Adam Usden

Adam Wagner

Adam Wasson

Adam Weymouth's work has been published widely, including in Granta, The Atlantic, The Observer and the BBC. His first book, Kings of the Yukon, won the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year, the Lonely Planet Adventure Travel Book of the Year and the Prix Paul-Emile Victor. He has been named by the National Writing Centre as one of ten writers shaping the UK's future.

Adam Weymouth

Adam Wisniewski-Snerg (1937-95) was born on the outskirts of Warsaw. His science fiction writing is largely focused around the consequences of totalitarianism. Although largely unread during his lifetime, after his suicide in 1995 his work began to receive major critical attention. He is now considered to be, along with Stanislaw Lem, one of Poland's greatest science fiction writers.

Adam Wisniewski-Snerg

Ade Edmondson

Adele Lang

Adele Nozedar is an author and photographer. Previously, she was in a cult indie band, then ran her own indie record label and became A&amp;R Director/General Manager of a major record company. 
 
Her wide-ranging passions are reflected in her books, which include The Hedgerow Handbook (2012), The Signs and Symbols Sourcebook (2011), The Secret Language of Birds (2006), and The Element Encyclopedia of Native Americans (2013).

Adele Nozedar

Adele Puhn

Adeline Yen Mah

Adelle Waldman is a freelance writer and book critic. She worked as a reporter at the New Haven Register and the Cleveland Plain Dealer, and wrote a column for the Wall Street Journal's website. Her articles also have appeared in The New York Times Book Review,The New Republic,Slate,The Wall Street Journal, and other national publications. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Adelle Waldman

Aditi Kakade Beaufrand is an Indian illustrator based in France. She likes experimenting with bright, happy colours. She grew up reading fairytales, watching animated films and imagining adventure stories, and her style is an embodiment of her Indian heritage and western culture. She loves animals and taking long walks on the beach, but she is never too far away from a pencil and a paper to draw her perception of the world.

Aditi Kakade Beaufrand

Aditya Chakrabortty

Adiva Geffen is a bestselling writer and playwright. Her plays have appeared on major stages in Israel, she lectures and leads numerous writing workshops and she is a board member of the Israeli Writers’ Association. 
 
 Geffen started out as a special-education teacher, before serving as the spokesperson for the Habima National Theatre for more than a decade. She founded and subsequently led the Israeli Theatre Award for ten years, and now serves as head of The Gnazim Institute of the Hebrew Writers Association, the largest Hebrew literature archive in the world. 
 
 Born in Haifa, Israel and the mother of three sons, Geffen now lives in Tel Aviv with her partner Aharon Meidan.

Adiva Geffen

Adnan Sarwar, 35, is a former British soldier who served in the Iraq War.  He has since worked as a military consultant to film and is a writer based in London.  Read more at www.adnansarwar.com / @adnansarwar

Adnan Sarwar

Adolf Hitler

Adolf Loos (1877-1933) was a leading Austro-Hungarian architect, perhaps most famous for the revolutionary 'Loos House' opposite the Hofburg Palace in Vienna, which caused outrage when it was built in 1912, and the wonderful American Bar, also in Vienna. He wrote extensively on architecture and design, working in reaction to the elaborate mass of decoration celebrated by the Vienna Secession movement.

Adolf Loos

Adolfo García Ortega

Adomnan of Iona

Adonis

Adriaan Van Dis

Adrian Bean

Adrian Bliss is a creator, writer and performer from London, best known for his comedy sketches which, explore everything from history to natural science to religion. Adrian's work has earned him nearly 20 million followers across social media and has been featured in CNN, The Times and Vogue. Adrian was named one of the New Faces of Comedy at Just For Laughs, and his one-man play Inside Everyone sold out its debut run at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival prior to opening.

Adrian Bliss

Adrian Desmond

Adrian Edmondson

Adrian Fort

Adrian Gilbert

Adrian Henri

Adrian House

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Roald Dahl

In The Sound Machine, Roald Dahl, one of the world's favourite authors, tells a sinister story about the darker side of human nature. Here, a curious invention reveals a horrifying truth about plants . . .

The Sound Machine (A Roald Dahl Short Story)

In The Visitor, Roald Dahl, one of the world's favourite authors, tells a funny, fruity story about one of his favourite characters, adventurer and seducer Oswald Hendryks Cornelius. Here, Uncle Oswald gets more than he bargained for in Arabia . . .

The Visitor (A Roald Dahl Short Story)

In The Way Up to Heaven, Roald Dahl, one of the world's favourite authors, tells a sinister story about the darker side of human nature. Here, a woman obsessed with punctuality makes a fateful decision . . .

The Way Up to Heaven (A Roald Dahl Short Story)

In The Wish, Roald Dahl, one of the world's favourite authors, tells a sinister story about the darker side of human nature. Here, an imaginative boy plays a game that quickly gets out of hand . . .

The Wish (A Roald Dahl Short Story)

In They Shall Not Grow Old, Roald Dahl, one of the world's favourite authors, tells of a pilot who goes missing for two days and the strange tale he eventually reveals on his return . . .

They Shall Not Grow Old (A Roald Dahl Short Story)

In William and Mary, Roald Dahl, one of the world's favourite authors, tells a sinister story about the darker side of human nature. Here, a wronged woman takes revenge on her dead husband . . .

William and Mary (A Roald Dahl Short Story)

In Yesterday was Beautiful, Roald Dahl, one of the world's favourite authors, tells of a bailed out pilot in Greece looking for assistance from the natives . . .

Yesterday was Beautiful (A Roald Dahl Short Story)

Will Self

These remarkable new pieces from Will Self each feature the largest of our internal organs: the liver, in varying states of disease and decay. In 'Foie Humane' we go inside a Soho drinking club, the denizens of which live in a highly stylised yet emotionally dead state of excess. 'Prometheus' tells the story of a dazzlingly successful advertising copywriter who can sell anything to anyone at any time. But things go wrong when he meets Zeus, a bigshot entrepreneur with a beautiful and manipulative wife. Tony Phillips's subterranean Kensington flat is the setting for 'Birdy Num Num,' where obsessives spend their days in a crepuscular realm of cocaine and heroin. Finally, in 'Leberknodel', a terminal liver cancer patient travels to Zurich to commit assisted suicide. When she arrives, however, the cancer mysteriously goes into remission.

Liver

A Fictional Organ with a Surface Anatomy of Four Lobes

Edith Templeton

In The Darts of Cupid, Edith Templeton gives a sweeping and intimate exposé of her century, and of the lives of women caught in the historic and personal contingencies it engendered. The unforgettable title story was celebrated upon its original publication in The New Yorker for its explicit portrayal of the relationship between a young British woman and her American superior in a provincial war office during World War II - a love affair that lasted only two nights but changed the narrator's life forever, and is still haunting today. Other stories take us from the tumbledown glamour of a Bohemian castle between the wars to an apartment on the coast of Italy in the 1990s, where a rich widow's decision to sell her husband's prized silver becomes a bewitching tale of longing. 
 
Whatever the period, Templeton addresses the truth about female passion with a forthright gaze that is rare for any age.

The Darts of Cupid

And Other Stories

Evelyn Waugh

In this unique collection of Waugh's early short stories, some of which became the inspirations for his novels, Waugh displays his unique talent for comedy and narration. 'Mr Loveday's Little Outing' is a blackly comic tale of a mental asylum and its favourite resident, while 'Cruise' sees a hilarious series of letters from a naïve young woman as she travels with her family. These witty and immaculately crafted stories display the finest writing of a master of satire and comic twists.

Mr Loveday's Little Outing & Other Early Stories (13)

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Composed between 1939-62, the late stories of Evelyn Waugh are in turn blackly comic and bitingly satirical. In 'The Sympathetic Passenger' a radio-loathing retiree picks up exactly the wrong hitchhiker, while 'Charles Ryder's Schooldays' provides a hilarious and fragmentary insight into life before Brideshead. These witty and immaculately crafted stories display the finest writing of a master of satire and comic twists.

Tactical Exercise & Other Late Stories

James Joyce

'Snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves.' 
 
From a child grappling with the death of a fallen priest, to a young woman's dilemma over whether to elope to Argentina with her lover, to the dance party at which a man discovers just how little he really knows about his wife, these fifteen stories bring the gritty realism of existence in Joyce's native Dublin to life.

Dubliners

Who better to choose the ultimate in spine-chillers than Roald Dahl, whose own sinister stories have teased and twisted the imagination of millions? 
 
Here are fourteen of his favourite ghost stories, including Sheridan Le Fanu's The Ghost of a Hand, Edith Wharton's Afterward, Cynthia Asquith's The Corner Shop and Mary Treadgold's The Telephone.

Roald Dahl's Book of Ghost Stories

Anita Brookner

Penguin Specials are designed to fill a gap. Written to be read over a long commute or a short journey, they are original and exclusively in digital form. This is a poignant novella from Anita Brookner. 
 
'I rather hope I shall die at the hairdresser's, for they are bound to know what to do. At least that is what I tell myself.' 
 
Solitude is a familiar burden for Elizabeth Warner. She lives in a basement flat near Victoria and leaves the house only to go shopping and to have her hair done - until a chance encounter at the hairdresser's brings unexpected change. At the Hairdresser's is a deeply moving, unflinchingly observed story about trust and betrayal by one of the greatest writers of contemporary fiction.

At the Hairdresser's

The sweet scents of rural life infuse this collection of Roald Dahl's country stories, but there is always something unexpected lurking in the undergrowth . . . 
 
Whether it is taking a troublesome cow to be mated with a prime bull; dealing with a rat-infested hayrick; learning the ways and means of maggot farming; or describing the fine art of poaching pheasants using nothing but raisins and sleeping pills, Roald Dahl brings his stories of everyday country folk and their strange passions wonderfully to life. Lacing each tale with dollops of humour and adding a sprinking of the sinister, Dahl ensures that this collection is brimful of the sweet mysteries of life.

Ah, Sweet Mystery of Life

Michael Emmerich

Here is the perfect introduction to contemporary Japanese fiction. Featuring many stories appearing in English for the first time, this collection, with parallel translations, offers students at all levels the opportunity to enjoy a wide range of contemporary literature without having to constantly consult a dictionary. Richly diverse in themes and styles, the stories are by well-known writers-like Haruki Murakami and Banana Yoshimoto-as well as by emerging voices. Complete with notes, these selections make excellent reading in either language.

Short Stories in Japanese

New Penguin Parallel Text

Topping and tailing this collection are The Visitor and Bitch, stories featuring Dahl's notorious hedonist Oswald Hendryks Cornelius (or plain old Uncle Oswald) whose exploits are frequently as extraordinary as they are scandalous. In the middle, meanwhile, are The Great Switcheroo and The Last Act, two stories exploring a darker side of desire and pleasure. 
 
In the black comedies of Switch Bitch Roald Dahl brilliantly captures the ins and outs, highs and lows of sex.

Switch Bitch

Enter a brilliant, sinister and wholly unpredictable world. Here you will find the suggestion of other-worldly goings on in a dark story about a swan and a boy; the surprising tale of a wealthy young wastrel who suddenly develops a remarkable new ability; and meet the hitchhiker whose light-fingers save the day. 
 
Stories include: The Boy Who Talked with Animals, The Hitch-hiker, The Mildenhall Treasure, The Swan, The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar, Lucky Break, A Piece of Cake.

The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More

Deliciously dark adult tales soon to be a major Netflix film starring Benedict Cumberbatch, Sir Ben Kingsley Dev Patel and more!

What could go wrong when a wife pawns the mink coat that her lover gave her as a parting gift? What happens when a priceless piece of furniture is the subject of a deceitful bargain? Can a wronged woman 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 leads us into the territory of the unexpected and unsettling. Stylish, macabre and haunting, these tales will leave you with a delicious feeling of unease. 
 
The stories are: The Landlady, William and Mary, The Way Up To Heaven, Parson's Pleasure, Mrs Bixby and the Colonel's Coat, Royal Jelly, Georgy Porgy, Genesis and Catastrophe, Edward the Conqueror, Pig, The Champion of the World.

Kiss Kiss

Ten terrifying tales of life as a wartime fighter pilot, from the master of the short story, Roald Dahl. 
 
During the Second World War Roald Dahl served in the RAF and even suffered horrific injuries in an air crash in the Libyan desert. Drawing on his own experiences as a fighter pilot, Dahl crafted these ten spine-tingling stories: of air battles in the sky; of the nightmare of being shot down; the infectious madness of conflict; and the nervy jollity of the Mess and Ops room. 
 
Dahl brilliantly conveys the bizarre reality of a wartime pilot's daily existence, where death is a constant companion and life is lived from one heartbeat to the next. 
 
Stories include: Death of an Old Man, An African Story, A Piece of Cake, Madame Rosette, Katina, Yesterday was Beautiful, They Shall Not Grow, Beware of the Dog, Only This, Someone Like You.

Over to You

Ten Stories of Flyers and Flying

In Someone Like You, Roald Dahl's first collection of his world famous dark and sinister adult stories, a wife serves a dish that baffles the police; a harmless bet suddenly becomes anything but; a curious machine reveals a horrifying truth about plants; and a man lies awake waiting to be bitten by the venomous snake asleep on his stomach. 
 
Through vendettas and desperate quests, bitter memories and sordid fantasies, Roald Dahl's stories portray the strange and unexpected, sending a shiver down the spine. 
 
 
Stories include: Taste, Lamb to the Slaughter, Man from the South, The Soldier, My Lady Love, My Dove, Dip in the Pool, Galloping Foxley, Skin, Poison, The Wish, Neck, The Sound Machine, Nunc Dimittis, The Great Automatic Grammatizator, Claud's Dog.

Someone Like You

Paul Theroux

Whether visiting the King of the Lozis at a bend in the Zambezi river or crossing the United States in a railway car of unsurpassable luxury, relating his experiments with biblical dieting, or detailing the illneses and diseases suffered in half a lifetime of travel, Paul Theroux, the fresh-air fiend himself, is always an entertaining and honest guide. 
 
Full of startling encounters and memorable scenes, fascinating and sometimes bizarre locations, and enlightening musings on themes as various as sexual attraction and the point of travel writing itself, this extensive collection of his shorter pieces is a rich and remarkable book from a superb writer.

Fresh-air Fiend

Travel Writings, 1985-2000

James Cochrane

'American literature and the short story might be said to have come of age at about the same time, and this, along with something in the bustling and energetic American temperament, might go some way towards explaining why the two go together as well as they do.' 
 
Twenty-one short stories from some of the best American writers over the last two hundred years provide a mesmerizing, multi-faceted portrait of a country, a people and the unique literature produced by this most exuberant of nations.

The Penguin Book of American Short Stories

Christopher Dolley

2 books in this series (Browse books in this series-old desc)

The Golden Age of the English short story lies from its first wide acceptance in the middle of the nineteenth century until the middle of the twentieth, a period when there were a great many outlets in Britain for shorter fictions. 
 
The Penguin Book of English Short Stories celebrates this period through some of the most widely known writers of the time. Though many of the chosen authors are more generally known for their novels, here they provide some perfect examples of much shorter work. 
 
Each of these concise, evocative, subtle and satisfying stories is a little jewel, providing a small window into another world.

The Penguin Book of English Short Stories

Featuring short stories from classic authors including Charles Dickens, Thomas Hardy, Evelyn Waugh and many more

Benedict Kiely

'Do the Irish have, in relation to anybody else, any special capacity for the short story?' 
 
In this collection of thirty-eight short stories covering many generations and moods of Irish writing, this question is emphatically answered in the affirmative. These mercurial, intoxicating, witty and sometimes sad stories range from Lady Gregory's moving retelling of an ancient love story through to the extraordinary and prolific William Trevor.

The Penguin Book of Irish Short Stories

J. Hendry

'In this collection the heretical principle has been adopted that if a writer is Scots, something of the Scottish spirit must inevitably emerge from his work.' 
 
In the twenty stories collected here we are given a multi-faceted view of Scotland, the Scots and the Scottish short story. With stories ranging from Roman Britain through the trials of those at home during the Second World War to a country and people determined to assert their independence.

The Penguin Book of Scottish Short Stories

Alun Richards

'It is my hope that the Wales of the past and present is well represented in this volume, together with the world of work and workmen in some of our more ravaged terrains.' 
 
In twenty-four short stories, written by Welsh men and women, for the most part about Welsh people, we are treated to depictions of valley and mountain, country and town, as well as offered powerful and moving insights into the nature of the people.

The Penguin Book of Welsh Short Stories

The short story is enjoying a revival all the more encouraging when viewed against the gloom surrounding the future of the literary novel . . .' 
 
Fifteen further short stories from the golden age of the short story offer more gems from some of the masters of the genre. Whether it is the lyrical prose of Thomas Hardy or the irreverent wit of Kingsley Amis, the monologues of Virgina Woolf or Muriel Spark, the authors here demonstrate that the vitality of the form remains as compelling today as when these stories were originally published.

The Second Penguin Book of English Short Stories

Nick Hornby

A dozen of the most successful and popular writers today including: Helen Fielding, Robert Harris, Patrick Marber, Zadie Smith, John O'Farrell, Roddy Doyle, Melissa Bank and Irvine Welsh have written 6000-word fictional monologues along the lines of Alan Bennet's Talking Heads. And Colin Firth makes his début as a fiction writer. The result is a book of completely original stories that have heart, soul and wit. All the writers have given their work free, and Penguin is giving £1 per copy sold to the TreeHouse Trust, a charity which is setting up a unique school for autistic children

Speaking with the Angel

Colm Tóibín

'I imagined lamplight, shadows, soft voices, clothes put away, the low sound of late news on the radio. And I thought as I crossed the bridge at Baggot Street to face the last stretch of my own journey home that no matter what I had done, I had not done that.' 
 
In the captivating stories that make up The Empty Family Colm Tóibín delineates with a tender and unique sensibility lives of unspoken or unconscious longing, of individuals, often willingly, cast adrift from their history. 
 
From the young Pakistani immigrant who seeks some kind of permanence in a strange town to the Irish woman reluctantly returning to Dublin and discovering a city that refuses to acknowledge her long absence each of Tóibín's stories manage to contain whole worlds: stories of fleeing the past and returning home, of family threads lost and ultimately regained.

The Empty Family

Stories

Described by his creator as 'short, fat and primitive', Evert Bäckström is a rather unique homicide detective but he is undeniably the real deal with it comes to modern policing. 
 
This series is blackly comic, thrillingly compelling and utterly real.

Bäckström

CAMP GOLD

Caedmon Aisquith

Cairo Trilogy

Can You Solve the Murder?

Capital

Care Bears

Cartoon Kid

Cath Kidston

A crime-fiction series with a twist - private investigator Catherine Berlin, is a damaged soul struggling with a heroin addiction, but she still manages to do her best, even when her own neck is on the chopping block.

Catherine Berlin

Celeste Express

Central Intelligence

Chaos and Flame

Charles Hayden

Charles Paris Dramatisations

Charlie Bass

Charlie Changes Into a Chicken

Charlie and Lola

Cherry Blossoms After Winter

Chevalier

Chinese Cinderella

Life at Tanglewood isn't all sleepovers, picnics and beach parties. Cherry, Summer, Skye, Coco and Honey all face some tough life challenges in this delicious series from bestselling girls' favourite Cathy Cassidy. Every sister has a secret to share. Which one will be your favourite?

Chocolate Box Girls

Christmas

Chronicles of Vladimir Tod

Churchminister

Welcome inside the violent, treacherous world of Roman politics, and learn how one man - clever, compassionate, devious, vulnerable - fought to reach the top.

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