Classic fiction Books 661 results

Margaret Cavendish

90 classic titles celebrating 90 years of Penguin Books 'I had rather die in the adventure of noble achievements, than live in obscure and sluggish security' In 1666, Margaret Cavendish had a vision: there was a crack in reality at the North Pole leading to a utopian parallel universe, where gender roles, scientific orthodoxy and political norms had been razed to the ground. ...

Virginia Woolf

'Waking, I cry "Oh, is this your - buried treasure? The light in the heart."' In these exquisite stories from the genius of English modernism, everyday objects acquire profound significance: a lump of buried green glass leads to a lifetime of obsession; a mark on the wall prompts a questioning of reality itself; a pale-yellow silk dress provokes a painful self-reckoning. Beaut...

Hermann Hesse

Of course, very few people go through the gate and abandon the beautiful phenomenon of the outside world for the interior reality that they intuit... A visitor to a zoo discovers he can understand the animals talking, a young man turns into a mountain and a bird guides a boy to another planet in this selection of dream-like and visionary fairy tales from the great German-Swiss...

Bram Stoker

The bones were still warm; but they were picked clean. They had even eaten their own dead This spine-chilling collection from Dracula creator Bram Stoker showcases five haunting tales, including the newly discovered 'Gibbet Hill'. From 'Dracula's Guest', thought by many to be the original excised opening of Dracula itself, to the sinister 'The Judge's House,' each gripping sto...

Jane Austen

During his reign, Lord Cobham was burnt alive, but I forget what for. In Jane Austen's breezy and entirely biased telling of English history, Mary, Queen of Scots is a scandalously wronged victim, Elizabeth I is a wicked villain and most historical facts and dates are cheerfully disregarded. It is accompanied here by other riotous early pieces in which young women steal money,...

Rabindranath. Tagore

90 classic titles celebrating 90 years of Penguin Books Rabindranath Tagore was one of the greatest authors of his generation. In these two short stories - 'The Broken Nest' and 'Dead or Alive' - he is at his devastating best, charting the slow, then fast, implosion of two perfect Bengali households. No-one understands each other; everything is misconstrued; all is lost. ...

Frederich Nietzsche

I am not a man, I am dynamite Weeks before his final mental breakdown, Nietzsche set out to compose his autobiography, and Ecce Homo is the result. A summary of his life's work as a philosopher, with chapter headings including 'Why I Am So Wise' and 'Why I Write Such Good Books', it is part mocking self-judgement and part battle cry, and remains one of the most singular, stran...

Leo Tolstoy

'I'm not the sort of husband you dream of when you're walking alone along the avenue in the evening, am I? And it would be a disaster, wouldn't it?' How does love die? This question lies at the heart of Tolstoy's desperately sad novella. It tells the story of seventeen-year-old Masha who, despite their differences, falls passionately in love with an older man, and marries him. ...

Yasunari Kawabata

Kikuji has been invited to a tea ceremony by a mistress of his dead father, only to find that the mistress' rival and successor is also present. He falls for her, with devastating consequences. By 1949 Yasunari Kawabata, the first Japanese author to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, felt that the tradition of the tea ceremony had been degraded. In this delicate novella he use...

Stefan Zweig

'... a human being, an intellectual human being who constantly bends the entire force of his mind on the ridiculous task of forcing a wooden king into the corner of a wooden board, and does it without going mad!' A group of passengers on a cruise ship challenge the world chess champion to a match. At first, they crumble, until they are helped by whispered advice from a stranger...

Dorothy Parker

What can you say, when a man asks you to dance with him? I most certainly will not dance with you. I'll see you in hell first. Why, thank you, I'd like to awfully, but I'm having labor pains. Acerbic, pithy and vibrant, Dorothy Parker's writings capture the dizzying decadence of Jazz Age New York. Though Parker refuses to be swept along- she gleefully deconstructs its hypocrisy...

Stanislaw Lem

Journey into space with Polish scifi master Stanislaw Lem. The whimsical time-loops of Ijon Tichy's cosmic adventure 'The Seventh Voyage' are reminiscent of Douglas Adams, while the spectral whispers haunting Pirx the Pilot as he navigates his spaceship to Mars in 'Terminus', echo the author's masterpiece Solaris. Then 'The Mask' introduces a perfect robot assassin and asks, ca...

Audre. Lorde

'I am Black because I come from the earth's inside now take my word for jewel in the open light.' Impassioned and profound, the poems in Coal showcase Audre Lorde in all her dazzling elegance and multiplicity. Mournful, celebratory, politically conscious, this early collection is a testament to Lorde's beloved and hugely influential lyric voice, which faithfully captures the c...

Walter Benjamin

90 Classic titles celebrating 90 years of Penguin Books'Every sort of passion verges on chaos, I know, but what the collecting passion verges on is a chaos of memories.' From intimate musings on his book collection, to a dream-like trip through the bustling streets of Marseille, each of these essays offers a compelling journey into the mind of one of the twentieth century's mos...

Katherine. Mansfield

90 classic titles celebrating 90 years of Penguin BooksShe drew a long, soft breath, as though the paper daffodils between them were almost too sweet to bear Katherine Mansfield was a magician of the short story, whose work was described by Virginia Woolf as 'the only writing I have ever been jealous of'. These eight tales show her gift for transforming fleeting moments - a cha...

Mary Gaitskill

A writer engulfed by a new obsession, an occasional sex-worker, a runaway, a teenager entering the workplace- these four tales of desire and dislocation explore the rough edges of relationships and the inner lives of women negotiating their precarious place in the world. In these coolly compelling and quietly devastating stories, Gaitskill evokes with razor-sharp precision the ...

Dante

90 classic titles celebrating 90 years of Penguin BooksLay down all hope, you that go in by me . . . Through the gates of Hell, past whirling hurricanes, leering devils and rivers of blood, lies the ultimate evil: Satan himself. Masterfully translated by Dorothy L. Sayers, this first instalment of The Divine Comedy tells the captivating tale of Dante and Virgil's arduous journe...

Muriel Spark

Muriel Spark claimed The Driver's Seat to be her best and creepiest novel. Once you have met her heroine Lise - heading for the holiday of a lifetime in an extraordinarily garish dress and with violence on her mind - you will understand why. ...

Kate Chopin

90 classic titles celebrating 90 years of Penguin BooksThere was something coming to her and she was waiting for it, fearfully. What was it? She did not know; it was too subtle and elusive to name Nuns, maidens, adventurers - with electricity, The Story of an Hour brings together stories of female freedom, as Kate Chopin asks the question: what will emancipation feel like for w...

Bohumil Hrabal

90 Classic titles celebrating 90 years of Penguin BooksClosely Watched Trains tells the story of Milos Hrma, a young railroad apprentice coming of age in wartime Czechoslovakia. Milos is overwhelmed with worries - about his virginity, his love for the conductor, and ongoing scandals in the stationmaster's office - besides which the idea of fighting the Germans seems a simple af...

Rumi

Rumi's verses have been a balm for readers' souls for over eight centuries. This exquisite selection brings together some of the Persian mystic's most profound, evocative and transcendent works. Exploring passion, heartbreak, friendship, faith and the myriad ways in which we move through the world, these strikingly modern poems are perfect for those looking for inspiration, gui...

H. P. Lovecraft

90 classic titles celebrating 90 years of Penguin Books'Assuming that I was sane and awake, my experience on that night was such as has befallen no man before' After five years of 'strange amnesia', Nathaniel Wingate Peaslee remains haunted by madness and memories that cannot be real. Desperate for answers he travels to Western Australia, joining an archaeological excavation in...

Epictetus

90 classic titles celebrating 90 years of Penguin Books'I must die. But must I die bawling?' What does it mean to live a virtuous life? How can we rise above pain and anguish? In these teachings from Book 1 of his Discourses, ancient philosopher Epictetus outlines a practical approach to Stoicism that has inspired thinkers for centuries, from Marcus Aurelius to Theodore Rooseve...

Saadat Hasan Manto

Saadat Hasan Manto, the most widely read and translated writer in the Urdu language, captured the devastation and absurdity of the partition of India and Pakistan like no other. The Price of Freedom brings together ten of his best stories, focusing on human voices from the religious fracture that forever unhinged two newly independent nations. Powerful, piercing and deeply movi...

Gertrude Stein

90 classic titles celebrating 90 years of Penguin Books'All Frenchmen know you have to become civilised between eighteen and twenty-three and that civilisation comes upon you by contact with an older woman, by revolution, by army discipline, by any escape or any subjection, and then you are civilised and life goes on normally in a latin way.' Gertrude Stein's Paris France, pub...

Gérard De Nerval

90 Classic titles celebrating 90 years of Penguin BooksIn October Nights, Gerard de Nerval takes us on a gentle meander through nighttime Paris - a dreamlike journey towards getting lost. Also included in this volume is Sylvie, his haunting novella of love and memory, the 'masterpiece' that inspired Proust to write In Search of Lost Time. Together, these works by the French poe...

Daphne Du Maurier

DISCOVER THE DU MAURIER DARK ROMANCE COLLECTION 'Rebecca has woven its way into the fabric of our culture with all the troubling power of myth or dream. A stunning book' SARAH WATERS 'It's the book every writer wishes they'd written' CLARE MACKINTOSH 'The greatest psychological thriller of all time' ERIN KELLY *** He did not belong to me at all, he belonged to Rebecca. . . ...

Charlotte Bronte

Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre is now available in an affordable softcover edition, featuring striking hand-painted cover art from Laci Fowler and distinctive interior design elements, making it ideal for classic fiction lovers, readers in high-school or college literature courses, and fans of annual reading challenges and "Required Reading" lists. Considered one of the greates...

Jane Austen

Dive into a world of romance, village life, and even a little silliness in this stunning edition of Jane Austen's timeless novel, Emma. Self-satisfied Emma Woodhouse thinks she is above romance of any kind, but when she decides she is a great matchmaker and sets out to find a wealthy husband for her friend, the sweet yet pitiable Harriet Smith, she crosses paths with the charm...

Robert Louis Stevenson

Robert Louis Stevenson's immortal tale of personality and evil, now in a Clothbound ClassicA Penguin Classics HardcoverDr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde have become synonymous with the idea of a split personality. More than a morality tale, this dark psychological fantasy is also a product of its time, drawing on contemporary theories of class, evolution, criminality, and secret lives. A...