Ali-A

Alia Akkam is former managing editor at both Beverage Media and Hospitality Design magazines, where she remains a frequent contributor and continues to immerse herself in the intricacies of the spirits and hotel worlds. Her interest lies in covering the intersection of food, drink, travel and design, and she has written for outlets including Architectural Digest, Food &amp; Wine and Vogue.

Alia Akkam

Alice Albinia

Alice Albinia is an award-winning author of fiction and non-fiction. Her books include Empires of the Indus: The Story of a River and Cwen, set on an archipelago which comes under female rule, which was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction and Scotland's National Book Awards. Albinia has worked as an editor and journalist, writing for publications including the Guardian, Financial Times and National Geographic. She has taught writing in Orkney for the Islands' Council, at King's College London and the University of Kent.

Alice B. Toklas

Alice Bailey

Alice Beer

Alice Bell is a full time astrologer and resident astrologer for British Vogue. She first got into astrology because it helped her validate certain personality traits she had always had trouble accepting, but it also made her more aware of which areas of life she needed to lean into to feel the most fulfilled. Through her work, she aims to help others find their unique life path and trust in their own personal timing. 
 
In addition to her weekly horoscopes for British Vogue, she is a co-host of the astrology podcast, Astrology and You, and has worked with many fashion and beauty brands to create astrology content. Her work has been featured in Vogue, Refinery 29, Goop, The Times, and Forbes. You can find Alice on Instagram @stalkalice.

Alice Bell

Alice Borchardt

Alice Boyes, PhD, is a former clinical psychologist-turned-writer. The author of The Anxiety Toolkit and The Healthy Mind Toolkit, she is a popular blogger for Psychology Today (where her articles have over 23 million views) and The Harvard Business Review. Her research has been published in The American Psychological Association, and and she has been featured in publications like the Guardian and Women's Health.

Alice Boyes

Alice Clark-Platts is a former human rights lawyer who has worked at the UN International Criminal Tribunal in connection with the Rwandan genocide, and on cases involving Winnie Mandela and the rapper Snoop Dogg. She studied at Durham University and is a graduate of the Curtis Brown creative writing course whose fiction has been shortlisted for literary prizes.

Alice Clark-Platts

No stranger to doing things his own way, Alice Cooper has cast a long shadow over rock music with an unrivalled live show and timeless anthems like 'School’s Out', 'No Mr. Nice Guy', and 'Poison'. Selling over 50 million albums worldwide, he earned a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame® in 2003, and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame® inducted him as part of its class of 2011. Boasting one of the most influential catalogues in history, Rolling Stone cited 1971’s platinum-certified Love It To Death among the '500 Greatest Albums of All Time', while other platinum releases spanned the seminal Killer [1971], School’s Out [1972], the Billboard 200 #1 Billion Dollar Babies [1973], Welcome to My Nightmare [1975], and Trash [1989], to name a few. The latter even graced Rolling Stone’s '50 Greatest Hair Metal Albums of All Time'. 
 
He’s so embedded in generations of popular culture that he not only made a cult-classic appearance in Wayne’s World during 1992, but he also starred alongside John Legend and Sara Bareilles in NBC’s 2018 production of Andrew Lloyd Weber and Tim Rice’s Jesus Christ Superstar Live in Concert - and also memorably appeared on both The Muppets and That 70s Show! as well as in Dark Shadows. Beyond hundreds of syncs, everyone from Etta James, The Smashing Pumpkins, Megadeth, and The Flaming Lips has covered his tunes. The Beastie Boys, Disturbed, and countless others have sampled him. His collaborators have notably included the late Vincent Price, Aerosmith, Guns N’ Roses, and Jon Bon Jovi, to name just a few. Plus, he co-founded Hollywood Vampires alongside Aerosmith’s Joe Perry and Johnny Depp. Most recently, 2025’s The Revenge Of Alice Cooper reunited the surviving members of the original Alice Cooper band to widespread critical acclaim. After thousands upon thousands of gigs and easily a million miles travelled, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame® Inductee continues ever onwards into rock 'n' roll folklore.

Alice Cooper

Alice Correia

Alice Courtley is an illustrator based in the UK. She creates playful images with a blend of people, animals and backgrounds inspired by real life. Her work has been recognised for prizes such as the Batsford Prize and featured in exhibitions such as the AOI's 'Inspired to Innovate' in London. She has been shortlisted for the Klaus Flugge Prize 2023.

Alice Courtley

Alice Gendron was diagnosed with ADHD at the age of 29 and created her online platform, The Mini ADHD Coach, to navigate her diagnosis and help others to make sense of theirs too. Alice's funny and relatable illustrations are loved around the world. She currently lives in Bordeaux, France and has also lived in Melbourne, Australia.

Alice Gendron

Alice Hart

Alice Hart is an established and experienced UK-based food writer, food stylist, chef and cookbook author. Her vibrant, seasonal vegetarian recipes celebrate wholefoods, spices and herb by the handful. This is her second vegetarian cookbook. Alice lives by the sea.

Alice Hoffman

Alice James Books

Alice LaPlante

Alice Lascelles

Alice Levine

Alice Liveing is a personal trainer, influencer, columnist, podcaster and bestselling author who has inspired thousands of people with her relatable, motivational and balanced health advice. She runs her own successful fitness app Give Me Strength. This is her fourth book.

Alice Liveing

Alice Lowe

Alice Mah is a Chinese Canadian-British writer and Professor of Urban and Environmental Studies at the University of Glasgow. Originally from a small town in northern British Columbia, she has a long-standing interest in ecology and place. Her award-winning research focuses on toxic pollution and environmental justice, the subjects of her most recent books: Petrochemical Planet and Plastic Unlimited. This is her first trade book.

Alice Mah

Alice Mawdsley is a UK-based freelance illustrator who studied illustration at Falmouth University. She enjoys reportage illustration, sharing the stories of the people she meets across her travels. Known for her colourful drawings, Alice explores different cultures, daily life and food - highlighting similarities that connect us all.

Alice Mawdsley

Alice Montgomery

Alice Munro was born in 1931 and was the author of thirteen collections of stories and the novel, Lives of Girls and Women. She received many awards and prizes, including three of Canada’s Governor General’s Literary Awards and two Giller Prizes, the Rea Award for the Short Story, the Lannan Literary Award, the WHSmith Book Award in the UK, the National Book Critics Circle Award in the US, was shortlisted for the Booker Prize for Who Do You Think You Are? (previously published as The Beggar Maid), and was awarded the Man Booker International Prize 2009 for her overall contribution to fiction on the world stage, and in 2013 she won the Nobel Prize in Literature. Her stories have appeared in the New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly, Paris Review and other publications, and her collections have been translated into thirteen languages. Alice Munro died in 2024.

Alice Munro

Alice Nutter

Alice has worked at or written for nearly all of the country’s broadsheets and women’s glossies. She spent a decade at The Times as its Senior Fashion Writer, where she contributed front-page stories as well as big hitting fashion and lifestyle interviews for Times2 and the Saturday Magazine. Then came a stint as Marie Claire’s Fashion Features Director, where she commissioned, wrote and edited a weighty proportion of the magazine and co-founded the new publication Marie Claire Runway. Today, with two daughters in tow, Alice continues her career on a freelance basis. She is a Contributing Editor at Red and Marie Claire Australia, and continues to write across the board for titles including Grazia, LivingEtc and The FT.

Alice Olins

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Kingsley Amis

<a href="https://shop.penguin.co.uk/collections/book-bundles-modern-classics/?&amp;utm_source=Penguin.co.uk&amp;utm_medium=Linked_text&amp;utm_campaign=Penguin_Modern_Classics_Series_26_06">Choose 3 timeless classics for only £21 over on the Penguin Shop</a>

The short stories of Kingsley Amis - the great master of post-war comic prose - are dark, playful, moving, surprising and extremely funny. This definitive collection gathers all Amis's short fiction in a single volume for the first time and encompasses five decades of storytelling. In 'The 2003 Claret', written in 1958, a time machine is invented for the weighty task of sending a man to 2010 to discover what the booze will taste like. In 'Boris and the Colonel' a Cambridge spy is unearthed in the sleepy English countryside with the help of a plucky horse, while In 'Mason's Life' two men meet inside their respective dreams. The collection spans many genres, offering ingenious alternative histories, mystery and horror, satirical reflections and a devilishly funny attacks. Amis's stories reveal the scope of his imagination and the warmth beneath his acerbic humour, and they all share the unmistakable style and wit of one of Britain's best loved writers. 
 
Kingsley Amis' (1922-1995) works take a humorous yet highly critical look at British society, especially of the period following the end of World War II. Born in London, Amis explored his disillusionment with British society in novels such as THAT UNCERTAIN FEELING (1955). His other works include THE GREEN MAN (1970); STANLEY AND THE WOMEN (1984); and THE OLD DEVILS (1986) which won the Booker Prize. Amis also wrote poetry, criticism, and short stories. 
 
Rachel Cusk was born in 1967. She has won the Whitbread First Novel Award and the Somerset Maugham Award, and is the author of two works of non-fiction and seven novels, including In The Fold, longlisted for the 2005 Man Booker Prize, and Arlington Park, shortlisted for the Orange Broadband Prize 2007. Her non-fiction book, A Life's Work, was published to huge acclaim in 2001, and her account of a summer spent in Italy with her family, The Last Supper, was published in 2009. Her most recent novel, The Bradshaw Variations was published in 2009. In 2003 she was chosen as one of Granta's Best Young Novelists. She lives in Brighton.

Complete Stories

In Kingsley Amis's Difficulties With Girls, Jenny Bunn and Patrick Standish have settled into London life with their troubled courtship long behind them. Patrick works in publishing and Jenny teaches sick children in a hospital. They have reached a certain level of maturity, or so they think. It is not long before they realize their respectability will be severely tested by seductive neighbours with a taste for whisky, the sexually confused Ted Valentine, and the literary set of Hampstead. 
 
In this funny and provocative study of a young couple growing up, Amis shows us that the difficulty with marriage is that it's so hard to preserve, especially when Patrick and Jenny harbour deep yearnings for a different kind of life. 
 
Kingsley Amis's (1922-95) works take a humorous yet highly critical look at British society, especially in the period following the end of World War II. Born in London, Amis explored his disillusionment in novels such as That Uncertain Feeling (1955). His other works include The Green Man (1970), Stanley and the Women (1984), and The Old Devils (1986), which won the Booker Prize. Amis also wrote poetry, criticism, and short stories.

Difficulties With Girls

Italo Calvino

Italo Calvino was due to deliver the Charles Eliot Norton lectures at Harvard in 1985-86, but they were left unfinished at his death. The surviving drafts explore of the concepts of Lightness, Quickness, Multiplicity, Exactitude and Visibility (Constancy was to be the sixth) in serious yet playful essays that reveal Calvino's debt to the comic strip and the folktale. With his customary imagination and grace, he sought to define the virtues of the great literature of the past in order to shape the values of the future. This collection is a brilliant précis of the work of a great writer whose legacy will endure through the millennium he addressed. 
 
Italo Calvino, one of Italy's finest postwar writers, has delighted readers around the world with his deceptively simple, fable-like stories. Calvino was born in Cuba in 1923 and raised in San Remo, Italy; he fought for the Italian Resistance from 1943-45. His major works include Cosmicomics (1968), Invisible Cities (1972), and If on a winter's night a traveler (1979). He died in Siena in1985, of a brain hemorrhage.

Six Memos for the Next Millennium

In Kingsley Amis's Take A Girl Like You, twenty year old Jenny Bunn is supernally beautiful and stubbornly chaste, which is why Patrick Standish, an arrogant schoolmaster, wants her so much. This perceptive coming of age novel about a northern girl who moves south, wants to fit in and yet wants to preserve her principles, challenges our assumptions about the battle of the sexes and classes in Britain. It is a story about 'the squalid business of the man and the woman' and 'the most wonderful thing that had ever happened' to Jenny Bunn. 
 
Few twentieth century novelists have explored our preoccupation with sex like Kingsley Amis. The results are surprising and often hilarious. 
 
Kingsley Amis's (1922-95) works take a humorous yet highly critical look at British society, especially in the period following the end of World War II. Born in London, Amis explored his disillusionment in novels such as That Uncertain Feeling (1955). His other works include The Green Man (1970), Stanley and the Women (1984), and The Old Devils (1986), which won the Booker Prize. Amis also wrote poetry, criticism, and short stories.

Take A Girl Like You

In That Uncertain Feeling by Kingsley Amis, competition is stiff for the position of sub-librarian in Aberdarcy Library. For John Lewis, the situation is complicated by the attentions of daunting and desirable village socialite, Elizabeth Gruffyd-Williams, who is married to a member of the local Council. Pursuing an affair with her whilst keeping his job prospects alive is John's predicament, as he finds himself running down Welsh country lanes at midnight in a wig and dress, resisting the advances of local drunks and suffering the long speeches of a 'nut-faced' clergyman. 
 
At times tenderly satirical and at times riotously slap-stick, Amis sends up an array of rural stereotypes in this story about a man who doesn't know what he wants. 
 
Kingsley Amis's (1922-95) works take a humorous yet highly critical look at British society, especially in the period following the end of World War II. Born in London, Amis explored his disillusionment in novels such as That Uncertain Feeling (1955). His other works include The Green Man (1970), Stanley and the Women (1984), and The Old Devils (1986), which won the Booker Prize. Amis also wrote poetry, criticism, and short stories.

That Uncertain Feeling

John Mortimer

For the first time in Penguin Modern Classics, this is a new selection of some of the best moments in the trials of Horace Rumpole, fiction's most loved barrister-at-law. When not downing Château Fleet Street in Pommeroy's Wine Bar or held in check by She Who Must Be Obeyed, the Old Bailey hack can be found battling through the Law Courts with his formidable mixture of wit, eloquence, cynicism and scruffiness. And whether he is defending various members of the notorious and incompetent south London crime family, the Timsons, or mocking the pomposity and hypocrisy of his own profession, Rumpole is an amiably relentless reminder of what justice should really be about. These twenty stories serve as the definitive introduction to one of the wisest and wittiest characters in British comic writing, in all his shabby glory.

The Collected Stories of Rumpole

Wallace Stegner

Literary agent Joe Allston, the central character of Stegner's novel All the Little Live Things, is now retired and, in his own words, 'just killing time until time gets around to killing me.' His parents and his only son are long dead, leaving him with neither ancestors nor descendants, tradition nor ties. His job, trafficking the talent of others, had not been his choice. He passes through life as a spectator. A postcard from an old friend causes Allston to return to the journals of a trip he and his wife had taken years before, a journey to his mother's birthplace, where he'd sought a link with the past. The memories of that trip, both grotesque and poignant, move through layers of time and meaning, and reveal that Joe Allston isn't quite spectator enough. 
 
Wallace Stegner was the author of, among other works of fiction, Remembering Laughter (1973); The Big Rock Candy Mountain (1943); Joe Hill (1950); All the Little Live Things (1967, Commonwealth Club Gold Medal); A Shooting Star (1961); Angle of Repose (1971, Pulitzer Prize); Recapitulation (1979); Crossing to Safety (1987); and Collected Stories (1990). His nonfiction includes Beyond the Hundredth Meridian (1954); Wolf Willow (1963); The Sound of Mountain Water (essays, 1969); The Uneasy Chair: A Biography of Bernard deVoto (1964); American Places (with Page Stegner, 1981); and Where the Bluebird Sings to the Lemonade Springs: Living and Writing in the West (1992). Three short stories have won O.Henry prizes, and in 1980 he received the Robert Kirsch Award from the Los Angeles Times for his lifetime literary achievements.

The Spectator Bird

Hans Fallada

A Small Circus is a powerful 1931 portrayal of a German town on the brink of chaos, from bestselling author Hans Fallada (writer of Alone in Berlin) 
 
It is summer, 1929, and in a small German town a storm is brewing. The shabby reporter Tredup leads a precarious existence working for the Pomeranian Chronicle - until he takes some photographs that offer the chance to make a fortune. In Krüger's bar, the farmers are plotting their revenge on greedy officials. A mysterious travelling salesman from Berlin , Henning, is stirring up trouble - but no one knows why. Meanwhile the Nazis grow stronger and the Communists fight them in the streets. And at the centre of it all, the Mayor, 'Fatty' Gareis, seeks the easy life even as events spiral beyond his control. 
 
As tensions erupt between workers and bosses, town and country, Left and Right, alliances are broken, bribes are taken and plots are hatched, until the tension spills over into violence. 
 
'Uncommonly vivid and original' Robert Musil 
 
'Real love and real humanity' Hermann Hesse 
 
'The best account of small-town Germany ... so terribly genuine, it is frightening' Kurt Tucholsky 
 
'This novel's genius ... lies in Fallada's ability to reveal ... as well as to analyse the macabre game of musical chairs that was the Weimar Republic. Fallada gives us front-row seats to Germany's decade-long quest for a sacrificial scapegoat that culminated in the Nazi takeover ... Two years after Alone in Berlin's runaway success, A Small Circus continues the Fallada revival that owes so much to the efforts of its translator, the poet Michael Hofmann' André Naffis-Sahely, Independent 
 
'Fallada creates characters with Dickensian prodigality, each yokel, hack, pig and pen-pusher brought to life in Michael Hofmann's beautifully judged translation ... a generous, life-affirming treat' Jake Kerridge, Telegraph 
 
'Michael Hofmann ... comes as close as possible to giving us Fallada's work in all its coarse, humorous, immediate, tragic glory' Charlotte Moore, Spectator 
 
'Not for the first time, all praise is due to Michael Hofmann's art and feel for nuance. His translation catches the many voices - some exasperated, others bewildered, a few downright angry - that make this bold, exuberant and candid narrative sizzle with life and the relentlessly shocking reality of it all' Irish Times 
 
'Fallada's own experiences as a regional journalist in north Germany underlie the action, and it is this sense of realism, combined with an ear for dialogue and an acute understanding of human frailty, that make the novel such an authentic portrayal of an imploding era' Ben Hutchinson, Observer

A Small Circus

William S. Burroughs

These letters cover the activities of Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, and Jack Kerouac in the years that gave birth to the Beat Generation. Written mostly to Ginsberg or Kerouac, the letters provide a rare glimpse into Burroughs's psyche, revealing his struggle with drug addiction, his confusion over his sexual identity, and his search for a form fluid enough to mirror his mind and art.

Rub Out the Words

Letters 1959-1974

Tim Blanning

Once musicians such as Mozart were little more than court servants; now they are multimillionaire superstars wielding more power than politicians. How did this extraordinary change come about? 
 
Tim Blanning's brilliantly enjoyable book examines how everything from the cult of the romantic to technology and travel all fed the inexorable rise of music in the West, making it the most dominant and ubiquitous of the art forms. Encompassing balladeers, the great composers, jazz legends and rock gods, this is an enthralling story of power, patronage, creativity and genius.

The Triumph of Music

Composers, Musicians and Their Audiences, 1700 to the Present

Joseph Brodsky

'Reading Brodsky's essays is like a conversation with an immensely erudite, hugely entertaining and witty (and often very funny) interlocutor' Wall Street Journal 
 
Watermark is Joseph Brodsky's witty, intelligent, moving and elegant portrait of Venice. Looking at every aspect of the city, from its waterways, streets and architecture to its food, politics and people, Brodsky captures its magnificence and beauty, and recalls his own memories of the place he called home for many winters, as he remembers friends, lovers and enemies he has encountered. Above all, he reflects with great poetic force on how the rising tide of time affects city and inhabitants alike. 
 
Watermark is an unforgettable piece of writing, and a wonderful evocation of a remarkable, unique city. 
 
Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature

Watermark: An Essay on Venice

George Orwell

This is the essential edition of the essential book of modern times, 1984, now annotated for students with an introduction by D. J. Taylor. 
 
Ever since its publication in 1948, George Orwell's terrifying vision of a totalitarian regime where Big Brother controls its citizens like 'a boot stamping on a human face' has become a touchstone for human freedom, and one of the most widely-read books in the world. In this new annotated edition Orwell's biographer D. J. Taylor elucidates the full meaning of this timeless satire, explaining contemporary references in the novel, placing it in the context of Orwell's life, elaborating on his extraordinary use of language and explaining the terms such as Newspeak, Doublethink and Room 101 that have become familiar phrases today.

Nineteen Eighty-Four

The Annotated Edition

Javier Marías

Dark Back of Time is a compelling story of the way in which reality blurs into fiction by Javier Marías, whose highly-anticipated new novel The Infatuations is published in 2013. It is translated by Esther Allen in Penguin Modern Classics. 
 
'We lose everything because everything remains except us', says the mysterious narrator of this extraordinary novel, which meditates on the transience, chance and fragility of life. As a man called Javier Marías recalls the strange events and people that shaped his past, including ghostly literary figures, a pilot, an adventurer, a brother who died as a child and the king of an island in the Caribbean, we begin to question the nature of time, memory and reality itself. Here the writer is both a keeper of memories and a purveyor of illusions, destined to be lost in the dark back of time. 
 
Javier Marías was born in Madrid in 1951. He has published ten novels, two collections of short stories and several volumes of essays. His work has been translated into thirty-two languages and won a dazzling array of international literary awards, including the prestigious Dublin IMPAC award for A Heart So White. He is also a highly practised translator into Spanish of English authors, including Joseph Conrad, Robert Louis Stevenson, Sir Thomas Browne and Laurence Sterne. 
 
'I was enthralled by his strange mix of made-up memories, lost experiences and real-life fantasies' Marina Warner, Guardian 
 
'He uses language like an anatomist uses a scalpel to lay bare the innermost secrets of that strangest of species, the human being' W. G. Sebald, author of Austerlitz

Dark Back of Time

Ludmilla Petrushevskaya

In these dark, dreamlike love stories with a twist, Ludmilla Petrushevskaya tells of strange encounters in claustrophobic communal apartments, ill-fated holiday romances, office trysts, schoolgirl crushes, tentative courtships, rampant infidelity, tender devotion and terrifying madness. By turns sly and sweet, earthy and sublime, these fables of flawed love blend black humour and macabre spectacle with transformative moments of grace.

There Once Lived a Girl Who Seduced Her Sister's Husband, And He Hanged Himself: Love Stories

In the dark narratives that make up When I Was Mortal by Javier Marías, winner of the Dublin IMPAC prize and author of the bestselling A Heart So White, a dapper Paris doctor dispenses a treatment for dissatisfied wives. A mother auditions for her first porn movie. A writer working on a study of pain makes himself the subject of his experiments. A voyeur mistakes a murderer for a fellow peeping tom ... these are some of the characters observed by the narrator of these chilling stories. Ironic, unsettling, imbued with dread and with droll humour, Javier Marías' short tales cast a shrewd, sardonic eye on humanity. 
 
Javier Marías was born in Madrid in 1951. He has published ten novels, two collections of short stories and several volumes of essays. His work has been translated into thirty-two languages and won a dazzling array of international literary awards, including the prestigious Dublin IMPAC award for A Heart So White. He is also a highly practised translator into Spanish of English authors, including Joseph Conrad, Robert Louis Stevenson, Sir Thomas Browne and Laurence Sterne. He has held academic posts in Spain, the United States and in Britain, as Lecturer in Spanish Literature at Oxford University.

When I Was Mortal

Susan Sontag

First published in 1967, Death Kit is a classic of modern fiction. Blending realism and dream, Susan Sontag's second novel offers a passionate exploration of the recesses of the American conscience. 
 
The novel is a narrative of the suffering of Dalton 'Diddy' Harron, told through his own observations. He works in advertising for a microscope manufacturer, is thirty-three and divorced and a month ago tried to commit suicide. The haphazard events of his life, including killing a railway worker and falling in love with a blind girl, are brought to us through the lens of Diddy's own mind. We follow him through his journey to justify his actions and exorcise his inner demons, but we can see what is happening to Diddy only from inside his head, in the present, and the balance of his mind does not always bear close scrutiny.

Death Kit

George Orwell's vivid memoir of his time living among the desperately poor and destitute, Down and Out in Paris and London is a moving tour of the underworld of society. 
 
'You have talked so often of going to the dogs - and well, here are the dogs, and you have reached them.' 
 
Written when Orwell was a struggling writer in his twenties, it documents his 'first contact with poverty'. Here, he painstakingly documents a world of unrelenting drudgery and squalor - sleeping in bug-infested hostels and doss houses of last resort, working as a dishwasher in Paris's vile 'Hôtel X', surviving on scraps and cigarette butts, living alongside tramps, a star-gazing pavement artist and a starving Russian ex-army captain. Exposing a shocking, previously-hidden world to his readers, Orwell gave a human face to the statistics of poverty for the first time - and in doing so, found his voice as a writer.

Down and Out in Paris and London

Penguin Modern Classics

'An unrivalled picture of the rumours, suspicions and treachery of civil war' Antony Beevor 
 
Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic Socialism as I understand it'. Thus wrote Orwell following his experiences as a militiaman in the Spanish Civil War, chronicled in Homage to Catalonia. Here he brings to bear all the force of his humanity, passion and clarity, describing with bitter intensity the bright hopes and cynical betrayals of that chaotic episode: the revolutionary euphoria of Barcelona, the courage of ordinary Spanish men and women he fought alongside, the terror and confusion of the front, his near-fatal bullet wound and the vicious treachery of his supposed allies. 
 
A firsthand account of the brutal conditions of the Spanish Civil War, George Orwell's Homage to Catalonia includes an introduction by Julian Symons.

Homage to Catalonia

'Politics and the English Language' is widely considered Orwell's most important essay on style. Style, for Orwell, was never simply a question of aesthetics; it was always inextricably linked to politics and to truth.'All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred and schizophrenia.When the general atmosphere is bad, language must suffer.'Language is a political issue, and slovenly use of language and cliches make it easier for those in power to deliberately use misleading language to hide unpleasant political facts. Bad English, he believed, was a vehicle for oppressive ideology, and it is no accident that 'Politics and the English Language' was written after the close of World War II.

Politics and the English Language

Vladimir Nabokov

Dr Philip Wild, a man of brilliance, wit, fortune and tremendous bulk, is used to suffering humiliations at the hands of his wife, the younger, slender, and rudely promiscuous Flora. But in a novel, a 'maddening masterpiece' documenting her infidelities, written by one of her lovers and given to the doctor, she appears as My Laura. Dishonoured, Wild still finds pleasure in life, by indulging in self-annihilation, beginning with the removal of his toes.

The Original of Laura

(Dying Is Fun) A Novel in Fragments

Jack Kerouac

'His first novel is a revelation ... the writing is vivid, serious and extraordinary ... wonderful' The Times 
 
 The Sea is My Brother is Jack Kerouac's very first novel, begun shortly after his tour as a merchant sailor in 1942. Lost during his lifetime, it is an intense portrait of friendship and brotherhood and a meditation on the desire to escape society, following the fortunes of two men as they impulsively decide to work their passage on the S.S. Westminster: drinking, arguing, playing cards, dodging torpedoes and contemplating the vast, terrible beauty of the sea. Published with fragments of early stories and letters, this visceral work gives a unique insight into the young Kerouac and the formation of his genius. 
 
 'What's clear from this newly published first novel is that Kerouac was positively fizzing with talent at an early age' Sunday Times

The Sea is My Brother

The Lost Novel

Leszek Kolakowski

'The most esteemed philosopher to have produced a general introduction to his discipline since Bertrand Russell' Independent 
 
In these essays, one of the most important thinkers of the twentieth century writes about communism and socialism, the problem of evil, Erasmus and the reform of the Church, reason and truth, and whether God is happy. Accessible and absorbing, the essays in Is God Happy? deal with some of the eternal problems of philosophy and the most vital questions of our age. 
 
Leszek Kolakowski has also written on religion, Spinoza, Bergson, Pascal and seventeenth-century thought. He left communist Poland after his expulsion from Warsaw University for anti-communist activities. From 1970 he was a fellow of All Souls College, Oxford. 
 
'His distinctive mix of irony and moral seriousness, religious sensibility and epistemological scepticism, social engagement and political doubt was truly rare ... a true Central European intellectual-perhaps the last' Tony Judt, The New York Times Review of Books

Is God Happy?

Selected Essays

Miklos Nyiszli

When the Nazis invaded Hungary in 1944, they sent virtually the entire Jewish population to Auschwitz. A Hungarian Jew and a medical doctor, Dr. Miklos Nyiszli was spared from death for a grimmer fate: to perform "scientific research" on his fellow inmates under the supervision of the infamous "Angel of Death": Dr. Josef Mengele. Nyiszli was named Mengele's personal research pathologist. Miraculously, he survived to give this terrifying and sobering account of the terror of Auschwitz. 
 
This new Penguin Modern Classics edition contains an introduction by Richard Evans.

Auschwitz: A Doctor's Eyewitness Account

Hunter S Thompson

A compilation of the subversive, important and entertaining writer of Hunter S. Thompson - renowned American writer of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas 
 
'It would not do to be found in the desert under these circumstances: firing wildly into the cactus from a car full of drugs...' 
 
Fear and Loathing at Rolling Stone showcases the evolution of the writer of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and Hell's Angels, through his work at the magazine that he helped to put on the map. Jann S. Wenner, Hunter Thompson's editor and friend for nearly thirty-five years, has chosen the pieces, including many never collected before. They show how Thompson's Rolling Stone writing, when taken as a whole, forms an extended, allusive autobiography of the writer himself as he pursues his lifelong obsession, the king-hell story of them all: The Death of the American Dream.

Fear and Loathing at Rolling Stone

The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson

Nabokov begins his Strong Opinions: 'I think like a genius, I write like a distinguished author, and I speak like a child.' In the interviews collected here - covering everything from his own burgeoning literary celebrity to Kubrick's Lolita to lepidoptery - he is never casual or off-guard. Instead he insisted on receiving questions in advance and always carefully composed his responses. 
 
Keen to dismiss those who fail to understand his work and happy to butcher those sacred cows of the literary canon he dislikes, Nabokov is much too entertaining to be infuriating, and these interviews, letters and articles are as engaging, challenging and caustic as anything he ever wrote. 
 
Part of a major new series of the works of Vladimir Nabokov, author of Lolita and Pale Fire, in Penguin Classics.

Strong Opinions

C.S. Forester

Described as a 'riveting read' by Sarah Waters and acclaimed by crime writers such as Andrew Taylor, The Pursued is a dark, gripping 1930s psychological thriller by C. S. Forester, the author of Hornblower. 
 
The story begins when Marjorie, a young woman, arrives home one summer evening and finds her sister, dead, with her head in the oven. She looks peaceful, as if she is asleep. Their mother suspects, however, that Dot's death was far from natural - and that she knows who the killer is. So, slowly and meticulously, she plots her terrible revenge. 
 
C. S. Forester's 1935 thriller The Pursued, lost for decades, rewrote the traditions of crime fiction to create a dark, twisted portrayal of obsession and retribution.

The Pursued

A Heart so White is the breathtaking international bestseller and IMPAC Award-winning masterpiece by Javier Marías, whose highly-anticipated new novel The Infatuations is published in 2013. This Penguin Modern Classics edition features a new Introduction by Jonathan Coe. 
 
A Heart so White begins as, In the middle of a family lunch Teresa, just married, goes to the bathroom, unbuttons her blouse and shoots herself in the heart. What made her kill herself immediately after her honeymoon? Years later, this mystery fascinates the young newlywed Juan, whose father was married to Teresa before he married Juan's mother. As Juan edges closer to the truth, he begins to question his own relationships, and whether he really wants to know what happened. Haunting and unsettling, A Heart So White is a breathtaking portrayal of two generations, two marriages, the relentless power of the past and the terrible price of knowledge.

A Heart so White

All Souls is a compelling black comedy of Oxford life by Javier Marías, whose highly-anticipated new novel The Infatuations is published in 2013. This Penguin Modern Classics edition features a new Introduction by John Banville, author of The Sea. 
 
The pretty young tutor Clare Bayes attracts many eyes at an Oxford college dinner, not least those of a visiting Spanish lecturer (desperate to escape his conversation with an obese economist about an eighteenth-century cider tax). As they begin an affair, meeting in hotel bedrooms away from the eyes of Clare's husband, the Spaniard finds himself increasingly drawn into the strange world of Oxford, 'one of the cities in the world where the least work gets done', in a story of lust, loneliness, vanity and memory. Filled with brilliant set pieces and pin-sharp observation, All Souls is a masterpiece of black humour.

All Souls

Dorothy Allison

'About as close to flawless as any reader could ask for' The New York Times Book Review 
 
'For anyone who has ever felt the contempt of a self-righteous world, this book will resonate within you like a gospel choir. For anyone who hasn't, this book will be an education' Barbara Kingsolver 
 
Carolina in the 1950s, and Bone - christened Ruth Anna Boatwright - lives a happy life, in and out of her aunt's houses, playing with her cousins on the porch, sipping ice tea, loving her little sister Reece and her beautiful young mother. But Glen Waddell has been watching them all, wanting her mother too, and when he promises a new life for the family, her mother gratefully accepts. Soon Bone finds herself in a different, terrible world, living in fear, and an exile from everything she knows. 
 
Bastard Out of Carolina is a raw, poignant tale of fury, power, love and family. 
 
This editon contains an introduction by the author. Dorothy Allison was awarded the 2007 Robert Penn Warren Award for Fiction, and has been likened to Flannery O'Connor, William Faulkner and Harper Lee.

Bastard Out of Carolina

The Man of Feeling is a story of love and memory by Javier Marías, whose highly-anticipated new novel The Infatuations is published in 2013. 
 
On a train journey from Paris to Madrid a young opera singer becomes fascinated by those in his compartment: a middle-aged businessman, his alluring wife and their male travelling companion. Soon his life of constant travel, luxury hotels, rehearsal and performance will become entangled with these three people, and the singer will find himself fatefully consumed by Natalia's beauty. The Man of Feeling is the haunting story of the birth and death of a passion, told in retrospect. Intricately interweaving desire and memory, it explores the nature of love, and asks whether we can ever truly recall something that no longer exists.

The Man of Feeling

Magic Ex Libris

Irresistibly cute stories of animal magic, perfect for children who are ready to enjoy chapters books on their own.

Magic Kitten

Magic Kitten Duos

Magic Ponies

Magic Puppy

Magic Reindeer

Magic Tree House

Magical Colouring Books

Magnolia Springs

A thrilling adventure series featuring the gods and monsters of Norse mythology - from the creator of Percy Jackson.

Magnus Chase

Maids of Kent Series

Maigret Capsule Collection

Malazan Empire

Malice Duology Series

Maple Hollow

Margaret Kerr Trilogy

Margaret Thatcher: The Authorised Biography

Mark Steel’s In Town

Follow the incredible journey of Mary Queen of Scots from her coronoation at just six days old, through to her imprisonment by ruthless cousin Queen Elizabeth I.

Mary Stuart

Spanning sixty years of Roman history, Masters of Rome is Colleen McCullough's brilliant reimagining of the tumultuous years that led to the rise of Julius Caeser, his time in power and his ultimate demise.

Masters of Rome

Matched

Follow Lieutenant-Colonel Matthew Hervey through the 19th century as he takes command of the Sixth Light Dragoons, battles to crush the rebellion, and tries to safeguard his country's interests whilst leaving the brutal war as unscathed as possible. With cuts in the army and with his battalion down to a single squadron, can Hervey remain an impartial spectator when the stakes have never been higher?

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