The Penguin English Library Edition of The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde 'I am jealous of everything whose beauty does not die. I am jealous of the portrait you have painted of me ...Why did you paint it? It will mock me some day - mock me...
Great art has dreadful manners. The hushed reverence of the gallery can fool you into believing masterpieces are visions that soothe, charm and beguile, but actually they are thugs. Merciless and wily, the greatest paintings grab you in a...
'It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.' The year is 1984 and war and revolution have left the world unrecognisable. Great Britain, now known as Airstrip One, is ruled by the Party...
Vintage Feminism: classic feminist texts in short form. This book comes with an introduction by Natalie Haynes. When this book was first published in 1949 it was to outrage and scandal. Never before had the case for female ...
This is The Sunday Times Bestseller. Planet Earth is 4.5 billion years old. In just a fraction of that time, one species among countless others has conquered it. Us. We are the most advanced and most destructive animals ever to have lived...
Smaug certainly looked fast asleep, when Bilbo peeped once more from the entrance. He was just about to step out onto the floor when he caught a sudden thin and piercing ray of red from under the drooping lid of Smaug's left eye...
You’ve just passed someone on the street who could be the love of your life, the person you’re destined for – what do you do? In Murakami’s world, you tell them a story. The five weird and wonderful tales collected here each unlock the many-tongued ...
How does a writer compose a suicide note? This was not a question that the prize-winning novelist William Styron had ever contemplated before. In this true account of his depression, Styron describes an illness that reduced him from ...
When he hears her favourite Beatles song, Toru Watanabe recalls his first love Naoko, the girlfriend of his best friend Kizuki...
The Republic of Gilead offers Offred only one function: to breed. If she deviates, she will, like dissenters, be hanged at the wall or sent out to die slowly of radiation sickness. But even a repressive state cannot obliterate desire ...
According to The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch, Judgement Day is almost upon us and the world's going to end in a week. Now people have been predicting the end of the world almost from its very beginning ...
Edith Wharton (1862–1937) wrote carefully structured fiction that probed the psychological and social elements guiding the behavior of her characters...
An expertly crafted work of reportage, memoir, and biography on the subject of loneliness told through the lives of six iconic artists, by the acclaimed author of The Trip to Echo Spring. You can be lonely anywhere, but there is a particular flavor ...
A hugely influential collection for writers and artists of all kinds, Rilke's profound and lyrical letters to a young friend advise on writing, love, sex, suffering and the nature of advice itself...
Tom Ripley is struggling to stay one step ahead of his creditors, and the law, when an unexpected acquaintance offers him a free trip to Europe and a chance to start over. Ripley wants money, success and the good life and he's willing to kill for it...
The number one bestseller and British Book Awards Book of the Year. London 1893. When Cora Seaborne's controlling husband dies, she steps into her new life as a widow with as much relief as sadness...
Connell and Marianne grow up in the same small town in the west of Ireland, but the similarities end there. In school, Connell is popular and well-liked, while Marianne is a loner. But when the two strike up a conversation - awkward but electrifying ...
The Godfather is the Mafia leader Vito Corleone, a benevolent despot who stops at nothing to gain and hold power. Set in Long Island, Hollywood and Sicily, this is a story of a feudal society within society...
The hawk was everything I wanted to be: solitary, self-possessed, free from grief, and numb to the hurts of human life. How do we carry on when someone close to us dies? Is it simply a case of putting one foot ...