Classic fiction Books 622 results

Ernest Hemingway

Ernest Hemingway's literary apprenticeship was served in journalism, a career that he pursued for over four decades. From his early work as a correspondent for the Toronto Star in Europe during the 1920s, through his inimitable articles for Esquire and his first-hand reports of the Spanish Civil War, to the mellow, ironic chronicle of his last African adventures, few correspond...

Shirley Jackson

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

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...

Robert Louis Stevens

The Penguin English Library Edition of Treasure Island and The Ebb-Tide by Robert Louis Stevenson'"One more step, Mr Hands," said I, "and I'll blow your brains out"'In Treasure Island, a weathered old sailor known as Billy Bones arrives at the inn of young Jim Hawkins's parents - and it is the start of an adventure beyond anything he could have imagined. For when Bones dies mys...

Wilkie Collins

The Penguin English Library Edition of The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins'In one moment, every drop of blood in my body was brought to a stop ... There, as if it had that moment sprung out of the earth ... stood the figure of a solitary Woman, dressed from head to foot in white'The Woman in White famously opens with Walter Hartright's eerie encounter on a moonlit London road....

Emily Bronte

The Penguin English Library Edition of Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë"May you not rest, as long as I am living. You said I killed you - haunt me, then"Lockwood, the new tenant of Thrushcross Grange on the bleak Yorkshire moors, is forced to seek shelter one night at Wuthering Heights, the home of his landlord. There he discovers the history of the tempestuous events that too...

Jane Austen

The Penguin English Library Edition of Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen'No sooner had he made it clear to himself and his friends that she had hardly a good feature in her face, than he began to find it was rendered uncommonly intelligent by the beautiful expression of her dark eyes ...'When Elizabeth Bennet first meets eligible bachelor Fitzwilliam Darcy, she thinks him arro...

Jane Austen

The Penguin English Library Edition of Mansfield Park by Jane Austen'We have all been more or less to blame ... every one of us, excepting Fanny'Taken from the poverty of her parents' home in Portsmouth, Fanny Price is brought up with her rich cousins at Mansfield Park, acutely aware of her humble rank and with her cousin Edmund as her sole ally. During her uncle's absence in A...

George Eliot

One of the BBC's '100 Novels That Shaped Our World'The Penguin English Library Edition of Middlemarch by George Eliot'She did not know then that it was Love who had come to her briefly as in a dream before awaking, with the hues of morning on his wings - that it was Love to whom she was sobbing her farewell as his image was banished by the blameless rigour of irresistible day'G...

E M Forster

The Penguin English Library Edition of A Room with a View by E. M. Forster'"But you do," he went on, not waiting for contradiction. "You love the boy body and soul, plainly, directly, as he loves you, and no other word expresses it ..."Lucy has her rigid, middle-class life mapped out for her until she visits Florence with her uptight cousin Charlotte, and finds her neatly order...

Anne Bronte

One of the BBC's '100 Novels That Shaped Our World'The Penguin English Library Edition of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Brontë'She looked so like herself that I knew not how to bear it'In this sensational, hard-hitting and passionate tale of marital cruelty, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall sees a mysterious tenant, Helen Graham, unmasked not as a 'wicked woman' as the local g...

James Joyce

The Penguin English Library Edition of Dubliners by James Joyce'Every night as I gazed up at the window I said softly to myself the word paralysis. It had always sounded strangely in my ears ... But now it sounded to me like the name of some maleficent and sinful being. It filled me with fear, and yet I longed to be nearer to it and to look upon its deadly work'From a child gra...

Charles Dickens

The Penguin English Library Edition of A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens'Liberty, equality, fraternity, or death; - the last, much the easiest to bestow, O Guillotine!'Described by Dickens as 'the best story I have written', A Tale of Two Cities interweaves thrilling historical drama with heartbreaking personal tragedy. It vividly depicts a revolutionary Paris running red...

Elizabeth Gaskell

The Penguin English Library edition of North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell'How am I to dress up in my finery, and go off and away to smart parties, after the sorrow I have seen today?'Elizabeth Gaskell's compassionate, richly dramatic novel features one of the most original and fully-rounded female characters in Victorian fiction, Margaret Hale. It shows how, forced to move fr...

Charles Dickens

The Penguin English Library Edition of Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens'A parish child - the orphan of a workhouse - the humble, half-starved drudge - to be cuffed and buffeted through the world, despised by all, and pitied by none'Dark, mysterious and mordantly funny, Oliver Twist features some of the most memorably drawn villains in all of fiction - the treacherous gangmaster ...

Charlotte Bronte

The Penguin English Library Edition of Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë'The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself'Passionate, poetic and revolutionary, Jane Eyre is a novel of naked emotional power. Its story of a defiant, fiercely intelligent woman who refuses to accept her appointed place in society - and instead finds love...

Mary Shelley

One of the BBC's '100 Novels That Shaped Our World'The Penguin English Library Edition of Frankenstein by Mary Shelley'Never did I behold a vision so horrible as his face, of such loathsome, yet appalling hideousness'A twisted, upside-down creation myth, Mary Shelley's chilling Gothic tale lays bare the dark side of science, and the horror within us all. It tells the story of V...

Charlotte Brontë

The Penguin English Library Edition of Villette by Charlotte Brontë'That evening more firmly than ever fastened into my soul the conviction that Fate was of stone, and Hope a false idol - blind, bloodless, and of granite core. I felt, too, that the trial God had appointed me was gaining its climax, and must now be turned by my own hands, hot, feeble, trembling as they were' Wit...

Henry James

The Penguin English Library edition of The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James 'She knew of no wrong that he had done; he was not violent, he was not cruel; she simply believed that he hated her' When Isabel Archer, a beautiful, spirited American, is brought to Europe by her wealthy aunt Touchett, it is expected that she will soon marry. But Isabel, resolved to enjoy her freedom,...

Roald Dahl

What could go wrong when a wife pawns the mink coat that her lover gave her as a parting gift? What happens when the priceless piece of furniture is the subject of a deceitful bargain? Can a wronged women take revenge on her dead husband? In these dark, disturbing stories Roald Dahl explores the sinister side of human nature: the cunning, sly, selfish part of each of us that le...

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

The Gambler and Other Stories is Fyodor Dostoyevsky's collection of one novella and six short stories reflecting his own life - indeed, 'The Gambler', a story of a young tutor in the employment of a formerly wealthy Russian General, was written under a strict deadline so he could pay off his roulette debts. This volume includes 'Bobok', the tale of a frustrated writer visiting ...

Louisa May Alcott

Nominated as one of America's best-loved novels by PBS's The Great American ReadPart of Penguin's beautiful hardback Clothbound Classics series, designed by the award-winning Coralie Bickford-Smith, these delectable and collectible editions are bound in high-quality colourful, tactile cloth with foil stamped into the design. Meg, Jo, Amy and Beth - four "little women" enduring ...

Niccolo Machiavelli

Machiavelli is one of the most famous strategists of all time. In this collection he discusses the dangers of conspiracies, and the component parts of an army, vital for gaining and holding power in his day. He also gives advice on tactics and discipline, and explains why promises made under force ought not to be kept. GREAT IDEAS. Throughout history, some books have changed th...

Fyodor Dostoevsky

Translated by Constance Garnett with an Introduction by A.D.P. Briggs. In 1869 a young Russian was strangled, shot through the head and thrown into a pond. His crime? A wish to leave a small group of violent revolutionaries, from which he had become alienated. Dostoevsky takes this real-life catastrophe as the subject and culmination of Devils, a title that refers the young rad...

Mark Twain

'Who could read the programme for the excursion without longing to make one of the party?' So Mark Twain acclaims his voyage from New York City to Europe and the Holy Land in June 1867. His adventures produced The Innocents Abroad, a book so funny and provocative it made him an international star for the rest of his life. He was making his first responses to the Old World - to...

James Joyce

With a new Introduction by Cedric Watts, Research Professor of English, University of Sussex. James Joyce's astonishing masterpiece, Ulysses, tells of the diverse events which befall Leopold Bloom and Stephen Dedalus in Dublin on 16 June 1904, during which Bloom's voluptuous wife, Molly, commits adultery. Initially deemed obscene in England and the USA, this richly-allusive nov...

Oscar Wilde

Part of Penguin's beautiful hardback Clothbound Classics series, designed by the award-winning Coralie Bickford-Smith, these delectable and collectible editions are bound in high-quality colourful, tactile cloth with foil stamped into the design. Enthralled by his own exquisite portrait, Dorian Gray exchanges his soul for eternal youth and beauty. Influenced by his friend Lord ...

Leo Tolstoy

Leo Tolstoy's last completed novel, Resurrection is an intimate, psychological tale of guilt, anger and forgivenessServing on the jury at a murder trial, Prince Dmitri Nekhlyudov is devastated when he sees the prisoner - Katyusha, a young maid he seduced and abandoned years before. As Dmitri faces the consequences of his actions, he decides to give up his life of wealth and lux...

Jane Austen

Part of Penguin's beautiful hardback Clothbound Classics series, designed by the award-winning Coralie Bickford-Smith, these delectable and collectible editions are bound in high-quality colourful, tactile cloth with foil stamped into the design. When Elizabeth Bennet first meets eligible bachelor Fitzwilliam Darcy, she thinks him arrogant and conceited; he is indifferent to he...

Emily Bronte

Part of Penguin's beautiful hardback Clothbound Classics series, designed by the award-winning Coralie Bickford-Smith, these delectable and collectible editions are bound in high-quality colourful, tactile cloth with foil stamped into the design. In a house haunted by memories, the past is everywhere ... As darkness falls, a man caught in a snowstorm is forced to shelter at the...