When Adela and her elderly companion Mrs Moore arrive in the Indian town of Chandrapore, they quickly feel trapped by its insular and prejudiced British community. Determined to explore the real India', they seek the guidance of the charming and mercurial Dr Aziz, a cultivated ... read more

Tolstoy married Sophia Andreevna Behrs, who was 16 years his junior on September 23, 1862. Her family and friends called her Sonya which is the Russian diminutive of Sofia. Tolstoy and Sophia had thirteen children, five of whom did not survive childhood. On the... read more

Atlas Shrugged is the "second most influential book for Americans today" after the Bible, according to a joint survey of five thousand people conducted by the Library of Congress and the Book of the Month Club in 1991.
In a scrap heap within an abandoned factory, the greatest ... read more

Miguel de Cervantes's mock-epic masterwork, Don Quixote was voted the greatest book of all time by the Nobel Institute, and this Penguin Classics edition is translated with an introduction and notes by John Rutherford. Don Quixote has become so entranced by reading romances of chivalr... read more

'I am Dracula. And I bid you welcome to my house?He is deathly pale. His fingernails are cut to sharp points. His teeth protrude menacingly from his mouth in clouds of rancid breath... Yet even Count Dracula?s unnerving appearance and the frightened reaction of the ... read more

One of the century's most challenging novels of ideas, The Fountainhead champions the cause of individualism through the story of a gifted young architect who defies the tyranny of conventional public opinion.
The struggle for personal integrity in a worl... read more

Conrad's narrator Marlow, a seaman and wanderer, recounts his physical and psychological journey in search of the infamous ivory trader Kurtz- dying, insane, and guilty of unspeakable atrocities. Travelling upriver to the heart of the African continent, he ... read more

A meticulously-observed tale of the clash between obligation and desire, Jane Austen's "Mansfield Park" is edited with an introduction and notes by Kathryn Sutherland in "Penguin Classics". Taken from the poverty of her parents' home in Portsmouth, Fanny Price is brought up with he... read more

A few miles south of Soledad, the Salinas River drops in close to the hillside bank and runs deep and green. The water is warm too, for it has slipped twinkling over the yellow sands in the sunlight before reaching the narrow pool. On one side of the river the golden foothill slop... read more

From the moment Melquiades the Gypsy walks into the jungle settlement of Macondo nothing is ever the same again. He brings to this protected Eden knowledge and the tools of discovery. This is a modern parable told without moralizing, its strength lying in its ability to make us laugh in sympathy.

Her last completed novel, marrying witty social realism to a 'Cinderella' love story, Jane Austen's "Persuasion" is edited with an introduction by Gillian Beer in "Penguin Classics". Anne Elliot, twenty-seven and still single, seems destined for spinsterhood. In ... read more

Thirteenth-century Persian philosopher, mystic, scholar and founder of the order of the Whirling Dervishes, Rumi was also a poet of transcendental power. His inspirational verse speaks with the universal voice of the human soul and brims with exuberant energy and passion. Rich in nat... read more