Classic fiction Books 733 results

William Shakespeare

Penguin

This Arden edition of Hamlet, arguably Shakespeare's greatest tragedy, presents an authoritative, modernized text based on the Second Quarto text with a new introductory essay covering key productions and criticism in the decade since its first publication. A timely up-date in the 400th anniversary year of Shakespeare's death which will ensure the Arden edition continues to off...

Dante Alighieri

Penguin

'Happiness beyond all words! A life of peace and love, entire and whole!' A collection of cantos from Paradiso, the most original and experimental part of the Divina Commedia. One of 46 new books in the bestselling Little Black Classics series, to celebrate the first ever Penguin Classic in 1946. Each book gives readers a taste of the Classics' huge range and diversity, with wo...

Patricia Highsmith

Abacus

BY THE BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF THE TALENTED MR RIPLEY, CAROL AND STRANGERS ON A TRAIN 'The No.1 Greatest Crime Writer' THE TIMES 'I love Highsmith so much . . . What a revelation her writing is' GILLIAN FLYNN 'No one has created psychological suspense more densely and deliciously satisfying' VOGUE 'Ramón had done it. Obviously! He thought about Ramón, his Catholic soul trappe...

Agatha Christie

Harper

All wish her dead Who succeeded? Among the towering red cliffs of Petra, like some monstrous swollen Buddha, sat the corpse of Mrs Boynton. A tiny puncture mark on her wrist was the only sign of the fatal injection that had killed her. With only 24 hours available to solve the mystery, Hercule Poirot recalled a chance remark he'd overheard back in Jerusalem: 'You see, don'...

Agatha Christie

Harper

A ruthless international cartel seeks world domination... Framed in the doorway of Poirot's bedroom stood an uninvited guest, coated from head to foot in dust. The man's gaunt face stared for a moment, then he swayed and fell. Who was he? Was he suffering from shock or just exhaustion? Above all, what was the significance of the figure 4, scribbled over and over again on a ...

Agatha Christie

Harper

Two trains Side by side for a brief moment In that moment, a murder Elspeth McGillicuddy is positive she witnessed a man strangling a woman to death. But it was only the merest glimpse through a carriage window as the trains drew parallel. She is the only witness, there are no suspects, and, most importantly, there is no corpse. Who, apart from her friend Jane M...

Antoine De Saint-Exupéry

Penguin

"The most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or touched, they are felt with the heart."After crash-landing in the Sahara Desert, a pilot encounters a little prince who is visiting Earth from his own planet. Their strange and moving meeting illuminates for the aviator many of life's universal truths, as he comes to learn what it means to be human from a child who is no...

Antoine De Saint-Exupéry

Penguin

'All grown-ups were once children - although few of them remember it.' A pilot forced to crash land in the Sahara Desert encounters a little prince who is visiting the Earth from his own small planet with its three volcanoes and a beautiful flower. Through this meeting, the aviator comes to discover many of life's universal truths which illuminate the human condition with all i...

F. Scott Fitzgerald / F Scott Fitzgerald

Macmillan

F. Scott Fitzgerald's fourth and final novelSet in the South of France in the decade after the First World War, Tender is the Night explores the new world of moneyed leisure found by the first generation of idle-rich Americans to take refuge in the French Riviera, bracketed between the horrors of the Great War and the Great Depression to come. It is the story of a brilliant and...

Angela Carter

Virago Moden Classics

'Wicked, wayward or otherwise, Carter's classic collection is a very erudite expression of girl power' MINA HOLLAND, GUARDIAN 'One of the century's greatest writers' SUNDAY TIMES This bestselling collection of stories extols the female virtues of discontent, sexual disruptiveness and bad manners. These are subversive tales by Ama Ata Aidoo, Jane Bowles, Angela Carter, Colette...

Virginia Woolf

Penguin Classics

'Things are not simple but complex. If he bit Mr. Browning he bit her too. Hatred is not hatred; hatred is also love.' Virginia Woolf's delightful biography of the poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning's spaniel, which asks what it means to be human - and to be dog. One of 46 new books in the bestselling Little Black Classics series, to celebrate the first ever Penguin Classic in 194...

Agatha Christie

Harper

An archaeologist's wife is murdered on the shores of the River Tigris in Iraq... It was clear to Amy Leatheran that something sinister was going on at the Hassanieh dig in Iraq; something associated with the presence of 'Lovely Louise', wife of celebrated archaeologist Dr Leidner. In a few days' time Hercule Poirot was due to drop in at the excavation site. But with Louise ...

Agatha Christie

Harper

A man returns from the dead, and the body of a mysterious stranger is found in his room... A few weeks after marrying an attractive young widow, Gordon Cloade is tragically killed by a bomb blast in the London blitz. Overnight, the former Mrs Underhay finds herself in sole possession of the Cloade family fortune. Shortly afterwards, Hercule Poirot receives a visit from the ...

Leo Tolstoy

Alma Classics

Hadji Murat, one of the most feared and venerated mountain chiefs in the Caucasian struggle against the Russians, defects from the Muslim rebels after feuding with his ruling imam, Shamil. Hoping to protect his family, he joins the Russians, who accept him but never put their trust in him - and so Murat must find another way to end the struggle.Tolstoy knew as he was writing th...

Agatha Christie

Harper

A woman is killed by a poisoned dart in the enclosed confines of a commercial passenger plane... From seat No.9, Hercule Poirot was ideally placed to observe his fellow air passengers. Over to his right sat a pretty young woman, clearly infatuated with the man opposite; ahead, in seat No.13, sat a Countess with a poorly-concealed cocaine habit; across the gangway in seat No.8,...

Agatha Christie

Harper

Stabbed in the back A pieced of lead piping nearby It should be a simple case... Poirot is summoned to France, but arrives too late to save his client, whose body now lies face down in a shallow grave on a golf course. Why is the dead man wearing his son's overcoat? And who was the intended recipient of the love-letter in the pocket? Before Poirot can answer these ques...

Niccolo Machiavelli

Penguin

A new series of beautiful hardcover nonfiction classics, with covers designed by Coralie Bickford-SmithWorld-changing ideas meet eye-catching design: the best titles of the extraordinarily successful Great Ideas series are now packaged in Coralie Bickford-Smith's distinctive, award-winning covers. Whether on a well-curated shelf or in your back pocket, these timeless works of p...

Jane Austen

Alma Classics

The pride of high-ranking Mr Darcy and the prejudice of middle-class Elizabeth Bennet conduct an absorbing dance through the rigid social hierarchies of early-nineteenth-century England, with the passion of the two unlikely lovers growing as their union seems ever more improbable.One of the most cherished love stories in English literature, Jane Austen's 1813 masterpiece has a ...

Karl Marx / Friedrich Engels

Penguin

'The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains.' Marx and Engels's revolutionary summons to the working classes - one of the most important and influential political theories ever formulated. Introducing Little Black Classics: 80 books for Penguin's 80th birthday. Little Black Classics celebrate the huge range and diversity of Penguin Classics, with books from around t...

Jane Austen

Penguin

'She has many rare and charming qualities, but Sobriety is not one of them.' A selection of Austen's dark and hilarious early writings - featuring murder, drunkenness, perjury, theft, poisoning, women breaking out of prison, men forging wills and babies biting off their mothers' fingers... Introducing Little Black Classics: 80 books for Penguin's 80th birthday. Little Black Cla...

Plato

Penguin

'I'll stop doing it as soon as I understand what I'm doing.' Somewhere between a historical account and work of philosophy, Socrates' Defence details the final plea of Plato's beloved mentor. Introducing Little Black Classics: 80 books for Penguin's 80th birthday. Little Black Classics celebrate the huge range and diversity of Penguin Classics, with books from around the world ...

Patricia Highsmith

Abacus

BY THE BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF THE TALENTED MR RIPLEY, CAROL AND STRANGERS ON A TRAIN 'Very wicked, very funny . . . very unsettling' GUARDIAN 'Each story is more appalling than the next, deadpan in tone and dripping with black humour' INDEPENDENT 'These little tales are tremendous fun, glorious hand grenades lobbed at the reader by a gleeful, cackling Patricia Highsmith' DAN ...

Graf Leo Tolstoy

Oxford Worlds Classics

"No one pitied him as he would have liked to be pitied." As Ivan Ilyich lies dying he begins to re-evaluate his life, searching for meaning that will make sense of his sufferings. In "The Death of Ivan Ilyich" and the other works in this volume, Tolstoy conjures characters who, tested to the limit, reveal glorious and unexpected reserves of courage or baseness of a near inhuma...

Agatha Christie

Harper

There's more than petty theft going on in a London youth hostel... An outbreak of kleptomania at a student hostel was not normally the sort of crime that aroused Hercule Poirot's interest. But when he saw the list of stolen and vandalized items - including a stethoscope, some old flannel trousers, a box of chocolates, a slashed rucksack and a diamond ring found in a bowl of so...

Agatha Christie

Harper

A simple accident? Or attempted murder? Everyone blamed the dog. When a wealthy spinster trips on the stairs, it seems only natural to assume it was an accident - a rubber ball left there by her lively terrier. And yet the more Emily Arundell thought about it, the more convinced she became that one of her relatives was trying to kill her. Seeking answers, she writes to t...

William Shakespeare

Penguin

One of the best-loved comedies ever written, Twelfth Night is perhaps Shakespeare's most lyrical as well as most experimental play. This Penguin Shakespeare edition is edited by M. M. Mahood with an introduction by Michael Dobson. 'If music be the food of love, play on...' Separated from her twin brother Sebastian after a shipwreck, Viola disguises herself as a boy to serve the...

Walt Whitman

Harper

HarperCollins is proud to present its incredible range of best-loved, essential classics. I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey work of the stars... First published in 1855, and edited, revised and expanded over thirty years, 'Leaves of Grass' has become one of the most celebrated poetry collections in the history of American literature. A master of free verse...

Jonathan Swift

Penguin

'... a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food...' Swift's devastating short satire on how to solve a famine Introducing Little Black Classics: 80 books for Penguin's 80th birthday. Little Black Classics celebrate the huge range and diversity of Penguin Classics, with books from around the world and across many centuries. They take us from a balloon ride over Victorian L...

Leo Tolstoy

Penguin Classics

'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. Introducing Little Black Classics: 80 books for Penguin's 80th birthday. Little Black Classics celebrate the huge range and diversity ...

William S. Burroughs

Penguin

Nightmarish and fiercely funny, William Burroughs' virtuoso, taboo-breaking masterpiece Naked Lunch follows Bill Lee through Interzone: a surreal, orgiastic wasteland of drugs, depravity, political plots, paranoia, sadistic medical experiments and endless, gnawing addiction. One of the most shocking novels ever written, Naked Lunch is a cultural landmark, now in a restored edit...