Classic fiction Books 733 results

Jack Kerouac

Ladybird

'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

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

Penguin

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

Harper

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

Harper

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

Macmillan

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...

William Shakespeare

Ladybird

'And when I shall die,Take him and cut him out in little stars.'This collection of Shakespeare's soliloquies, including both old favourites and lesser-known pieces, shows him at his dazzling best.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 an...

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Penguin Classics

'My God! A whole minute of bliss! Is that really so little for the whole of a man's life?'A poignant tale of love and loneliness from Russia's foremost writer.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 works from around t...

Jane Austen

Penguin

'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

Harper

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

Alma Classics

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

Harper

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

Harper

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

Robinson

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...

Agatha Christie

Harper

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...

Leo Tolstoy

Oxford Worlds Classics

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...

Homer

Penguin

Homer's monumental epic set at the end of the Trojan War explores love, heroism, and the intricate relationship between gods and mortals—now in a beautiful clothbound hardcover edition designed by Coralie Bickford-Smith. The Iliad is the first and the greatest literary achievement of Greek civilization—the cornerstone of Western culture and an epic poem without rival in world l...

Franz Kafka

Penguin

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, ...

Ryunosuke Akutagawa

Penguin

'What is the life of a human being - a drop of dew, a flash of lightning? This is so sad, so sad.' Autobiographical stories from one of Japan's masters of modernist story-telling. 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 m...

Henry Miller

Penguin

Shocking, banned and the subject of obscenity trials, Henry Miller's first novel Tropic of Cancer is one of the most scandalous and influential books of the twentieth century -- new to Penguin Modern Classics with a cover by Tracey Emin Tropic of Cancer redefined the novel. Set in Paris in the 1930s, it features a starving American writer who lives a bohemian life among prostit...

Nikolai Gogol

Penguin

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

Penguin

'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...

Aldous Huxley

Vintage

WITH INTRODUCTIONS BY MARGARET ATWOOD AND DAVID BRADSHAW Far in the future, the World Controllers have created the ideal society. Through clever use of genetic engineering, brainwashing and recreational sex and drugs all its members are happy consumers. Bernard Marx seems alone harbouring an ill-defined longing to break free. A visit to one of the few remaining Savage Reservati...

Shirley Jackson

Penguin

Mrs Halloran has inherited the great Halloran house on the death of her son, much to the disgust of her daughter-in-law, the delight of her wicked granddaughter, and the confusion of the rest of the household. But when the original owner - long dead - arrives to announce the world is ending and only the house and its occupants will be saved, they find themselves in a nightmare ...

Leo Tolstoy

Wordsworth Classics

With an Introduction by Anthony Briggs Translated by Louise Maude This powerful novel, Tolstoy's third major masterpiece, after War and Peace and Anna Karenina, begins with a courtroom drama (the finest in Russian literature) all the more stunning for being based on a real-life event. Dmitri Nekhlyudov, called to jury service, is astonished to see in the dock, charged with murd...

Elizabeth Gaskell

Oxford Worlds Classics

'He's spoilt my life,- he's spoilt it for as long as iver I live on this earth' The compelling story of an ordinary girl's tragic passion for a man who disappears, Sylvia's Lovers (1863) is Elizabeth Gaskell's last completed novel. Set in a fictional Whitby at the end of the eighteenth century, the novel is a modern revenge tragedy in which well-intentioned actions have unfores...

George Orwell

Penguin

One of the BBC's '100 Novels That Shaped Our World''Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past'Hidden away in the Record Department of the sprawling Ministry of Truth, Winston Smith skilfully rewrites the past to suit the needs of the Party. Yet he inwardly rebels against the totalitarian world he lives in, which demands absolute obedi...

Françoise Sagan

Penguin

'Bonjour Tristesse' tells the story of Cecile, who leads a carefree life with her widowed father and his young mistresses until he decides to remarry - with devastating consequences. This volume also includes 'A Certain Smile', a novella depicting a love triangle between a Parisian student and a married couple." ...

Shirley Jackson

Penguin

Shirley Jackson's Hangsaman is a story of lurking disquiet and haunting disorientation, inspired by the real-life, unsolved disappearance of a female college student. 'Shirley Jackson's stories are among the most terrifying ever written' Donna Tartt, author of The Goldfinch Natalie Waite, daughter of a mediocre writer and a neurotic housewife, is increasingly unsure of her plac...

Agatha Christie

Harper

CRIME & MYSTERY. With impeccable timing Hercule Poirot, the renowned Belgian detective, makes his dramatic entrance on to the English crime stage. Recently, there had been some strange goings on at Styles St Mary. Evelyn, constant companion to old Mrs Inglethorp, had stormed out of the house muttering something about 'a lot of sharks'. And with her, something indefinable had go...