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Okonkwo is the greatest warrior alive, famous throughout West Africa. But when he accidentally kills a clansman, things begin to fall apart. Then Okonkwo returns from exile to find missionaries and colonial governors have arrived in the village. With his world thrown radically off-balance he can...

40th anniversary edition of Richard Adams' picaresque saga about a motley band of rabbits - Watership Down is one of the most beloved novels of our time. Sandleford Warren is in danger. Hazel's younger brother Fiver is convinced that a great evil is about to...

'Lyrically imaginative . . . enthralling' GUARDIAN Before she was the legendary Persian queen who spun a thousand tales, Shaherazade was a girl who saw something she shouldn't have. She told the king. She thought she was...

One of the best loved books of all time.Nominated as one of America's best-loved novels by PBS's The Great American Read Lovely Meg, talented Jo, frail Beth, spoiled Amy- these are hard lessons of poverty and of growing up in New England during the Civil War. Through their...

Jane Austen's last completed novel, marrying witty social realism to a Cinderella love story At twenty--seven, Anne Elliot is no longer young and has few romantic prospects. Eight years earlier, she had been persuaded by her friend Lady Russell to break off her engagement to Frederick...

A GUARDIAN BEST BOOK OF THE 21ST CENTURY 'Chilling, powerful, audacious' The Times 'Magnificent. You are in the hands of a writer at the height of her powers' Evening Standard There was a woman at the heart of the...

The hauntingly prophetic classic novel set in a not-too-distant future where books are burned by a special task force of firemen. Over 1 million copies sold in the UK. Guy Montag is a fireman. His job is to burn books, which are forbidden, being the source of all...

Charlotte Brontë's moving masterpiece - the novel that has been "teaching true strength of character for generations" (The Guardian). Nominated as one of America's best-loved novels by PBS's The Great American Read A novel of intense power and...

A timeless masterpiece from the New York Times -bestselling author, the Pulitzer Prize-winning story of a farmer's journey through China in the 1920s. The Good Earth is Pearl S. Buck's classic story of Wang Lung, a Chinese peasant farmer, and his wife, O...

Fully restored edition of Anthony Burgess' original text of A Clockwork Orange, with a glossary of the teen slang 'Nadsat', explanatory notes, pages from the original typescript, interviews, articles and reviews Edited by Andrew Biswell With a Foreword by Martin Amis ...

Octavia E. Butler's ground-breaking masterpiece, with an original foreword by Ayòbámi Adébáyò. 'A marvel of imagination, empathy and detail' NEW YORK TIMES 'The marker you should judge all other time-travelling narratives by' GUARDIAN ...

The prize-winning translation of Miguel de Cervantes's mock-epic masterwork Don Quixote has become so entranced by reading romances of chivalry that he determines to become a knight errant and pursue bold adventures, accompanied by his squire, the cunning Sancho Panza. As they...

The Woman in White famously opens with Walter Hartright's eerie encounter on a moonlit London road. Engaged as a drawing master to the beautiful Laura Fairlie, Walter is drawn into the sinister intrigues of Sir Percival Glyde and his "charming" friend Count Fosco, who has a taste for...

Angered by the values of his materialistic society, Hawk-eye lives apart from the other white men, sharing the solitude and sublimity of the wilderness with his Mohican Indian friend, Chingachgook. As the savageries of war test these exiled men, they agree to guide two sisters in search of their...

Henry Fleming is an ordinary farm boy turned soldier, with romantic notions about the glory of war. But, as the tedium of his regiment's encampment without action provides ample time for self-reflection, disquieting thoughts begin to prey upon his mind: doubts as to whether, in combat, he will stand...

'Robinson Crusoe has a universal appeal, a story that goes right to the core of existence' Simon Armitage Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, regarded by many to be first novel in English, is also the original tale of a castaway struggling to survive on a...

'Great Expectations is up there for me with the world's greatest novels' Howard Jacobson. Nominated as one of America's best-loved novels by PBS's The Great American Read Charles Dickens's Great Expectations charts the course of orphan Pip Pirrip's life...

The classic novel of guilt and redemption from one of Russia's greatest novelists Raskolnikov, a destitute and desperate former student, wanders through the slums of St Petersburg and commits a random murder without remorse or regret. He imagines himself to be a great man, a...

'I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me.' Defeated and embittered by a country which treats him as a non-being, the 'invisible man' retreats into an underground cell, where he smokes, drinks, listens to jazz and recounts his search for identity in...

'Truly extraordinary books are rare, and this is one of them' - Roddy Doyle James is a profound and ferociously funny novel from one of our greatest living writers, Percival Everett. The Sunday Times Bestseller Winner of the...

'A classic, perhaps the supreme American novel' Sunday Times, Books of the Century 'It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life' Jay Gatsby is the man who has...

Forster's social comedy is a witty observation of the English middle classes as they holiday abroad in Florence. One of these tourists is Lucy Honeychurch, a young girl whose heart is awakened by her experiences in Italy.

The novel tells the story of the rise and fall of the mythical town of Macondo through the history of the BuendIa family. Rich and brilliant, it is a chronicle of life, death, and the tragicomedy of humankind. In the story of the BuendIa family, one sees all of humanity, just as in the history,...

"Eh, miss, but that be a rare young lady! She do have such pretty coaxing ways ..." Seventeen-year-old Molly Gibson worships her widowed father. But when he decides to remarry, Molly's life is thrown off course by the arrival of her vain, shallow and selfish stepmother. There is...

A hilarious and merciless parody of rural melodramas and one of the best-loved comic novels of all time, Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons is beautifully repackaged as part of the Penguin Essentials range. 'We are not like other folk, maybe, but there have always been Starkadders at Cold Comfort...

This dystopian classic, which has sold over 25 million copies, is 'exciting, relevant and thought-provoking' (Stephen King). When a group of schoolboys are stranded on a desert island, what could go wrong? 'One of my favorite books - I...

Allan Quatermain, wild game hunter and explorer, narrates his adventures with Danish adventurer Sir Henry Curtis and Royal Navy Officer Captain Good. Hired by Curtis, Quatermain leads the quest to find Curtis's lost brother - who vanished while searching for the fabled diamond mines of King Solomon...

**Named a Best Book of the Year by The New Yorker, The Washington Post, and Harper's Bazaar** SIXTY YEARS LATER, HILL HOUSE IS OCCUPIED AGAIN . . . 'Scary and beautifully written, imbued with the same sense of dread and inevitability as...

Independent and spirited Bathsheba Everdene has come to Weatherbury to take up her position as a farmer on the largest estate in the area. Her bold presence draws three very different suitors- the gentleman-farmer Boldwood, soldier-seducer Sergeant Troy and the devoted shepherd Gabriel Oak. Each, in...

Boston, Massachusetts, 1642: Imprisoned for the crime of adultery, young wife Hester Prynne is condemned on her release to bear a public display of her shame - a scarlet letter 'A' stitched upon her dress. For the sake of her baby daughter Pearl, the product of her illicit liaison, she determines to...

Explosive, subversive, wild and funny, 50 years on the novel's strength is undiminished. Reading Joseph Heller's classic satire is nothing less than a rite of passage. Set in the closing months of World War II, this is the story of a bombardier named Yossarian who is frantic and...

Discover Ernest Hemingway's most decadent novel 'He's so damned nice and he's so awful. He's my sort of thing' Paris in the twenties: Pernod, parties and expatriate Americans, loose-living on money from home. Jake is wildly in love with Brett Ashley,...

ONE OF THE MOST INFLUENTIAL NOVELS OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 'This novel is a packet of surprises as we have no idea what's going to happen next' GUARDIAN 'One of the greatest writers of our time' TONI MORRISON 'Devilishly funny and academically...

A big-hearted, captivating, modern-day Muslim Pride and Prejudice, with hijabs instead of top hats and kurtas instead of corsets.

A masterpiece in storytelling from the global bestselling author of Unsheltered and Flight Behaviour.

A Penguin Classic First published in 1897, Captain Courageoustells of the high-seas adventures of Harvey Cheyne, the son of an American millionaire, who, after falling from a luxury ocean liner, is rescued by the raucous crew of the fishing ship We're Here. Obstinate and...

It's 1993 and Paul Polydoris tends bar at the only gay club in a university town thrumming with politics and partying. He studies queer theory, has a dyke best friend, makes zines, and is a flâneur with a rich dating life. But Paul's also got a secret: he's a shapeshifter. Oscillating wildly from...

ONE OF THE GREATEST AMERICAN NOVELS EVER WRITTEN WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE FOR FICTION 'No one forgets this book' Independent 'One of the best first novels I remember ... uniquely unsentimental' Guardian 'There is humour as well as...

Buck lives a content life. Half St. Bernard, half shepherd, he is top dog on a California ranch. But the gold rush in the Klondike has produced an enormous demand for sled dogs, so when a gardener at the ranch needs to pay off a gambling debt, stealing and selling Buck is a quick way to do it....

'The ultimate fish story' Bob Dylan When Ishmael sets sail on the whaling ship Pequod one cold Christmas Day, he has no idea of the horrors awaiting him out on the vast and merciless ocean. The ship's strange captain, Ahab, is in the grip of an obsession to...

The international Number One bestseller from the author of The Song of Achilles, shortlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction Woman. Witch. Myth. Mortal. Outcast. Lover. Destroyer. Survivor. CIRCE. In the house of Helios, god of the sun and...

Discover Toni Morrison's most iconic work in this Pulitzer-prize winning novel that exemplifies her powerful and important place in contemporary American literature. 'An American masterpiece' AS Byatt It is the mid-1800s and as slavery looks to be coming to an...

Humbert Humbert is a middle-aged, fastidious college professor. He also likes little girls. And none more so than Lolita, who he'll do anything to possess. Is he in love or insane? A silver-tongued poet or a pervert? A tortured soul or a monster? ...Or is he all of these?

Best friends and sisters, the four Padavano girls bring loving chaos to their close-knit Italian American neighbourhood. William Waters grew up in a house silenced by tragedy, where his parents could hardly bear to look at him, much less love him. So, when he meets the spirited and ambitious Julia...

The million copy bestseller that redefined the way the world saw war. One of the ten books - novels, memoirs and one very unusual biography - that make up our Matchbook Classics' series, a stunningly redesigned collection of some of the best loved titles on our backlist....

Cry the Beloved Country is the deeply moving story of the Zulu pastor Stephen Kumalo and his son Absalom, set against the background of a land and a people riven by racial injustice. Remarkable for its contemporaneity, unforgettable for character and incident, Cry the Beloved Country...

'A literary rite of passage.' The Times 'Plath changed our world.' Guardian Esther is supposed to be having the time of her life. Her internship at a fashion magazine is a whirl of cocktail parties and dinner dates in the shimmering city. But why...

There is no knowing what lies in a man's heart. On a trip to buy ponies, Frank Ross is killed by one of his own workers. Tom Chaney shoots him down in the street for a horse, USD150 cash, and two Californian gold pieces. Ross's unusually mature and single-minded fourteen-year-old daughter Mattie...

** NOW A HIT NETFLIX FILM, WINNER OF 7 BAFTAS AND 4 OSCARS, INCLUDING BEST INTERNATIONAL FEATURE** Discover the most famous anti-war novel ever written. One by one the boys begin to fall... In 1914 a room full of German schoolboys, fresh...

Jean Rhys's late, literary masterpiece Wide Sargasso Sea was inspired by Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre, and is set in the lush, beguiling landscape of Jamaica in the 1830s. Born into an oppressive, colonialist society, Creole heiress Antoinette Cosway meets a young Englishman who is drawn to...

'The most outrageously funny book about sex written' Guardian Portnoy's Complaint n. after Alexander Portnoy (1933-) -A disorder in which strongly-felt ethical and altruistic impulses are perpetually warring with extreme sexual longings, often of a...

The Catcher in Rye is the ultimate novel for disaffected youth and has influenced countless coming-of-age stories since. Holden Caulfield is a seventeen- year-old dropout who has just been kicked out of his fourth school. Navigating his way through the challenges of growing up,...

The world's most famous work of horror fiction: a devastating exploration of the limits of human creativity. Nominated as one of America's best-loved novels by PBS's The Great American Read Mary Shelley's timeless gothic novel presents the epic battle between man and...

'I've done my damndest to rip a reader's nerves to rags, I don't want him satisfied.' Shocking and controversial when it was first published, The Grapes of Wrath is Steinbeck's Pultizer Prize-winning epic of the Joad family, forced to travel west from Dust Bowl era Oklahoma in...

When Jonathan Harker visits Transylvania to help Count Dracula with the purchase of a London house, he makes a series of horrific discoveries about his client. Soon afterwards, various bizarre incidents unfold in England- an apparently unmanned ship is wrecked off the coast of Whitby; a young woman...

No one is better equipped in the struggle for wealth and worldly success than the alluring and ruthless Becky Sharp, who defies her impoverished background to clamber up the class ladder. Her sentimental companion Amelia, however, longs only for caddish soldier George. As the two heroines make their...

In Russia's struggle with Napoleon, Tolstoy saw a tragedy that involved all mankind. Greater than a historical chronicle, War and Peace is an affirmation of life itself, 'a complete picture', as a contemporary reviewer put it, 'of everything in which people find their happiness and greatness,their...

'She liked lies...To lie readily and cleverly, recklessly and yet successfully, was, according to the lessons which she had learned, a necessity in a woman'Lizzie Eustace is young, beautiful, and widowed. Her determination to hold on to the Eustace family's diamond necklace in the face of legal...

Mark Twain's hymn to the secure and fantastic world of boyhood and adventure From the famous episodes of the whitewashed fence and the ordeal in the cave to the trial of Injun Joe, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer is redolent of life in the Mississippi River towns in which Twain...

Jules Verne's wild and riotous fantasy Journey to the Centre of the Earth delves into the hidden mysteries of a vast, uncharted subterranean world. This Penguin Classics edition is translated from the French by Frank Wynne with an introduction by Jane Smiley and notes by Peter Cogman. ...

Read Kurt Vonnegut's powerful masterpiece, which is as timely now as when it was first published. 'An extraordinary success. A book to read and reread. He is a true artist' New York Times Book Review Billy Pilgrim - hapless barber's assistant,...

Set in turn-of-the-century New York, Edith Wharton's classic novel The Age of Innocence reveals a society governed by the dictates of taste and form, manners and morals, and intricate social ceremonies. Newland Archer, soon to marry the lovely May Welland, is a man torn between his respect for...

'A triumph of execution ... one of the best narratives of the "double life" of a Victorian gentleman' Peter Ackroyd Oscar Wilde's alluring novel of decadence and sin was a succès de scandale on publication. It follows Dorian Gray who, enthralled by his own exquisite portrait,...