CLASSICS

The original American in Paris. This dark comedy, seen as one of the masterpieces of James's final period, has all the elements of great writing, brilliant plot and gorgeous setting-...

Social realism and fairy tale combine in Lucky Per, a bildungsroman about the ambitious son of a clergyman who rejects his faith and flees a restricted life in rural Jutland...

A brilliant and much admired novelist, Elizabeth Bowen (1899-1973) surpassed herself as a writer of short fiction: 'the supreme genius of her time', writes John Banville in his introduction; 'There...

Playful kittens and ruthless predators, beloved pets and witches' familiars - cats of all kinds come alive in these stories. Maeve Brennan and Alice Adams movingly explore what cats can...

In an interview, Updike once said, "If I had to give anybody one book of me, it would be the Olinger Stories." These stories were originally published in The New...

Russian Stories rounds up marvellous short stories by all the Russian heavyweights, including Pushkin, Lermontov, Gogol, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Turgenev, Chekhov, Bulgakov, Babel and Nabokov, and continuing up to contemporary writers...

When it came to loving he knew which Daisy to pick! Wild parties, exquisite cocktails, fabulous wealth, raging jealousy and spectacular deaths... Sorry old sport, but Gatsby has a bigger...

Murder... Mystery... Walkies! If you go down to the moors today, you'll be sure of a big surprise! A desolate moor, a diabolical dog in need of a muzzle and...

This cupcake was off her head! This cupcake was off her head! What HAS happened to little Alice? Taking 'shrooms, hanging out with hookah smoking ne'er do wells and being...

To Say Nothing of the Dog... Skiff off, Nigel! Incompetence, embarrassment and general disaster - no it's not PMQs, it's a trip down the Thames! Three hapless fellows and a...

Change really BUGGED him! Poor old Gregor. One day he's depressed about his dreary travelling salesman gig, the next, he's roaching around the apartment and disgusting his family. All that's...

Whoops! Apocalypse... The Horror! The Horror! Kurtz might be the apple of every brutish imperialist's eye, but his God complex is getting wildly out of hand in the depths of...

The publishers of Ulysses by James Joyce were brought to trial and convicted of obscenity in the USA in 1921. The immortal prose, ultimately recognized as the greatest English language...

The Mooske and the Gripes is James Joyce's peculiar and hilarious re-telling of Aesop's ancient fable of `The Fox and the Grapes', as presented in Finnegans Wake (1939). This book...

"Cranford" is the best known and most charming of Elizabeth Gaskell's novels. It is a comic portrait of an early Victorian country village and its genteel inhabitants, mostly women, whose...

Wharton's sly and delicious novel about the ambitious social ascent of Undine Spragg, with a foreword bySofia CoppolaConsidered by many to be her masterpiece, Edith Wharton's second full-length work is...

Introducing Little Clothbound Classics: irresistible, mini editions of short stories, novellas and essays from the world's greatest writers, designed by the award-winning Coralie Bickford-Smith.Celebrating the range and diversity of Penguin...

Introducing Little Clothbound Classics: irresistible, mini editions of short stories, novellas and essays from the world's greatest writers, designed by the award-winning Coralie Bickford-SmithCelebrating the range and diversity of Penguin...

First published in 1905, THE HOUSE OF MIRTH shocked the New York society it so deftly chronicles, portraying the moral, social and economic restraints on a woman who dared to...

Mere Marie-Helene once turned her back on life, sealing up her heart in order to devote herself to God. Now the formidable Mother Superior of an Irish convent, she has,...

Jessica and Jane have been living together for six months and are devoted friends - or are they? Jessica loves her friend with the cruelty of total possessiveness; Jane is...

Set in turn-of-the-century New York, Edith Wharton's classic novel The Age of Innocence reveals a society governed by the dictates of taste and form, manners and morals, and intricate social...

The setting for this piercing New England novel is the aptly named Starkfield, where, despite violently blue skies, the chill of cold and snow seems also to settle inside the...

I tell you your mine will be in ruins and your home destroyed and your children forgotten ...but this hill will be standing still to confound you.' So curses Morty...

With a cover design by Cath KidstonBehind this rather prim and proper title lies the hilarious fictional diary of a long-suffering, disaster-prone Devon lady of the 1930s, and her attempts...

With a cover design by founder of Biba, Barbara HulanickiValley of the Dolls took the world by storm when it was first published in 1966. Never had a book been...

I threw the piece of paper on the fire. She saw it burn . . .Orphaned at an early age, Philip Ashley is raised by his benevolent older cousin, Ambrose....

* 'The greatest psychological thriller of all time' ERIN KELLY * 'One of the most influential novels of the twentieth century' SARAH WATERS * 'It's the book every writer wishes...