Alastair Fothergill studied zoology and joined the BBC Natural History Unit in 1983, working on The Really Wild Show, Wildlife on One and David Attenborough's The Trials of Life. He was appointed head of the Unit in 1992, and during his tenure he produced Attenborough's award-winning series Life in the Freezer. He was awarded the Royal Geographical Society's Cherry Kearton Medal and Award in 1996. 
In June 1998, he stood down as head of the Natural History Unit to concentrate on his work as series producer, initially on the multi-award-winning The Blue Planet,. In 2006 he completed his next major series Planet Earth, which won the Cinema for Peace Clean Energy Award at the Cinema for Peace Gala Berlin in 2008. He was executive producer of Frozen Planet (2011) and The Hunt (2015). He has also presented several television programmes, including The Abyss. 
In 2008, he signed a multi-picture deal with newly formed Disneynature. In 2012 he left the BBC to co-found Silverback Films, which makes landmark natural history series for various clients including Netflix and the BBC. 
In 2016, Alastair was made a Fellow of the Royal Television Society for his work in natural history programming. He was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2019 Birthday Honours for services to film.

Alastair Fothergill

Alastair Gunn is an experienced magazine journalist. The Advent Killer was his first novel in the series featuring DCI Antonia Hawkins, followed by My Bloody Valentine and The Keeper, which was published in April 2017. 
 
Alastair lives in Hertfordshire with his fiancée, Anna.

Alastair Gunn

Alastair Jessiman

Alastair Panton

Alastair Reynolds

Alastair Sooke is the author of the biographies Henri Matisse: A Second Life and Roy Lichtenstein: How Modern Art was Saved by Donald Duck, both published by Penguin. He is art critic for the Daily Telegraph and is a popular BBC broadcaster. He was educated at Christ Church, Oxford, and at the Courtauld Institute of Art, London.

Alastair Sooke

Alayo Akinkugbe graduated from the University of Cambridge with a BA in History of Art in 2021 and graduated with an MA in Curating the Art Museum from the Courtauld Institute of Art in 2023. She runs the Instagram platform @ABlackHistoryofArt, which highlights Black artists, sitters, curators and thinkers from art history and the present day; and hosts the podcast A Shared Gaze. Alayo is a contributing editor and writes the column ‘Black Gazes’ for AnOther Magazine. She was awarded a curatorial research grant by the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art for the exhibition Entangled Pasts: Art Colonialism and Change at the Royal Academy of Arts. 
Alayo was on the advisory panel and contributed to the book African Artists: From 1882 to Now, published by Phaidon in 2021, and has written for publications including Dazed, Tate Etc. and The World of Interiors. Reframing Blackness is her first book.

Alayo Akinkugbe

Alba De Zanet

Albert Camus (1913-60) grew up in a working-class neighbourhood in Algiers. He studied philosophy at the University of Algiers, and became a journalist. His most important works include The Outsider, The Myth of Sisyphus, The Plague and The Fall. After the occupation of France by the Germans in 1941, Camus became one of the intellectual leaders of the Resistance movement. He was killed in a road accident, and his last unfinished novel, The First Man, appeared posthumously.

Albert Camus

Albert Cohen

Albert Costa was Research Professor at Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona and director of the Speech Production and Bilingualism Group at the Centre for Brain and Cognition. His research focused on the cognitive and neural underpinnings of language processing.

Albert Costa

Regarded as the founder of modern physics, Albert Einstein was born in 1879, in Ulm, Kingdom of Württemberg, German Empire. He completed his Ph.D. from the University of Zürich in 1905 and published four papers in the scientific journal named Annalen der Physik. These papers on photoelectric effect, Brownian motion, special relativity and mass-energy equivalence (E = mc2) were significant contributors to the foundation of modern physics. In the next few years, Einstein came to be recognized as a major scientist. 
He developed the general theory of relativity between 1907 and 1915. It was published in 1915. In 1916, Einstein published Relativity: The Special and the General Theory in German. Its first English translation was published in 1920. In 1921, Einstein was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics "for his services to Theoretical Physics and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect." He published numerous scientific and non-scientific works. 
Einstein died on 18 April 1955, aged seventy-six, in Princeton, New Jersey.

Albert Einstein

Albert Espinosa

Albert French

Albert Jack

Albert Reynolds

Albert Roux

Alberto Granado

Alberto Polverosi was born in Montelupo Fiorentino, Tuscany and has been writing for Corriere dello Sport since 1977. He has covered eight World Cups and seven European Championships. He lives in Florence.

Alberto Polverosi

Alberto Villoldo

Aldo Leopold

Aldo Zilli

Aldous Huxley was born on 26 July 1894 near Godalming, Surrey. He began writing poetry and short stories in his early 20s, but it was his first novel, Crome Yellow (1921), which established his literary reputation. This was swiftly followed by Antic Hay (1923), Those Barren Leaves (1925) and Point Counter Point (1928) – bright, brilliant satires in which Huxley wittily but ruthlessly passed judgement on the shortcomings of contemporary society. For most of the 1920s Huxley lived in Italy and an account of his experiences there can be found in Along the Road (1925). The great novels of ideas, including his most famous work Brave New World (published in 1932, this warned against the dehumanising aspects of scientific and material 'progress') and the pacifist novel Eyeless in Gaza (1936) were accompanied by a series of wise and brilliant essays, collected in volume form under titles such as Music at Night (1931) and Ends and Means (1937). In 1937, at the height of his fame, Huxley left Europe to live in California, working for a time as a screenwriter in Hollywood. As the West braced itself for war, Huxley came increasingly to believe that the key to solving the world's problems lay in changing the individual through mystical enlightenment. The exploration of the inner life through mysticism and hallucinogenic drugs was to dominate his work for the rest of his life. His beliefs found expression in both fiction (Time Must Have a Stop,1944, and Island, 1962) and non-fiction (The Perennial Philosophy, 1945; Grey Eminence, 1941; and the account of his first mescaline experience, The Doors of Perception, 1954). Huxley died in California on 22 November 1963.

Aldous Huxley

Alec Baldwin is a multiple Emmy, Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild Award-winning actor, producer, comedian and philanthropist. He has also been nominated for an Oscar and a Tony Award and the author of the New York Times bestseller A Promise to Ourselves.

Alec Baldwin

Alec Ross is the New York Times bestselling author of The Industries of the Future and one of the world's leading experts on innovation. Now Distinguished Visiting Professor at Bologna Business School of l'Universitá di Bologna, he served in the Presidential Administration of Barack Obama for four years as Senior Advisor for Innovation to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. He is also Board Partner at Amplo, a global venture capital firm and has been named a Top 100 Global Thinker by Foreign Policy magazine.

Alec Ross

Alec Russell

Alec Vidler

Alec Wilkinson

Aled Jones

Aleesha Nandhra

PublicationStatus

Brand

Format

AgeRange

Series

Imprint

CategoryLabel

Georges Simenon

<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>

A new translation of Simenon's gripping novel about lives transformed by deceit and the destructive power of lust. 
 
It was all real: himself, the room, Andrée still lying on the ravaged bed. 
 
For Tony and Andrée, there are no rules when they meet in the blue room at the Hôtel des Voyageurs. Their adulterous affair is intoxicating, passionate - and dangerous. Soon it turns into a nightmare from which there can be no escape. Simenon's stylish and sensual psychological thriller weaves a story of cruelty, reckless lust and relentless guilt. 
 
'A wondrous achievement, brief, inexorable, pared to, and agonisingly close to, the bone, and utterly compelling; in short, a true and luminous work of art.' John Banville 
 
'A double crime, a dark provincial scandal, and a dreadful sort of triumph . . . presented with shattering power' San Francisco Chronicle 
 
'One of the greatest writers of the twentieth century . . . Simenon was unequaled at making us look inside, though the ability was masked by his brilliance at absorbing us obsessively in his stories' Guardian 
 
'A supreme writer . . . unforgettable vividness' Independent

The Blue Room

Introducing Inspector Maigret, the literary character behind the major ITV drama starring Rowan Atkinson 
 
The first four titles from the new Penguin Inspector Maigret series: Pietr the Latvian, The Hanged Man of Saint-Pholien, The Carter of La Providence and The Grand Banks Cafe. 
 
Penguin is publishing the entire series of Maigret novels in new translations. 
 
'Compelling, remorseless, brilliant' John Gray 
 
'One of the greatest writers of the twentieth century . . . Simenon was unequalled at making us look inside, though the ability was masked by his brilliance at absorbing us obsessively in his stories' Guardian 
 
'A supreme writer . . . unforgettable vividness' Independent

Inspector Maigret Omnibus 1

Pietr the Latvian, The Hanged Man of Saint-Pholien, The Carter of 'La Providence', The Grand Banks Café

Georges Simenon's chilling portrayal of tragic love, persecution and betrayal. 
 
'One sensed in him neither flesh nor bone, nothing but soft, flaccid matter, so much so that his movements were hard to make out. Very red lips stood out from his orb-like face, as did the thin moustache that he curled with an iron and looked as if it had been drawn on with India ink; on his cheekbones were the symmetrical pink dots of a doll's cheeks.' 
 
People find Mr Hire strange, disconcerting. The tenants he shares his building with try to avoid him. He is a peeping Tom, a visitor of prostitutes, a dealer in unsavoury literature. He is also the prime suspect for a brutal murder that he did not commit. Yet Mr Hire's innocence will not stand in the way of those looking for a scapegoat as tragedy unfolds in this quietly devastating and deeply unnerving novel. 
 
'The romans durs are extraordinary: tough, bleak, offhandedly violent, suffused with guilt and bitterness, redolent of place . . . utterly unsentimental, frightening in the pitilessness of their gaze, yet wonderfully entertaining' John Banville

Mr Hire's Engagement

Ludmilla Petrushevskaya

Here are attempts at human connection, both depraved and sublime, and the grinding struggle to survive against the crushing realities of the Soviet system: in Among Friends, a doting mother commits an atrocious act against her beloved son in an attempt to secure his future; The Time: Night examines the suicide of the great Russian poetess Anna Andreevna with heartbreaking clarity; while in Chocolates with Liqueur the struggle for ownership of an apartment between a nurse and a madman turns murderous. With the satirical eye of Cindy Sherman, the psychological perceptiveness of Dostoevsky, and the bleak absurdities of Beckett, Petrushevskaya blends macabre spectacle with transformative moments of grace and shows just why she is Russia's preeminent contemporary fiction writer.

There Once Lived a Mother Who Loved Her Children, Until They Moved Back In

Three Novellas About Family

Roald Dahl

'We are the music makers ... we are the dreamers of dreams' 
 
This new edition of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory celebrates fifty years of the bestselling and beloved classic. The story of Charlie Bucket, a mysterious, eccentric chocolate factory owner and the golden ticket that transforms his existence is a masterpiece of exuberant invention, nonsense, fantasy and dark morality tale; both delightful and cruel.

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

L. P. Hartley

'You'll never be happy until you can think and feel and look like other people . . .' 
 
Jael 97 is an Alpha. Deemed over-privileged for her beauty, she is compelled to report to the Ministry of Facial Justice, where her face will be reconstructed. 
 
For Jael lives in the New State, created out of the devastation of the Third World War. Under the rule of the Darling Dictator, citizens must wear sackcloth and ashes, and only a 17.5% quotum of personality is permitted to each. Anything that inspires envy is forbidden. 
 
But Jael cannot suppress her rebellious spirit. Secretly, she starts to reassert the rights of the individual, and decides to hunt down the faceless Dictator. 
 
 
'An exquisitely entertaining fantasy' Observer

Facial Justice

Giorgio Bassani

A new translation of Giorgio Bassani's haunting collection of short stories that evoke 1930s Ferrara, with an introduction by Ali Smith. 
 
Isolated lives and a lost world are evoked in these memorable stories set in the Jewish-Italian community of 1930s Ferrara. A young man's unrequited love; a strange disappearance; a faded hotel; a lonely funfair; the smell of mown hay at the gates of the Jewish Cemetery - these vivid, impressionistic snapshots build a picture of life's brevity and intensity. Part of the sequence including The Gold-Rimmed Spectacles and The Garden of the Finzi-Continis, and featuring people and places from these novels, The Smell of Hay is told with a voice that is by turns intimate, ironic, elegiac and rueful. 
 
This new translation contains two pieces, added by Bassani to his earlier collection, which have never appeared in English before. 
 
'Powerful new translations... Bassani began as a poet, and McKendrick's redelivery of this taut uncompromising fiction reveals resonance and generosity' Ali Smith 
 
'Giorgio Bassani is one of the great witnesses of this century, and one of its great artists' Guardian 
 
 
Giorgio Bassani (1916-2000) was an Italian poet, novelist and editor. The Smell of Hay is the last in a series of six works collected together as Il romanzo di Ferrara. Other works in the cycle include The Garden of the Finzi-Continis, which received the Viareggio Prize and inspired an Academy Award-winning film adaptation by Vittorio de Sica, The Gold-Rimmed Spectacles, and Within the Walls (originally published as Five Stories of Ferrara), which won the Strega Prize. 
 
Jamie McKendrick is a poet and translator. His translations of Bassani's The Garden of the Finzi-Continis and The Gold-Rimmed Spectacles are already available as Penguin Modern Classics, and he is in the process of translating the rest of the Romanzo di Ferrara cycle anew.

The Smell of Hay

Eileen Chang

From one of twentieth-century China's greatest writers and the author of Lust, Caution, this is an unforgettable story of a love affair set in 1930s Shanghai. 
 
Manzhen is a young worker in a Shanghai factory, where she meets Shijun, the son of wealthy merchants. Despite family complications, they fall in love and begin to dream of a shared life together - until circumstances force them apart. When they are reunited after a separation of many years, can they start their relationship again? Or is it destined to be the romance of only half a lifetime? This affectionate and captivating novel tells the moving story of an enduring love affair, and offers a fascinating window onto Chinese life in the first half of the twentieth century. 
 
Eileen Chang was born in Shanghai in 1920. She studied literature at the University of Hong Kong but returned to Shanghai in 1941 during the Japanese occupation, where she established her reputation as a literary star. She moved to America in 1955 and died in Los Angeles in 1995. 
 
Karen S. Kingsbury taught and studied in Chinese-speaking cities for nearly two decades, and currently lives in Pennsylvania, USA. She has translated Love in a Fallen City for Penguin Classics, as well as other essays and stories by Chang. 
 
'A giant of modern Chinese literature' The New York Times 
 
'Eileen Chang is the fallen angel of Chinese literature' Ang Lee 
 
'A dazzling and distinctive fiction writer' The New York Times Book Review 
 
'Chang's world is a stark and mysterious place where people strive to find their way in love but often fail under the pressures of family, tradition, and reputation' The New Yorker

Half a Lifelong Romance

Hans Fallada

A powerful story of the shattering effects of the First World War on both a family and a country - from Hans Fallada, bestselling author of Alone in Berlin 
 
'This remarkable work, now complete after 76 years, could well be one of the finest novels any of us will ever read' Irish Times 
 
Gustav Hackendahl's will is law. Known as 'Iron Gustav', he runs his family and his Berlin carriage business with stern, unyielding discipline. But his children have wills of their own, and soon they slip from his control - some to better lives, some towards disaster. As war breaks out and Gustav's beloved Germany is devastated by hardship and violence, he finds everything he believes in destroyed. Can the man of iron endure, or even change? 
 
Brutal and moving, written with Hans Fallada's gift for capturing the small tragedies of ordinary lives, Iron Gustav is a heartbreaking family chronicle and an unflinching portrayal of the First World War and its aftermath.

Iron Gustav

A Berlin Family Chronicle

'Powerful . . . unputdownably gripping' Guardian 
 
'The island itself. Its throbbing heat as if in a belljar under the sun, the scorpion in his son's bed, the deafening sound of cicadas' 
 
During his first holiday on the island of Porquerolles Dr Mahé caught a glimpse of something irresistible. As the memory continues to haunt him, he falls prey to a delusion that may offer an escape from his conventional existence - or may destroy him. This is the first English translation of The Mahé Circle, Simenon's dark, malevolent depiction of an ordinary man trapped in mundanity and consumed by obsession. 
 
'Extraordinary . . . Simenon is one of the most important writers of the 20th century' Independent

The Mahé Circle

James Jones

The soldiers of C-for-Charlie Company are not cast from the heroic mold. The unit's captain is too intelligent and sensitive for the job, his first sergeant is psychotic, and the enlisted men begin the campaign gripped by cowardice. But they will all discover the thin red line that divides the sane from the mad - and the living from the dead - when they arrive on the island of Guadalcanal in the Pacific. Based on James Jones' experience in the Pacific Theatre during World War II, The Thin Red Line is a raw and unsparing depiction of the senselessness and brutalizing impact of war.

The Thin Red Line

Andrés Caicedo

María del Carmen Huerta lives a respectable middle-class life in Colombia. One day she misses class, and discovers she cannot return to her ordinary existence but must pursue her passion for dancing across the city. We follow her from rumbas in car parks to concerts in shantytowns as she gives in to every desire - however dark. 
 
Published in 1977, Liveforever was its young author's masterpiece - and final work. Andrés Caicedo took his life the day it was published, but it has been recognized as a landmark in Colombian literature ever since.

Liveforever

E.M. Delafield

'January 22nd - Robert startles me at breakfast by asking if my cold - which he has hitherto ignored - is better. I reply that it has gone. Then why, he asks, do I look like that? Feel that life is wholly unendurable, and decide madly to get a new hat' 
 
It's not easy being a Provincial Lady in Devonshire in the 1920s, juggling a grumpy husband, mischievous children and a host of domestic dilemmas - from rice mould to a petulant cook. But this Provincial Lady will not be defeated; not by wayward flower bulbs, not by unexpected houseguests, not even by the Blitz. She will continue to preside over the W.I., endure rain-drenched family picnics and succeed as a published author, all the while tending to her strawberries. 
 
The Diary of a Provincial Lady is a brilliantly observed comic novel, as funny and fresh today as when it was first written. 
 
Widely regarded as one of the funniest English authors and an heir to Jane Austen, E.M. Delafield was born in Sussex in 1890. She took the name Delafield to distinguish herself from her mother (De la Pasture), also a novelist, and wrote over 30 books which could be 'as laugh-out-loud funny as PG Wodehouse' before her death in 1943.

The Diary of a Provincial Lady

Penguin Classics

William S. Burroughs

The diabolical Nova Criminals now include the nightmarish characters of Sammy the Butcher, Iron Claws, Izzy the Push and the Brown Artist, and are poised to wreak untold destruction on the world with their new-found control. Only Inspector Lee of the Nova Police has any chance of stopping them, by dismantling the word and image machine before it's too late. 
 
The third book of Burroughs's linguistically prophetic 'cut-up' trilogy - following The Soft Machine and The Ticket That Exploded - Nova Express is a hilarious and Swiftian parody of bureaucracy and the frailty of the human animal.

Nova Express

The Restored Text

A terrifying, surreal space-age odyssey, The Soft Machine initiated Burroughs' Cut-Up Trilogy that includes Nova Express and The Ticket That Exploded. The book draws the reader into an unmappable textual space, where nothing is true and everything is permitted, to make a total assault on the colonising powers of planet earth that have turned us all into machines. 
 
Edited and introduced by renowned Burroughs scholar Oliver Harris, this new edition clarifies for the first time the extraordinary history of The Soft Machine's writing and rewriting, demolishing the myths of Burroughs' chance-based writing methods and demonstrating for a new generation the significance of his greatest experiment.

The Soft Machine

Inspector Lee and the Nova Police have been forced to engage the Nova Mob in one final battle for the planet. This is Burroughs's nightmare vision of scientists and combat troops, of Johnny Yen's chicken-hypnotizing and green Venusian-boy-girls, of ad men and conmen whose destructive language has spread like an incurable disease; a virus and parasite that takes over every human body. 
 
One of Burroughs's most approachable works, The Ticket That Exploded is the climax of his innovative 'cut-up' Nova trilogy - following The Soft Machine and Nova Express - and is an enthralling and frightening image of the future.

The Ticket That Exploded

Frederic Manning

Niall Ferguson

A moving, raw and powerful novel about fighting on the front - 'The finest and noblest book of men in war that I have ever read' (Ernest Hemingway) 
 
Bourne is a private fighting on the front. He is under pressure to accept a commission and become an officer, but he prefers to be among the ranks, drawn into the universal struggle for survival in a world gone mad. 
 
Manning's startling work is unlike any other First World War novel in its portrayal of the lives of ordinary British soldiers: the trauma of the Somme; the moments of bloodlust; the camaraderie, rivalry, alcohol and boredom. Considered obscene for its language and previously published in censored form as Her Privates We, The Middle Parts of Fortune appears here in its raw, unexpurgated version.

The Middle Parts of Fortune

Somme And Ancre, 1916

Ahmet Hamdi Tanpinar

'Just as she was being lowered into the earth - following the late afternoon call to prayer - my aunt sprang briskly back to life' 
 
In this fictional memoir of Hayri Irdal - troublesome boy, workshy man and feckless husband - life is examined in all its double-crossing, chaotic, disastrous glory. From his youth, dismantling timepieces while his family fell apart, to his later years at the scandal-hit Time Regulation Institute, Hayri's absurdist misadventures play out as a brilliant allegory of the collision between East and West, tradition and modernity.

The Time Regulation Institute

Czeslaw Milosz

This selection brings together the most beautiful and powerful of Czeslaw Milosz's poems, spanning his writing life. In verses such as 'Café' he considers the upheaval, revolutions and two world wars that he had witnessed, while 'My Faithful Mother Tongue' reflects the loyalty he felt to his native Polish language. He also remembers his schooldays in 'The World', and in 'Bypassing Rue Descartes' recalls the Paris streets of his student years, displaying both tenderness and tough-minded fury towards those who shaped his experiences. Writing not about abstract emotions, but about the horrors and beauty that he directly observed, Milosz opens our eyes to the joy-bringing potential of the poetry to which he gave his life. 
 
Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature

Selected and Last Poems 1931-2004

Shirley Jackson

The unsettling story of a young woman's descent into mental illness, from the author of The Haunting of Hill House and We Have Always Lived at the Castle. 
 
 'An amazing writer' Neil Gaiman 
 
Elizabeth Richmond is almost too quiet to be believed, with no friends, no parents, and a job that leaves her strangely unnoticed. But soon she starts to behave in ways she can neither control nor understand, to the increasing horror of her doctor, and the humiliation of her self-centred aunt. As a tormented Elizabeth becomes two people, then three, then four, each wilder and more wicked than the last, a battle of wills threatens to destroy the girl and all who surround her. The Bird's Nest is a macabre journey into who we are, and how close we sometimes come to the brink of madness. 
 
 Shirley Jackson's chilling tales of creeping unease and casual cruelty have the power to unsettle and terrify unlike any other. She was born in California in 1916. When her short story The Lottery was first published in The New Yorker in 1948, readers were so horrified they sent her hate mail; it has since become one of the most iconic American stories of all time. Her first novel, The Road Through the Wall, was published in the same year and was followed by five more: Hangsaman, The Bird's Nest, The Sundial, The Haunting of Hill House and We Have Always Lived in the Castle, widely seen as her masterpiece. Shirley Jackson died in her sleep at the age of 48. 
 
 'The world of Shirley Jackson is eerie and unforgettable ... It is a place where things are not what they seem; even on a morning that is sunny and clear there is always the threat of darkness looming, of things taking a turn for the worse' - A. M. Homes 
 
 Shirley Jackson is unparalleled as a leader in the field of beautifully written, quiet, cumulative shudders' - Dorothy Parker 
 
 'Shirley Jackson is one of those highly idiosyncratic, inimitable writers ... whose work exerts an enduring spell' - Joyce Carol Oates

The Bird's Nest

In The Sundial Shirley Jackson, author of We Have Always Lived in the Castle, blends family politics and apocalyptic terror to create a disturbing world of sinister relations and the macabre. 
 
'An amazing writer' Neil Gaiman 
 
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 of strange marble statues, mysterious house guests and the beautiful, unsettling Halloran sundial which seems to be at the centre of it all. 
 
Shirley Jackson's chilling tales have the power to unsettle and terrify unlike any other. She was born in California in 1916. When her short story The Lottery was first published in The New Yorker in 1948, readers were so horrified they sent her hate mail; it has since become one of the greatest American stories of all time. Her first novel, The Road Through the Wall, was published in the same year and was followed by five more: Hangsaman, The Bird's Nest, The Sundial, The Haunting of Hill House and We Have Always Lived in the Castle, widely seen as her masterpiece. Shirley Jackson died in her sleep at the age of 48. 
 
'The world of Shirley Jackson is eerie and unforgettable ... It is a place where things are not what they seem; even on a morning that is sunny and clear there is always the threat of darkness looming, of things taking a turn for the worse' A. M. Homes 
 
'Shirley Jackson is unparalleled as a leader in the field of beautifully written, quiet, cumulative shudders' Dorothy Parker 
 
'Shirley Jackson's stories are among the most terrifying ever written' Donna Tartt

The Sundial

Henri Barbusse

A searing, unflinchingly realist novel about life at war, written during the First World War 
 
'Men are made to be husbands, fathers - men, in short! Not animals that hunt one another down' 
 
Under Fire follows the fortune of a French battalion during the First World War. For this group of ordinary men, thrown together from all over France and longing for home, war is simply a matter of survival, and the arrival of their rations, a glimpse of a pretty girl or a brief reprieve in hospital is all they can hope for. 
 
Based directly on Henri Barbusse's experiences of the trenches, Under Fire is the most famous French novel of the First World War, starkly evoking the mud, stench and monotony of an eternal battlefield. It is also a powerful critique of inequality between ranks, the incomprehension of those who have not experienced battle, and of war itself.

Under Fire

Paul Bowles

A linguistic professor arrives in Ain Tadouirt seeking to study the local dialects. Confident, condescending and culturally aloof, he is led that night to a quarry and left there. He begins to descend. Met with horror upon horror as his journey continues, he is stripped of dignity, humanity and worth. In this dark short story, language takes a central role as Paul Bowles vividly consigns the Professor to his fate amidst evocative smells, haunting sights and lurking sensations. Incisive and commanding, it is an exploration of the definition of identities, cultural differences and the shifting natures of cultural supremacy.

A Distant Episode

Kingsley Amis

Boarding the train at Euston, Alec begins the journey to his former lover's funeral. Theirs was an affair acknowledged and so permanent that they called themselves 'the Trio', but now only two of them remain. Returning, 'Uncle Alec' will be welcomed by his lover's children, her husband, Jim, and the suburban world that he left behind. As memories are rehashed and acquaintances re-met, this is a short tale of regret, old age and the lies that we tell ourselves. Through conversations, half-hung sentences and painful allusions, Kingsley Amis contemplates the purpose of love, the myriad ways of loving, and the complex web of relationships and distortions that make up our humanity.

All the Blood Within Me

Varlam Shalamov

Narrated in the first person, this short story is one episode in the life of a Russian labour-camp inmate. Written by Varlam Shalamov after his own experiences at a gulag, it describes the apathy of prisoners as they steadily approach death, the assuredness of betrayal and duplicity, and the constant craving for material satisfaction to lessen the empty, scorched feeling inside. When an old acquaintance lays out an escape plan, that satisfaction is offered in the form of condensed milk: a sweet, delicious extravagance - a small element of joy in the midst of impending death.

Condensed Milk

John Updike

John Updike's fictional antihero, Henry Bech, could not be more different from his creator. A self-confessed composite of Norman Mailer and J.D. Salinger, he cannot help but flatter himself. In this 'foreword' Updike presents us with a conceited and satirical manifestation of what it means to be an American and a writer.

Foreword

Donald Barthelme

"I Bought a Little City [is] a take on the role that a writer has in writing a story - playing god, in a certain way." Donald Antrim, novelist. 
 'Got a little city, ain't it pretty'. 
 Galveston, Texas, has been bought. It suits its new owner just fine. So he starts to change it. He creates a new residential area in the shape of a Mona Lisa jigsaw puzzle, shoots six thousand dogs, and reminds those who complain that he controls the jail, the police and the local chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union. But, playing God has its limitations, which he soon discovers when he starts to covet Sam Hong's wife. With Donald Barthelme's unmistakeable ability to blend absurdity and the recognisable details of ordinary life, this is an uncanny tale about urban planning, capitalism and God.

I Bought a Little City

John Steinbeck

Roark is a bad man. His pig is a bad pig. They match in devilish temperament and violent deeds. Roark laughs at a drowned monk; his pig eats its own young and turns a boar sterile. As a spiteful tithe, the pig is given to the local monastery. The pig becomes a Christian. The pig is Saint Katy the Virgin. Fantastical and farcical, this short story parodies religious tropes and stereotypes. With a lively imagination and piercing wit, John Steinbeck delivers an absurd tale that amuses and entertains whilst asking powerful, revealing questions.

Saint Katy the Virgin

Merzlakov, once a robust stable-hand, now fights hunger, pain and exhaustion after a year and a half at a labour camp. An enormous man given little food, he sees the larger men dying first, their bodies conquered by starvation. In his desperation for survival, he begins a yearlong struggle of pain and injury. It ends with the inscrutable and punctilious Dr Peter Ivanovich. In a curious mix of empathy and haunting objectivity, this short story describes a snapshot of life in a Russian labour-camp. Written after Varlam Shalamov's own experiences at a gulag, it is one episode in the many that make up Kolyma Tales.

Shock Therapy

Vladimir Nabokov

'Spring in Fialta is cloudy and dull'. With his senses wide open, Victor wanders the streets. He meets Nina. Again. For fifteen years, their fleeting, chance encounters have made Nina a faint but constant presence in the margins of his life. As they happen upon one another once again, his mind wanders back into the past and relives each brief memory: their kiss in Russia, when she met his wife, when he met her husband, their affair in Paris. Each time she captivated him, each time she seemed to almost forget him, each time he noticed a lurking sense of apprehension that began to grow.

Spring in Fialta

Georgian Romance

From one of the most distinguished English authors of historical fiction comes a series that explores the lives of eleven Georgian figures. Beginning with the beautiful Sophia Dorothea, darling of Celle, and ending with Victoria's rise to become Queen of England.

Georgian Series

Ghost Detectives

Girl Heart Boy

The #1 bestselling series by Zoe Sugg, aka Zoella, following the life, loves and laughs of Penny, an ordinary blogger, who meets an extraordinary boy...

Girl Online

Maxine is a little girl full of big ideas. She loves solving problems, and can usually be found with her twin brothers in tow causing all kinds of mischief. Whether it is solving the mystery of the tooth fairy, building the biggest snowball ever or just causing trouble, they always have the best time together. This selection of fantastically funny short stories is perfect for spring boarding younger readers into the world of reading via an endearing heroine who has a lot of fun.

Girl Wonder

Being a teenager is tough, but having your two best friends around you can make it easier. Sometimes. Thirteen year old Ellie narrates this quartet of books as three girls navigate their way through their early teenage years, finding their first loves, testing the boundaries with their parents, falling out, making new friends, working out what they really want and realising how lucky they are to have each other. Jaqueline Wilson deals with the pressures surrounding teenage girls with her usual style, creating a series that is in equal measure heartwrenching and uplifting.

Girls

Gladiator

Glenn Moore’s Almanac

Global Icons Series

Glory Gardens

Glow-in-the-dark Dinosaurs

Gods Beyond the Skies

Gods and Warriors

Goodnight

Grandville Series

Set in rural Georgia, and starring Dr. Sara Linton, the town’s pediatrician and coroner, Jeffrey Tolliver, her wayward ex-husband and chief of police, and Lena Adams, the county’s only female detective.

Grant County

Starring Detective Inspector Will Grayson and Detective Sergeant Helen Walker – a police partnership like no other.

Grayson & Walker

Great British Classics

Great Kerouac

Great Plains Trilogy

Green Ideas

Green Puffin Classics

Greg the Sausage Roll

Grumpy Monkey

Guillermo Downes Thriller

Guru Guru Pon Chan

Hairy Maclary and Friends

Meet Nathan Byrn. 
 
He's half White Witch, half Black Witch 
His mother was a healer, his father is a killer 
He's been kept in a cage since he was fourteen. 
 
If White Witches are good 
And Black Witches are evil... 
What happens if you are both?

Filters

Category

Age

Publication Date

Format

Series

Imprint

Follow penguin

Follow ladybird

Follow puffin

Sign up to the Penguin newsletter