From the Booker Prize-winning and Women's Prize-shortlisted author of The Silence of the Girls The first novel in Pat Barker's acclaimed 'Life Class' trilogy - an unforgettable story of art and war, f
Features fifteen-year-old Alex and his friends who set out on a diabolical orgy of robbery, rape, torture and murder. Alex is jailed for his teenage delinquency and the State tries to reform him - but
Exploring issues of colonialism, faith and the limits of comprehension, E.M. Forster's A Passage to India is published as a Penguin Essential for the first time. When Adela Quested and her elderly com
A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian is bestselling author Marina Lewycka's hilarious and award winning debut novel, now available as a Penguin Essential for the first time. 'Two years after my mo
'What I've found does the most good is just to get into a taxi and go to Tiffany's. It calms me down right away, the quietness and the proud look of it; nothing very bad could happen to you there, not
Humbert Humbert is a middle-aged, frustrated college professor. In love with his landlady's twelve-year-old daughter Lolita, he'll do anything to possess her. Unable and unwilling to stop himself, he
The Sunday Times Top Ten Bestseller, available as a Penguin Essential for the first time. A castle at the foot of the Carpathian mountains in the 1930s. Two men, inseparable in their youth, meet for t
Drifters in search of work, George and his simple-minded friend Lennie, have nothing in the world except each other - and a dream. A dream that one day they will have some land of their own. Eventuall
'The days and the weeks dragged on, and the months dragged on. . . . The people of the conquered country settled in a slow, silent, waiting revenge. The men who had been traitors, who had helped the i
'In the town they tell the story of the great pearl - how it was found and how it was lost agin. They tell of Kino, the fisherman, and of his wife, Juana, and of the baby, Coyotito. And because the st
'I believe that there is one story in the world, and only one . . . Humans are caught-in their lives, in their thoughts, in their hungers and ambitions, in their avarice and cruelty, and in their kind
'Wherever they's a fight so hungry people can eat, I'll be there. Wherever they's a cop beatin' up a guy, I'll be there. If Casy knowed, why, I'll be in the way guys yell when they're mad an' - I'll b
Patrick Suskind's Perfume is a classic novel of death and sensuality in Paris, published as a Penguin Essential for the first time. 'In eighteenth-century France there lived a man who was one of the m
This book is short-listed for both the Man Booker Prize and the Guardian First Book Award, and published here as a Penguin Essential for the first time. Nine-year-old Suleiman is just awakening to the
Tom Birkin, a damaged survivor of World War One, is spending the summer uncovering a huge medieval wall-painting in the village church of Oxgodby. Joined by another veteran, employed to look for a gra
The classic book that inspired Kes, the famous film, now published as a Penguin Essential for the first time. Barry Hines's A Kestrel for a Knave was published in 1968, and was made into one of the ke
The classic Cold War thriller, published as a Penguin Essential for the first time. Alec Leamas is tired. It's the 1960s, he's been out in the cold for years, spying in Berlin for his British masters,
Anita Brookner's first novel, available as a Penguin Essential for the first time. 'Dr Weiss, at forty, knew that her life had been ruined by literature.' Ruth Weiss, an academic, is beautiful, intell
Twilight is the haunting novel by Nobel Peace prize-winning author Elie Wiesel, available as a Penguin Essential for the first time. Raphael Lipkin hears voices and talks to ghosts. Spending the summe
Any Human Heart is William's Boyd's classic, bestselling novel, now available as a Penguin Essential for the first time. Every life is both ordinary and extraordinary, but Logan Mountstuart's - lived
