Literature

'A classic.' Guardian'A masterpiece.' The New Yorker'I just adore this book and have probably reread it a hundred times.' Michelle Zauner From the Orange Prize winning author of Home and Gilead. Housekeeping is the story of Ruth and Lucille, orphans growing up in the small desolate town of Fingerbone in the vast northwest of America. Abandoned by a succession of relatives, the sisters find themselves in the care of Sylvie, the remote and enigmatic sister of their dead mother.

Steeped in imagery of the bleak wintry landscape around them, the sisters' struggle towards adulthood is powerfully portrayed in a novel about loss, loneliness and transience.

In the twilight of the Gold Rush, two siblings cross a landscape with a gun in their hands and the body of their father on their backs . . . Ba dies in the night, Ma is already gone. Lucy and Sam, twelve and eleven, are suddenly alone and on the run. With their father's body on their backs, they roam an unforgiving landscape dotted with giant buffalo bones and tiger paw prints, searching for a place to give him a proper burial. How Much of These Hills is Gold is a sweeping adventure tale, an unforgettable sibling story and a remarkable novel about a family bound and divided by its memories. 'A daring and haunting epic' SUNDAY TIMES'A unique reimagining of the American West adventure' THE TIMES'A fierce, feminist Western' DAILY MAIL'Remarkable' HARPER'S BAZAAR'Reminiscent of both Cormac McCarthy and Toni Morrison' IRISH TIMES'C Pam Zhang's arresting, beautiful first novel is filled with myths of her own making as well as sorrows and joys

Allen Ginsberg was the bard of the beat generation, and Howl, Kaddish and Other Poems is a collection of his finest work published in Penguin Modern Classics, including 'Howl', whose vindication at an obscenity trial was a watershed moment in twentieth-century history.

'I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked'

Beat movement icon and visionary poet, Allen Ginsberg broke boundaries with his fearless, pyrotechnic verse. This new collection brings together the famous poems that made his name as a defining figure of the counterculture. They include the apocalyptic 'Howl', which became the subject of an obscenity trial when it was first published in 1956; the moving lament for his dead mother, 'Kaddish'; the searing indictment of his homeland, 'America'; and the confessional 'Mescaline'. Dark, ecstatic and rhapsodic, they show why Ginsberg was one of the most influential poets of the twentieth century.

Allen Ginsberg (1926-97) was an American poet, best known for the poem 'Howl' (1956), celebrating his friends of the Beat Generation and attacking what he saw as the destructive forces of materialism and conformity in the United States at the time. He was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters, was awarded the medal of Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Minister of Culture, won the National Book Award for The Fall of America and was a co-founder of the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at the Naropa Institute, the first accredited Buddhist college in the Western world.

If you enjoyed Howl, Kaddish and Other Poems, you might like Jack Kerouac's On the Road, also available in Penguin Modern Classics.

'The poem that defined a generation'
Guardian on 'Howl'

'He avoids nothing but experiences it to the hilt'
William Carlos Williams

"I think it A Work of genius, I think it The Work of a Genius, I think it brilliant, splendid, etc. If there is literature (and this proves there is) this is where it's at." -John Cheever Saul Bellow's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel explores the long friendship between Charlie Citrine, a young man with an intense passion for literature, and the great poet Von Humboldt Dleisher. At the time of Humboldt's death, Charlie's life is falling apart: his career is at a standstill, and he's enmeshed in an acrimonious divorce, infatuated with a highly unsuitable young woman, and involved with a neurotic Mafioso. And then Humboldt acts from beyond the grave, bestowing upon Charlie an unexpected legacy that may just help him turn his life around. This Penguin Classics edition features an introduction by Jeffrey Eugenides. F

'Whip-smart and uncompromising' NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW'Quietly riveting' IRISH TIMES'It's the perfect crime' NEW YORKER'Impressive and complex' GUARDIAN'Addictive' OPRAH DAILYThe riveting new novel from the author of The Great Believers, finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award A successful film professor and podcaster, Bodie Kane is content to forget her past: the family tragedy that marred her adolescence, her four largely miserable years at a New Hampshire boarding school, and the 1995 murder of a classmate, Thalia Keith. Though the circumstances surrounding Thalia's death and the conviction of the school's athletics coach, Omar Evans, are the subject of intense fascination online, Bodie prefers-needs-to let sleeping dogs lie. But when The Granby School invites her back to teach a two-week course, Bodie finds herself inexorably drawn to the case and its increasingly apparent flaws. In their rush to convict Omar, did the school and the police overlook other suspects? Is the real killer still out there? As she falls down the very rabbit hole she was so determined to avoid, Bodie begins to wonder if she wasn't as much of an outsider at Granby as she'd thought-if, perhaps, back in 1995, she knew something that might have held the key to solving the case. One of the most acclaimed contemporary American writers, Rebecca Makkai reinvents herself with each of her brilliant novels. Both a transfixing mystery and a deeply felt examination of one woman's reckoning with her past, I Have Some Questions for You is her finest achievement yet.

'The writer who saved my life - or my soul.' Merve Emre, The New Yorker'A true living hero of the American avant-garde.' Jonathan Franzen'One of the very few contemporary prose writers who seem to be doing something independent, energetic, heartfelt.' Lydia DavisA new collection of stories from the 'godmother of flash fiction' (The Paris Review). In Williams' stories, life is newly alive and dangerous; whether she is writing about an affair, a request for money, an afternoon in a garden, or the simple act of carrying a cake from one room to the next, she offers us beautiful and unsettling new ways of seeing everyday life. In perfectly honed sentences, with a sly and occasionally wild wit, Williams shows us how any moment of any day can open onto disappointment, pleasure, and possibility.

It was only an accident but it would change their lives forever. Last summer, four terrified friends made a desperate pact to conceal a shocking secret. But now, someone has learned the truth, and the horror is starting again. There is an unknown avenger out there who is stalking them in a deadly game. Will he stop at terror--or is he out for revenge?This summer, four friends are going to learn that some secrets just won't stay buried.

Angelos Kouros’ “I swear to you on the mountain, I have no holier oath” is a poetic narration of an exodus from the city to the mountains – a narration of a much-needed catharsis. Formed as a unified poem, it has all the elements that make poetry great: the specific, the tangible, the “deep” (in the sense of conceiving metaphysical meaning) and at the same time the “simple” with the Giorgos Seferis’ way “to speak simply, to be granted that grace”. The collection was originally published in the volume “σου ορκίζομαι στο βουνό, ιερότερο όρκο δεν έχω” in 2020 by “Kapa Publications” in Greece to critical acclaim. Featuring expert translation by Angelos Sakkis this volume also includes an addendum with notes on all the relevant mountains and trees. 

Bringing to life the subterfuge and double-dealing of Roman nobility, Robert Graves' "I, Claudius" brings the ancient world to life with startling clarity and meticulous realism. Despised for his weakness and regarded by his family as little more than a stammering fool, the nobleman Claudius quietly survives the intrigues, bloody purges and mounting cruelty of the imperial Roman dynasties. In "I, Claudius" he watches from the sidelines to record the reigns of its emperors: from the wise Augustus and his villainous wife Livia to the sadistic Tiberius and the insane excesses of Caligula. Written in the form of Claudius' autobiography, this is the first part of Robert Graves' brilliant account of the madness and debauchery of ancient Rome, and stands as one of the most celebrated, gripping historical novels ever written. Robert Ranke Graves (1895-1985) was a British poet, novelist, and critic.

Frozen inside a million-ton mass of ice is the charred remains of a long-missing luxury yacht, which vanished en route to a secret rendezvous. The only clue to the ship's priceless--and missing--cargo: nine ornately carved rings and the horribly burned bodies of its crew. Reissue.