sight long before I met him. That was unavoidable for, from his first week, he was the...

A Christmas Carol is the most famous, heart-warming and chilling festive story of them all. In these pages we meet Ebenezer Scrooge, whose name is synonymous with greed and parsimony: 'Every idiot who goes about with "Merry Christmas" on his lips, should...

In 1943, there was an urgent need for Animal Farm. The Soviet Union had become Britain's ally in the war against Nazi Germany, and criticism of Stalin's brutal regime was either censored or discouraged. In any case, many intellectuals on the left still...

In 2020, we enjoyed Atwood’s latest poetry title, Dearly. Not unlike her poems, Atwood’s essays show how she is always looking, observing and questioning. She even has an essay about Zombies! And, what a perfect look back...

In the aftermath of the Mexican-American War, two French Jesuit priests travel to the American Southwest to establish a new Roman Catholic diocese. Upon arrival, Father Jean Marie Latour and Father Joseph Vaillant encounter an ethnically diverse...

From the author of The Metamorphosis and The Trial—one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century—the haunting tale of K.’s relentless, unavailing struggle with an inscrutable authority in order to gain access to...

Homer’s great epic The Odyssey—one of Western literature’s most enduring and important works—translated by Richmond Lattimore A classic for the ages, The Odyssey recounts Odysseus’ journey home after the...

Sing to me of the man, Muse, the man of twists and turnsdriven time and again off course, once he had plunderedthe hallowed heights of Troy.So begins Robert Fagles' magnificent translation of the Odyssey.If the Iliad is the world's...

Dating from around the 8th century BC, The Iliad is a prime example of an epic narrative poem and is one of Western literature's oldest works. It tells the story of the weeks during the Trojan war when King Agamemnon and the hero warrior Achilles were at...

Robert Graves's classic retelling of the Greek Myths is definitive, comprehensive and unparalleled - and available now in the Penguin Classics Deluxe series, featuring a new introduction from Rick Riordan (bestselling author of the Percy...

Every artist is an unhappy lover. And unhappy lovers want to tell their story.''A source of wonders and delight' SpectatorEx-tax collector and author of two unpopular novels, Bradley Pearson wishes to devote his retirement to writing a masterpiece...

The Little Nugget (1913) is one of the novels in which Wodehouse found his feet, a light comic thriller set in an English prep school for the children of the nobility and gentry. Into their midst comes eleven-year-old Ogden Ford, the mouthy,...

For two and a half thousand years The Art of War has been the core text of military strategy and planning, providing leaders with enduring insights into tactics, psychology, discipline and the nature of power. Favoured by countless great generals and...

The most ambitious narrative of nineteenth-century realism, Middlemarch tells the story of an entire town in the years leading up to the Reform Bill of 1832, a time when modern methods were starting to challenge old orthodoxies. Eliot's sophisticated and...

'It was as if the sea, breaking down the wall protecting all the homes of the town, had sent a wave over her head'One of Conrad's most powerful, gripping storiesIntroducing Little Black Classics: 80 books for Penguin's 80th birthday. Little Black...

'It would be a dull world if we all thought alike.'After seven years of marriage, the beautiful Lady Brenda Last is bored with life at Hetton Abbey, the Gothic mansion that is the pride and joy of her husband, Tony. She drifts into an affair with the...

An impoverished member of the privileged high society of old New York, Lily Bart is beautiful and socially agreeable, but she is almost thirty and still unmarried. Now she is keen to secure a wealthy husband to confirm her status, but the debts she...