Must Read Classics

Roald Dahl fans will rejoice at the opportunity to bring their favorite books and characters to life. Five of Dahl’s hugely popular, beloved books have been adapted into winning plays for children. With useful tips on staging, props, and costumes,...

The revolutionary literary vision that sowed the seeds of Objectivism, Ayn Rand's groundbreaking philosophy, and brought her immediate worldwide acclaim.This modern classic is the story of intransigent young architect Howard Roark, whose integrity...

The perfect edition for any Orwell enthusiasts' collection, discover Orwell's personal account of life on the streets beautifully reimagined by renowned street artist Shepard FaireyTo be poor and destitute in 1920s Paris and London was to experience life...

'Orwell was the great moral force of his age' SpectatorYou can live on a shilling a day in Paris if you know how. But it is a complicated business.When he was a struggling writer in his twenties, George Orwell lived as a down-and-out among the poorest...

Elizabeth Gaskell's chilling Gothic tales blend the real and the supernatural to eerie, compelling effect. 'Disappearances', inspired by local legends of mysterious vanishings, mixes gossip and fact; 'Lois the Witch', a novella based on an account of the...

Joseph Conrad's enduring portrait of the ugliness of colonialism. Nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American ReadHeart of Darkness is the thrilling tale of Marlow, a seaman and wanderer...

Occupied by enemy troops, a small, peaceable town comes face-to-face with evil imposed from the outside—and betrayal born within the close-knit communityA Penguin ClassicIn this masterful tale set in Norway during World War II, Steinbeck explores...

Along with Blake and Dickens, Mark Twain was one of the nineteenth century’s greatest chroniclers of childhood. These two novels reveal different aspects of his genius: Tom Sawyer is a much loved story about the sheer pleasure of being a...

"There is absolutely no necessity to learn how to read; meat smells a mile off, anyway. Nevertheless, if you live in Moscow and have a brain in your head, you'll pick up reading willy-nilly, and without attending any courses. Out of the forty thousand or...

Professor Persikov, an eccentric zoologist, stumbles upon a new light ray that accelerates growth and reproduction rates in living organisms. In the wake of a plague that has decimated the country's poultry stocks, Persikov's discovery is exploited as a...

WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY ANDREY KURKOVA rich, successful Moscow professor befriends a stray dog and attempts a scientific first by transplanting into it the testicles and pituitary gland of a recently deceased man. A distinctly worryingly human animal...

During a stifling St Petersburg summer, the rich landowner Velchaninov is haunted by the figure of a man he keeps glimpsing in the street. When he receives a surprise visit from him late at night, he realizes he is an old friend, Trusotsky, whose late...

The House of the Dead recounts the story of Alexander Goryanchikov, a gentleman who is sent to a prison colony in Siberia for killing his wife. Largely ignored at first by his fellow inmates due to his noble blood, he gradually settles in and becomes an...

In June 1862, Dostoevsky left Petersburg on his first excursion to Western Europe. Ostensibly making the trip to consult Western specialists about his epilepsy, he also wished to see firsthand the source of the Western ideas he believed were corrupting...

Leo Tolstoy's last completed novel, Resurrection is an intimate, psychological tale of guilt, anger and forgiveness, translated from the Russian with an introduction and notes by Anthony Briggs in Penguin Classics.Serving on the jury at a...

A Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition of Steinbeck's brilliant short novelsCollected here for the first time in a deluxe paperback volume are six of John Steinbeck's most widely read and beloved novels. From the tale of commitment, loneliness and hope in Of...

Leo Tolstoy began his trilogy, Childhood, Boyhood, Youth, in his early twenties. Although he would in his old age famously dismiss it as an 'awkward mixture of fact and fiction', generations of readers have not agreed, finding the novel to be a...

'Although he feared death, he could not stop. 'If I stopped now, after coming all this way - well, they'd call me an idiot!'A pair of short stories about greed, charity, life and death from one of Russia's most influential writers and thinkers...

Twenty-Five Hundred years ago, Sun Tzu wrote this classic book of military strategy based on Chinese warfare and military thought. Since that time, all levels of military have used the teaching on Sun Tzu to warfare and cilivzation have adapted these...

Voted America's Best-Loved Novel in PBS's The Great American Read Harper Lee's Pulitzer Prize-winning masterwork of honor and injustice in the deep South--and the heroism of one man in the face of blind and violent hatred One of the most cherished...