Classic fiction Books 661 results

Jack Kerouac

Jack Kerouac's classic novel about friendship, the search for meaning, and the allure of nature A witty, moving philosophical novel, Jack Kerouac's The Dharma Bums is a journey of self-discovery through the lens of Zen Buddhist thought. This Penguin Modern Classics edition includes an introduction by Ann Douglas. Following the explosive energy of On the Road, the book that put ...

Murasaki Shikibu

The most famous work of Japanese literature and the world's first novel—written a thousand years ago and one of the enduring classics of world literature.Written centuries before the time of Shakespeare and even Chaucer, The Tale of Genji marks the birth of the novel—and after more than a millennium, this seminal work continues to enchant readers throughout the world. Lady Mura...

Daphne Du Maurier

Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again... Working as a lady's companion, the orphaned heroine of Rebecca learns her place. Life begins to look very bleak until, on a trip to the South of France, she meets Maxim de Winter, a handsome widower whose sudden proposal of marriage takes her by surprise. Whisked from glamorous Monte Carlo to his brooding estate, Manderley, on th...

Jane Austen

Chiltern Publishing creates the most beautiful editions of the World's finest literature. Your favourite classic titles in a way you have never seen them before; the tactile layers, fine details and beautiful colours of these remarkable covers make these titles feel extra special and will look striking on any shelf. This book has matching lined and blank journals (sold sepa...

Jack Kerouac

'I read On the Road in maybe 1959. It changed my life like it changed everyone else's' Bob Dylan Sal Paradise, a young innocent, joins his hero, the mystical traveller Dean Moriarty, on a breathless, exuberant ride back and forth across the United States. Their hedonistic search for release or fulfilment through drink, sex, drugs and jazz becomes an exploration of personal fre...

Charlotte Brontë

Chiltern Publishing creates the most beautiful editions of the World's finest literature. Your favourite classic titles in a way you have never seen them before; the tactile layers, fine details and beautiful colours of these remarkable covers make these titles feel extra special and will look striking on any shelf. This book has matching lined and blank journals (sold sepa...

Jean Rhys

New to Penguin Classics, the remarkable, devastating collected stories by the author of Wide Sargasso Sea.Some of Jean Rhys's most powerful writing is to be found in this rich, dark collection of her collected stories. Her fictional world is haunted by her own, painful memories: of cheap hotels and drab Parisian cafés; of devastating love affairs; of her childhood in Dominica; ...

Agatha Christie

When a man plunges down a cliff, two adventurous young friends decide to find his killer... While playing an erratic round of golf, Bobby Jones slices his ball over the edge of a cliff. His ball is lost, but on the rocks below he finds the crumpled body of a dying man. With his final breath the man opens his eyes and says, 'Why didn't they ask Evans?' Haunted by these words, Bo...

Agatha Christie

A collection of short stories featuring the 'heart specialist', Parker Pyne. Mrs Packington felt alone, helpless and utterly forlorn. But her life changed when she stumbled upon an advertisement in The Times which read: 'ARE YOU HAPPY? IF NOT, CONSULT MR PARKER PYNE'. Equally adept at putting together the pieces of a marriage or the fragments of a murder mystery, Mr Parker ...

Charlotte Brontë

Designed to appeal to the book lover, the Macmillan Collector's Library is a series of beautifully bound pocket-sized gift editions of much loved classic titles. Bound in real cloth, printed on high quality paper, and featuring ribbon markers and gilt edges, Macmillan Collector's Library are books to love and treasure.A beloved classic and undisputed masterpiece, Charlotte Bron...

Jane Austen

'Of what a mistake were you guilty in marrying a Man of his age! - just old enough to be formal, ungovernable and to have the Gout - too old to be agreable, and too young to die.'The scheming and unscrupulous Lady Susan is unlike any Austen heroine you've met in this fascinating early novella.One of 46 new books in the bestselling Little Black Classics series, to celebrate the ...

Agatha Christie / Dorothy L. Sayers / G. K. Chesterton

Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, G.K. Chesterton and nine other writers from the legendary Detection Club collaborate in this fiendishly clever but forgotten crime novel first published 80 years ago. Inspector Rudge does not encounter many cases of murder in the sleepy seaside town of Whynmouth. But when an old sailor lands a rowing boat containing a fresh corpse with a sta...

Agatha Christie

Agatha Christie's ingenious murder mystery thriller, reissued with a striking new cover designed to appeal to the latest generation of Agatha Christie fans and book lovers. Luke Fitzwilliam could not believe Miss Pinkerton's wild allegation that a multiple murderer was at work in the quiet English village of Wychwood - or her speculation that the local doctor was next in line...

Agatha Christie

A beautiful heiress is fatally poisoned in a West End restaurant... Six people sit down to dinner at a table laid for seven. In front of the empty place is a sprig of rosemary - in solemn memory of Rosemary Barton who died at the same table exactly one year previously. No one present on that fateful night would ever forget the woman's face, contorted beyond recognition - or...

James Joyce

Universally known for his groundbreaking prose - especially for the monumental novel Ulysses and its depictions of Dublin at the turn of the twentieth century - James Joyce started off as a writer of lyrical poetry, a genre which he never abandoned in his lifetime and which informs and enriches the rest of his literary production. This volume, which includes Joyce's first publ...

Agatha Christie

An ordinary village A shocking announcement One morning the villagers of Chipping Cleghorn wake to find a strange notice in their papers: 'A murder is announced and will take place on Friday, October 29th, at Little Paddocks at 6.30pm.' Suspecting this is just a joke, they gather for some evening entertainment. Then a gunshot is heard. In desperation, the police...

Agatha Christie

A quiet English village A shocking murder An unlikely detective Nobody liked Colonel Protheroe. So when he's found dead in the vicarage study, there's no absence of suspects in the seemingly peaceful village of St Mary Mead. In fact, Jane Marple can think of at least seven. As gossip abounds in the parlours and kitchens of the parish, everyone becomes an amateur detective. Th...

Paula Guran

For more than 80 years H. P. Lovecraft has inspired writers of horror and supernatural fiction with his dark vision of humankind's insignificant place in a vast, uncaring cosmos. At the time of his death in 1937, Lovecraft was virtually unknown, but from early cult status his readership expanded exponentially; his nightmarish visions laying down roots in the collective imaginat...

Dante Alighieri

'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...

Agatha Christie

POIROT INVESTIGATES: - is a collection of eleven short stories written by English author Agatha Christie -- the best-selling author of all time. This was first published in the UK in March 1924. In the motley collection of superb short stories, Hercule Poirot -- idiosyncratic and eccentric detective -- solves a variety of mysteries involving greed, jealousy, and revenge. In the...

Agatha Christie

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...

Virginia Woolf

'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...

Leo Tolstoy

At its simplest, Anna Karenina is a love story. It is a portrait of a beautiful and intelligent woman whose passionate love for a handsome officer sweeps aside all other ties - to her marriage and to the network of relationships and moral values that bind the society around her. The love affair of Anna and Vronsky is played out alongside the developing romance of Kitty and Levi...

Franz Kafka

A terrifying psychological trip into the life of one Joseph K., an ordinary man who wakes up one day to find himself accused of a crime he did not commit, a crime whose nature is never revealed to him. Once arrested, he is released, but must report to court on a regular basis - an event that proves maddening, as nothing is ever resolved. As he grows more uncertain of his fate, ...

Karl Marx / Friedrich Engels

'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

'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

'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 ...

Leo Tolstoy

'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 ...

Nikolai Gogol

One of six beloved Christmas classics in collectible hardcover editions Written in 1831 by the father of Russian literature, this uproarious tale tells of the blacksmith Vakula's battle with the devil, who has stolen the moon and hidden it in his pocket, allowing him to wreak havoc on the village of Dikanka. Both the devil and Vakula are in love with Oksana, the most beautiful ...

J L Carr

'Tender and elegant' Guardian'Unlike anything else in modern English literature' D.J. Taylor, SpectatorA damaged survivor of the First World War, Tom Birkin finds refuge in the quiet village church of Oxgodby where he is to spend the summer uncovering a huge medieval wall-painting. Immersed in the peace and beauty of the countryside and the unchanging rhythms of village life he...