Popular Penguins

Dick and Nicole Diver have turned the French Riviera into the playground of the rich and glamorous. Among their circle is Rosemary Hoyt, the beautiful starlet, who is unaware of the corruption and dark secrets that haunt their marriage. When Dick becomes entangled with Rosemary, he fractures the delicate structure of his relationship with Nicole and the lustre of their life together begins to tarnish. Tender is the Night reflects not only Fitzgerald's own personal tragedy, but also the shattered idealism of the society in which he lived.

Mary Wollstonecraft produced her declaration of female independence in 1792. Passionate and forthright, she attacked the prevailing view of docile, decorative femininity and laid out the principles of equal education, an end to prejudice, and the call for women to become defined by their profession, not their partner. A Vindication of Womans Rights established her as the founder of modern feminism.

Throughout history, some books have changed the world. They have transformed the way we see ourselves - and each other. They have inspired debate, dissent, war and revolution. They have enlightened, outraged, provoked and comforted. They have enriched lives - and destroyed them. Now Penguin brings you the works of the great thinkers, pioneers, radicals and visionaries whose ideas shook civilization and helped make us who we are. Inspired by the myth of a man condemned to ceaselessly push a rock up a mountain and watch it roll b... read more

Donna Tartt's The Secret History is the original American campus novel. When Richard Papen joins an elite group of clever misfits at his New England college, it seems he can finally become the person he wants to be. But the moral boundaries he will cross with his new friends - and the deaths they are responsible for - will change all of their lives forever. The Secret History recounts the terrible price we pay for mistakes made on the dark journey to adulthood.

Evelyn Waugh's A Handful of Dust is a satirical depiction of the 'sterile' generation between the wars. It tells the story of bored Lady Brenda Last, who abandons her husband's Gothic pile to conduct an affair with shallow socialite John Beaver of the Belgravia set. A Handful of Dust remains one of the finest tragedies and comedies of ill manners.

Peter Mayle's A Year in Provence is the much-loved account of an English couple living their dream abroad.When they buy a 200-year-old farmhouse in the South of France, Peter Mayle and his wife little expect the delights that await them - from six-course lunches and epic games of boule, to encounters with charming but unpredictable builders. Both witty and affectionate, this is an idyllic portrait of the pleasures of rural life.

Barbara Vine's The Chimney Sweeper's Boy is one of the finest, most accomplished and chilling tales of psychological suspense ever written. When a sudden heart attack kills author Gerald Candless, his adoring daughter Sarah embarks on a memoir of her beloved father. But Sarah's investigations turn up someone very different from the man she had known - proof that he wasn't Gerald Candless at all. The Chimney Sweeper's Boy is a troubling tale of taboo, family guilt and personal identity.

Simon Winchester's The Surgeon of Crowthorne was an international bestseller and tells an extraordinary true story of murder, madness and an extraordinary friendship in the nineteenth century. It is the tale of James Murray, the compiler of the first Oxford English Dictionary, and his most valued helper: Dr Minor of Crowthorne, who was also a homicidal lunatic, confined to Broadmoor asylum for murder. This is an enthralling and beautifully written work of literary detection.

Count Dracula's castle is a hellish world where night is day, pleasure is pain and the blood of the innocent prized above all. Young Jonathan Harker approaches the gloomy gates with no idea what he is about to face . . .And back in England eerie incidents are unfolding as strange puncture marks appear on a young woman's neck . . . But can Harker's fiance be saved? And where is the evil Dracula?

Jonathan Noel, bank security guard, has spent 30 years protecting himself from people and events. But an encounter with a glaring pigeon upsets his ordered life and flings him into a state of fear and insecurity. From the author of the international bestselling Perfume.

Dr Felix Hoenikker, has left a deadly legacy to humanity. He is the inventor of ice-nine, a lethal chemical capable of freezing the entire planet. Writer Jonah's search for its whereabouts leads him to Hoenikker's three eccentric children, to an island republic in the Caribbean where the religion of Bokononism is practised, to love and to insanity.
Told with deadpan humour and bitter irony, Kurt Vonnegut's cult tale of global destruction is a funny and frightening satire on the end of the world and the madness of mankind.

Eight years ago Moose Malloy and cute little redhead Velma were getting married - until someone framed Malloy for armed robbery. Now his stretch is up and he wants Velma back. PI Philip Marlowe meets Malloy one hot day in Hollywood and, out of the generosity of his jaded heart, agrees to help him. Dragged from one smoky bar to another, Marlowe's search for Velma turns up plenty of dangerous gangsters with a nasty habit of shooting first and talking later. And soon what started as a search for a missing person becomes a matter of li... read more

Nausea is both the story of the troubled life of a young writer, Antoine Roquentin, and an exposition of one of the most influential and significant philosophical attitudes of modern times - existentialism. The book chronicles his struggle with the realisation that he is an entirely free agent in a world devoid of meaning; a world in which he must find his own purpose and then take total responsibility for his choices. A seminal work of contemporary literary philosophy, Nausea evokes and examines the dizzying angst that can come fr... read more

Originally designed as a story for boys, Stevenson's novel is narrated by the teenage Jim Hawkins, who outwits a gang of murderous pirates led by that unforgettable avatar of amorality, Long John Silver. But Treasure Island has also had great appeal for adult readers and was admired by Mark Twain, Rudyard Kipling, and (reluctantly) Henry James. The story has a dreamlike quality of a fairy tale and has worked its way into the collective imagination of more than five generations of readers, gaining the power of myth.

When timid and plain Catherine Sloper acquires a dashing and determined suitor, her father, convinced that the young man is nothing more than a fortune-hunter, decides to put a stop to their romance. Torn between her desire to win her father's love and approval and her passion for the first man who has ever declared his love for her, Catherine faces an agonising dilemma, and becomes all too aware of the restrictions that others seek to place on her freedom. James's masterly novel deftly interweaves the public and private faces of n... read more

The sole survivor of a shipwreck, Robinson Crusoe is stranded on an uninhabited island far from any shipping routes. At first he is in despair, but slowly, with patience and ingenuity, he transforms his dismal island into a tropical paradise. But for 24 years he has no human company - until one Friday, he rescues a prisoner from a boatload of cannibals.

In these three unforgettably intense plays, Henrick Ibsen explores the problems of personal and social morality that he perceived in the world around him and, in particular, the complex nature of truth.

The Serene City beckons, promising Paradise regained for Ruth Cracknell and her husband, Eric, as they set forth on a carefully planned holiday. What they are seeking is time. Time to think, time to gaze, time for each other. But from the moment the holiday becomes an uncharted journey, their time is measured. Journey from Venice is confronting yet deeply comforting - an acknowledgement of the miracle that is unconditional love.

First published in 1972, Pounamu Pounamu introduced an exciting new voice into New Zealand literature. Most of Witi Ihimaera's stories, based on the East Coast, describe a traditional rural, communal way of life facing huge pressures from the drift by many Maori to the cities. This was to be a constant theme in Ihimaera's future writing.

Orlando, deciding not to grow old, pursues his quest for passion, adventure, fulfilment and protracted youth. Chasing a dream through the centuries, he bounds from Elizabethan England and imperial Turkey to the modern world. Will he find happiness with the exotic Russian Princess Sasha? Or is the dashing explorer Shelmerdine the ideal man? And what form will Orlando take on the journey - a nobleman, gypsy, writer? Man or...woman?