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'No one would have believed, in the last years of the nineteenth century, that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man's' Exploring the primordial nightmares that lurk within humanity's dreams of progress and technology, H. G. Wells was a science fiction

'All the world was mad around her and she herself, agonized, took on the complexion of a mad woman; of a woman very wicked.' In 'the saddest story I have ever heard', a naive American abroad unfolds a devastating tale of two seemingly respectable Edwardian marriages destroyed by infidelity and

'The sap had dried up; the sap, the incentive, the fever, the desire to do, to act, to act the fool, make love, create' A middle-aged woman breaks with her handsome young lover; a placid husband is suspected of infidelity; and a dying man reflects on his extramarital affairs, in these tales of

'40,000 francs, which lay before him in a heap of gold and banknotes.' Written in twenty-six days to pay off Dostoyevsky's own roulette debts, The Gambler is a graphic psychological study of addiction, accompanied here by a brilliant short story of excruciating social embarrassment. Ten new

'He felt a sudden deep pity for the finger joint that lay there on the dresser, a few drops of blood gathering around the white bone.' A deliberately severed finger, a junky's Christmas miracle and a Tangier con-artist, among others, feature in these hallucinogenic sketches and stories from the

'They didn't seem to take much interest in my private parts which to tell the truth were nothing to write home about, I didn't take much interest in them myself.' From the master of the absurd, these two stories of an unnamed vagrant contending with decay and death combine bleakness with the

Now Brando looked at people with assurance, and with what can only be called a pitying expression, as though he dwelt in spheres of enlightenment where they, to his regret, did not. This mesmerizing profile of an insecure, vulnerable young Marlon Brando, brooding in a Kyoto hotel during a break

'Time is a catastrophe, perpetual and irreversible.' Science and fiction interweave delightfully in these playful Cosmicomic short stories. Penguin Modern: fifty new books celebrating the pioneering spirit of the iconic Penguin Modern Classics series, with each one offering a concentrated hit

My heart brims with billows and minnows of shadows and silver Beautiful, brutal, strange and lovely: this is Lorca reborn, in a selection of previously unpublished pieces and masterful new translations. Penguin Modern: fifty new books celebrating the pioneering spirit of the iconic Penguin

Set during the French and Indian Wars, The Deerslayer vividly captures the essence of both the murderous humanity and the natural beauty that distinguished America’s founding. The last of Cooper’s famous Leatherstocking Tales, it is first chronologically in the frontier adventures of the backwoods

Set against the background of the Black Death of 1348, Giovanni Boccaccio's undisputed masterpiece recaptures both the tragedies and comedies of medieval life and is surely one of the greatest achievements in the history of literature.

Leo Tolstoy combined detailed physical description with perceptive psychological insight to sweep aside the sham of surface appearances and lay bare man's intimate gestures, acts, and thoughts. Murder and sacrifice...greed and devotion...lust and affection...vanity and love--one by one, in this

'She only wished to prove to herself she was once more on a train going somewhere' A passionate, unfulfilled woman considers her life and her marriage in this moving novella by one of America's finest short story writers. Penguin Modern: fifty new books celebrating the pioneering spirit of

'He said that Shamil had ordered Hadji Murat to be taken dead or alive....' Two masterly Russian tales of freedom, fighting and great warriors in the majestic mountains of the Caucasus, inspired by Tolstoy's years as a soldier living amid the Cossack people. A new series of twenty distinctive,

The Penguin English Library Edition of The Confidence - Man and Billy Budd, Sailor by Herman Melville 'Life is a pic-nic en costume; one must take a part, assume a character, stand ready in a sensible way to play the fool' In The Confidence-Man, Melville's unnerving and hallucinatory satire on

Explore the transcendent world of unity and ultimate beauty in Edgar Allan Poe's verse in this complete poetry collection. Although best known for his short stories, Edgar Allan Poe was by nature and choice a poet. From his exquisite lyric "To Helen," to his immortal masterpieces, "Annabel Lee,"

The Canterbury Tales, compiled in the late fourteenth century, is an incisive portrait, infused with Chaucer's wry wit and vibrant, poetical languauge. He evokes a spectrum of colourful characters, from the bawdy Wife of Bath to the gallant Knight, the fastidious Prioress and the burly, drunken

Timeless tales of wolves, dogs, men, and the Wild, The Call of the Wild and White Fang are two of the world's greatest adventure stories. The biting cold and the aching silence of the far North become an unforgettable backdrop for Jack London's vivid, rousing, superbly realistic wilderness

'If he only knew what it was, he would fix it; he would kill this mean thing that made Mama feel so bad.' Belonging and estrangement intertwine in these four lyrical short stories from the the author of Invisible Man. Penguin Modern: fifty new books celebrating the pioneering spirit of the

The most inspirational and affirmational Bible stories compiled into an accessible, pocket-sized guide perfect for the contemporary Christian lifestyle. From the awe-inspiring story of the Creation to the defeats and triumphs of the Children of Israel and the life, death, and Resurrection of Jesus,

'I pity this house; the curse of God is hanging over it' Two lovers must face tyrants, war, riots, plague and famine as they struggle to be together, in this teeming panorama of seventeenth-century Italian life - the original historical novel. A new series of twenty distinctive, unforgettable

Oscar Wilde's infamous wit, taste for scandal, and gift for revealing the hypocrisies of fashionable society are on display here in this collection of his finest plays. A genius both of and ahead of his time, he built his craft on the eternal questions of right and wrong--with pithy dialogue as

'The train ran on without a driver, on and on, like some mindless, unseeing beast...' One of Zola's darkest and most violent works - a tense thriller of political corruption and a graphic exploration of the criminal mind, as a murder is committed on the new railways of the Second Empire. A new

Volume two in a collection of tales representing distinctive genres- from fairy tales to erotica-revealing the customs and societies in the medieval Middle East, as told by the mythic Sheherazade.

Bawdy and exotic, "Arabian Nights, " feature the wily, seductive Scheherazade, who saves her own life by telling tales of magical transformation, genies and wishes, flying carpets and fantastical journeys, terror and passion to entertain and appease the brutal King Shahryar. First introduced in the

Into his story of a simple but beautiful country girl's seduction by another man which causes her husband to leave her on their wedding night and thereby precipitates a course of events that ends in murder, Hardy wove a luminous tenderness and longing. 'I have never been able to put on paper all

The Penguin English Library Edition of Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy "I would be content, ay, glad, to live with you as your servant, if I may not as your wife; so that I could only be near you, and get glimpses of you, and think of you as mine ... I long for only one thing in heaven

In its vast scope, this book presents the continuum of Western philosophy. Ranging from ancient Greece to nineteenth-century America, it traces the history of our civilization through the seminal works of its most influential thinkers. Each philosopher in this volume made intellectual history; each

'It flashed upon me suddenly: they were going to shoot me!' This electrifying eyewitness account of the Russian Revolution, written by an American journalist in St Petersburg as the Bolsheviks seized power in 1917, is an unsurpassed record of history in the making.

Tarzan of the Apes Edgar Rice Burroughs With an Introduction by Gore VidalSet amid the vibrant colors and sounds of the African jungle, this classic work has beckoned generations of readers toward a glorious journey of pure adventure. This is the story of the ape-man Tarzan, raised in the

This title presents beautifully told tales, a perfect introduction to Shakespeare's greatest plays. Charles and Mary Lamb's labour of love brings vividly alive the power of "Hamlet" and "Othello", the fun of "As You Like It" and "The Taming of the Shrew", the magic of "The Tempest" and the drama of

'Out of the hideously scarred soil of Flanders rose black, splintered trunks of trees' In one of the greatest war memoirs ever written, an ordinary German soldier recalls the horror and bloodlust of combat on the Western Front with brutal, unflinching candour and stark simplicity. Ten new

'The unhappiness that I need and long for . . . is of the kind that will let me suffer with eagerness and die with lust. That is the unhappiness, or happiness, that I am waiting for.' Alienated from society, Harry Haller is the Steppenwolf, wild, strange and shy. His despair and desire for death

The marriage of Gertrude and Walter Morel has become a battleground. Repelled by her uneducated and sometimes violent husband, delicate Gertrude devotes her life to her children, especially to her sons, William and Paul - determined they will not follow their father into working down the coal

The Penguin English Library Edition of Sons and Lovers by D. H. Lawrence '"She was a brazen hussy." "She wasn't. - And she was pretty, wasn't she?" "I didn't look ... And tell your girls, my son, that when they're running after you, they're not to come and ask your mother for you - tell them

This epic of urban life tells of small- town heroine Carrie Meeber, adrift in an indifferent Chicago. Setting out, she has nothing but a few dollars and an unspoiled beauty. Hers is a story of struggle? from sweatshop to stage success?and of the love she inspires in an older, married man whose

Rachel Carson's Silent Spring alerted a large audience to the environmental and human dangers of indiscriminate use of pesticides, spurring revolutionary changes in the laws affecting our air, land, and water. This Penguin Modern Classics edition includes an introduction by Lord Shackleton, a

The best of American short fiction Spanning over 100 years of literary history, here are 33 of the finest short stories by Washington Irving Nathaniel Hawthorne Edgar Allan Poe Herman Melville Harriet Beecher Stowe Bret Harte Bayard Taylor Rose Terry Cooke Ambrose Bierce Hamlin Garland

The Penguin English Library Edition of Shirley by Charlotte Bronte 'Alas, Experience! No other mentor has so wasted and frozen a face as yours: none wears a robe so black, none bears a rod so heavy ...' Struggling manufacturer Robert Moore has introduced labour saving machinery to his Yorkshire

Marianne Dashwood wears her heart on her sleeve, and when she falls in love with the dashing but unsuitable John Willougby she ignores her sister Elinor's warning that her impulsive behaviour leaves her open to gossip and innuendo. Meanwhile Elinor, always sensitive to social convention, is