Penguin Books

Any Human Heart is William’s Boyd’s classic, bestselling novel, now available as a Penguin Essential for the first time. Every life is both ordinary and extraordinary, but Logan Mountstuart’s – lived from the beginning to the end of the twentieth century – contains more than its fair share of both. As a writer who finds […]

The gap year classic, available as a Penguin Essential for the first time in the year of its 20th anniversary. A devastatingly funny satire on the whole idea of student travel,and particularly the India back-pack trail. Dave travels to India with Liz because he thinks he might be able to get her into bed. Liz […]

Vintage Minis bring you the world’s greatest writers on the experiences that make us human – from birth to death and everything in between.

Autobiography covers Morrissey’s life from his birth until the present day. Steven Patrick Morrissey was born in Manchester on May 22nd 1959. Singer-songwriter and co-founder of…..

“Shelby and her art are extremely my shit. You need this book.” —Samantha Irby, New York Times bestselling author of We Are Never Meeting in Real Life “The rare Instagram-turned-book that actually works.” —Jezebel A wickedly funny illustrated look at living and dating in a patriarchal culture that celebrates men for displaying the bare minimum of […]

Babies: our biggest mystery and our most natural consequence, our hardest test and our enduring love. Anne Enright describes the intensity, bewilderment and extravagant happiness of her experience of having babies, from the exhaustion of early pregnancy to first smiles and becoming acquainted with the long reaches of the night. Everyone, from parents to the […]

A young woman anxiously waits for her date on a street corner in New York City; he sits in a pizza parlour across the street, watching her discomfort. The stories in this collection peer deep into the inner lives of men and women, explore the cavernous spaces between what we say and what can be […]

‘Kerouac’s grittiest novel … sensual and uninhibited’ The New York Times Driven mad by three years of endless telegrams, phonecalls, mail, reporters and snoopers in the wake of his hugely successful novel On the Road, Jack Kerouac, ‘King of the Beats’, needs peace, quiet and sobriety: surrounded and outnumbered he has to ‘get away to […]

‘Black Leopard, Red Wolf is the kind of novel I never realized I was missing until I read it. A dangerous, hallucinatory, ancient Africa, which becomes a fantasy world as well-realized as anything Tolkien made, with language as powerful as Angela Carter’s. I cannot wait for the next installment’ – Neil Gaiman In this stunning follow-up […]

From the Man Booker Prize longlisted author of The Water Cure – discover this chilling new novel about motherhood, free will and fate, human longing and animal instinct ‘The cool intensity and strange beauty of Blue Ticket is a wonder – be sure to read everything Sophie Mackintosh writes’ Deborah Levy, author of Hot Milk […]

‘Late into the night we talked of love, of its complications. In my father’s eyes they were imaginary…This conception of rapid, violent and passing love affairs appealed to my imagination. I was not at the age when fidelity is attractive. I knew very little about love’. The French Riviera: home to the Beautiful People. And […]

Meet Holly Golightly – a free spirited, lop-sided romantic girl about town. With her tousled blond hair and upturned nose, dark glasses and chic black dresses, Holly is…..

A beautiful clothbound edition of Evelyn Waugh’s classic novel of duty and desire set against the backdrop of the faded glory of the English aristocracy in the run-up to the Second World War. The most nostalgic and reflective of Evelyn Waugh’s novels, Brideshead Revisited looks back to the golden age before the Second World War. […]

Charles Ryder, a lonely student at Oxford, is captivated by the outrageous and exquisitely beautiful Sebastian Flyte. Invited to Brideshead, Sebastian’s magnificent family home…..

‘Addictive … a charter for wistfulness’ Observer ‘An enchanting rabbit hole of handmade houses’ The New York Times ‘The Bible of pared back, natural living’ Der Spiegel ‘Take a deep breath and let the inspiration sink in’ GQ Cabin Porn began as an on-line project created by a group of friends to inspire their own […]

How do we find calm in our frantic modern world? Tim Parks – lifelong sceptic of all things spiritual – finds himself on a Buddhist meditation retreat trying to answer this very question. With brutal honesty and dry wit, he recounts his journey from disbelief to something approaching inner peace and tackles one of the […]

Kurt Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle is an irreverent and highly entertaining fantasy about the playful irresponsibility of nuclear scientists, beautifully repackaged as part of the Penguin Essentials range. ‘All of the true things I am about to tell you are shameless lies.’ Dr Felix Hoenikker, one of the founding fathers of the atomic bomb, has left […]

‘… a human being, an intellectual human being who constantly bends the entire force of his mind on the ridiculous task of forcing a wooden king into the corner of a wooden board, and does it without going mad!’ A group of passengers on a cruise ship challenge the world chess champion to a match. […]

‘Language is a body, a living creature …and this creature’s home is the inarticulate as well as the articulate’. John Berger’s work has revolutionized the way we understand visual language. In this new book he writes about language itself, and how it relates to thought, art, song, storytelling and political discourse today. Also containing Berger’s […]

When it comes to death, is there ever a best case scenario? In this disarmingly witty book, Julian Barnes confronts our unending obsession with the end. He reflects on what it means to miss God, whether death can be good for our careers and why we eventually turn into our parents. Barnes is the perfect […]

Death in Spring is a dark and dream-like tale of a teenage boy’s coming of age in a remote village in the Catalan mountains; a place cut off from the outside world, where cruel customs are blindly followed

Following one woman’s journey from a troubled girlhood in working-class Copenhagen through her struggle to live on her own terms, The Copenhagen Trilogy is a searingly honest, utterly immersive portrayal of

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 a successful writer to a man arranging his own destruction. He lived to give us this gripping […]

One of the last surviving members of the futurist generation, Bruno Munari’s Design as Art is an illustrated journey into the artistic possibilities of modern design translated by Patrick Creagh published as part of the ‘Penguin on Design’ series in Penguin Modern Classics. ‘The designer of today re-establishes the long-lost contact between art and the […]

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 language of desire, whether it takes the form of hunger, […]

In this timely and enlightening book, the bestselling author of Deep Work introduces a philosophy for technology use that has already improved countless lives. Digital minimalists are all around us. They’re the calm, happy people who can hold long conversations without furtive glances at their phones. They can get lost in a good book, a woodworking project, […]

Have you ever dreamt you were naked on stage, or woken having failed an exam? In these fascinating, pioneering essays, Sigmund Freud plunges into the recesses of our minds, and awakens the hidden meanings behind our most typical and surprising night-time fantasies. From dreams of violence and death, to the more prosaic moments in our […]

What’s the worst another drink could do? John Cheever pours out our most sociable of vices, and hands it to us in a highball. From the calculating teenager who raids her parents’ liquor cabinet, only to drown her sorrows in it, to the suburban swimmer withering away with every plunge he takes, these are stories […]

A deeply satisfying thriller cum fairy tale, Drive Your Plow over the Bones of the Dead is a provocative exploration of the murky borderland between sanity and madness, justice and tradition, autonomy and fate

‘Snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves.’ From a child grappling with the death of a fallen priest, to a young woman’s dilemma […]

In this inspiring, witty and eminently sensible book, Nigella Lawson sets out a manifesto for how to cook (and eat) good food every day with a minimum of fuss. From basic roast chicken and pea risotto to white truffles and Turkish Delight figs, Nigella brings the joy back into the kitchen. Selected from the books […]

Everything Is Illuminated is Jonathan Safran Foer’s bestselling novel of a search for truth The inspiration for the Liev Schreiber film, starring Elijah Wood A young man arrives in the Ukraine, clutching in his hand a tattered photograph. He is searching for the woman who fifty years ago saved his grandfather from the Nazis. Unfortunately, […]

“[An] obscenely enjoyable romp . . . [Fashion Climbing] leaves the readers gasping for more.” —The New York Times Book Review For Bill Cunningham, New York City was the land of freedom, glamour, and, above all, style. Growing up in a lace-curtain Irish suburb of Boston, secretly trying on his sister’s dresses and spending his evenings […]

How to be a good father? Children’s birthday parties, unsuccessful family holidays, humiliating antenatal music classics: the trials of parenthood are all found in Knausgaard’s compelling and honest account of family life. Contrasting moments of enormous love and tenderness towards his children with the boring struggles of domesticity, this is one father’s personal experience, and […]

Over recent years, across much of the world, people have started rejecting shop bought
food and are getting into making it themselves. The DIY food movement is spreading…..

Can we ever be wholly free? In this book of breathtaking imaginary leaps that conjure dystopias and magical islands, Margaret Atwood holds a mirror up to our own world. The reflection we are faced with, of men and women in prisons literal and metaphorical, is frightening, but it is also a call to arms to […]

What is the secret to true friendship? Is it really love’s quieter relation or something stronger and more profound? And where does the line between the two lie? Rose Tremain looks at two unlikely lifelong friendships, which – though tested – prove unbreakable. Thought-provoking and life-affirming, this is at once an examination and a celebration […]

A high-pitched laugh echoes in an empty church. Servants discover their master dead in his bed, the only sign of disturbance an open window. The coffin of a woman hanged as a witch is found to be empty. A bed that hasn’t been slept in is crumpled and distressed come the morning. A skeletal figure […]

Based on the phenomenal bestseller Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls, this set of postcards celebrates some of the most inspiring heroes, from Malala and Michelle  Obama to Ada Lovelace and Zaha Hadid. Beautifully designed, these are postcards that will inspire generations with the extraordinary stories of fifty women who have changed the world. With […]

In the summer of 1959, an Antiguan immigrant in north west London lives the last day of his life, unknowingly caught in someone else’s story of hate and division, resistance and revolt.

Haunted Castles is the definitive, complete collection of Ray Russell’s masterful Gothic horror stories, including the famously terrifying novella trio of “Sardonicus,” “Sanguinarius,” and “Sagittarius.” The characters that

In September, 1964 a cavalcade of motorbikes ripped through the city of Monterey, California. It was a trip destined to make Hell’s Angels household names across America, infamous for…..

A monumental new novel about modern family lives from the bestselling author of Everything Is Illuminated and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close God asked Abraham to sacrifice his beloved son Isaac, and Abraham replied obediently, ‘Here I am’. This is the story of a fracturing family in a moment of crisis. Over the course of three weeks in […]

A monumental new novel about modern family lives from the bestselling author of Everything Is Illuminated and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close God asked Abraham to sacrifice his beloved son Isaac, and Abraham replied obediently, ‘Here I am’. This is the story of a fracturing family in a moment of crisis. Over the course of three weeks in […]

From the bestselling author of The Circle, a hilarious and heart-warming misadventure through modern America: it’s time for the family vacation… Josie’s life is falling apart – lawsuits raining down, her business down the drain and a feckless husband long gone – so she gathers up her two kids and lights out for the wilderness. […]

Nick Hornby’s internationally bestselling first novel, available as a Penguin Essential for the first time. Do you know your desert-island, all-time, top five most memorable split-ups? Rob does. He keeps a list, in fact. But Laura isn’t on it – even though she’s just become his latest ex. He’s got his life back, you see. […]

Salman Rushdie, a self-described ‘emigrant from one place and a newcomer in two’, explores the true meaning of home. Writing with insight, passion and humour, he looks at what it means to belong, whether roots are real and homelands imaginary, what it is like to reconfigure your past from fragments of memory and what happens […]

Effia and Esi: two sisters with two very different destinies. One sold into slavery; one a slave trader’s wife. The consequences of their fate reverberate through the generations that follow. Taking us from the Gold Coast of Africa to the cotton-picking plantations of Mississippi; from the missionary schools of Ghana to the dive bars of […]

Plunge into this hypnotic tale of female sexuality and power – from the Man Booker shortlisted author of Swimming Home.

Every day, James O’Brien listens to people blaming hard-working immigrants for stealing their jobs while scrounging benefits, and pointing their fingers at the EU and feminists for destroying B

Could psychedelic drugs change our worldview? One of America’s most admired writers takes us on a mind-altering journey to the frontiers of human consciousness. When LSD was first discovered in the 1940s, it seemed to researchers, scientists and doctors as if the world might be on the cusp of psychological revolution. It promised to shed […]

In Cold Blood: A True Account of a Multiple Murder and its Consequences is considered by many to be the first work of the true crime genre. In this groundbreaking book, Truman Capote reconstructs the murder of the Clutter family from information provided by newspaper articles and interviews. ‘Dick became convinced that Perry was that […]

How to go on in a world where everything is set against you? With hope? In fear? Or, in violent struggle? In this gripping and disturbing book, Richard Wright weaves his own childhood recollections with those of Bigger Thomas – a young black man trapped in a life of poverty in the slums of Chicago, […]

The secret diary of Vogue Editor-in-Chief Alexandra Shulman and the real story behind the BBC TV ABSOLUTELY FASHION documentary. ‘One of the great social diaries of our time . . . should become a classic.’ Sunday Times ‘Eye-popping, brilliantly candid’ Evening Standard What a year for Vogue! Alexandra Shulman reveals the emotional and logistical minefield […]

Editor in chief Alexandra Shulman kept a diary of Vogue‘s centenary year. And what an emotional and logistical minefield of a year: producing the 100th anniversary issue (that Duchess of Cambridge cover surprise), organizing the star-studded Vogue 100 Gala, working with designers such as Victoria Beckham and Karl Lagerfeld and contributors such as David Bailey […]

The dead wreak revenge on the living, paintings come alive, spectral brides possess mortal men and a priest devours human flesh in these chilling Japanese ghost stories retold by a master of the supernatural. Lafcadio Hearn drew on the phantoms and ghouls of traditional Japanese folklore – including the headless ‘rokuro-kubi’, the monstrous goblins ‘jikininki’ […]

Can we truly know the one we love? In this painfully candid book Marcel Proust looks straight into the green eye of every lover’s jealous struggle. He broods on why we are driven to try possess one another, how jealousy can outlive death, and whether we can ever reclaim those careless days of first love. […]

‘Junk is not, like alcohol or weed, a means to increased enjoyment of life. Junk is not a kick. It is a way of life’ William Burroughs, legendary drug addict, founder member of the Beats and author of Naked Lunch, relates with unflinching realism the addict’s life: from initial heroin bliss to an unabated hunger […]

The Yukon River is almost 2,000 miles long, flowing through Canada and Alaska to the Bering Sea. Setting out to explore one of the most ruggedly beautiful and remote regions of North America, Adam Weymouth journeyed

*Over 50 Best of 2018 listings worldwide* ‘Gary Shteyngart hears America perfectly; its fatuity, its poignant lament, its boisterous self-loathing. Its heartbeat. Reading him sometimes makes me want to scream – with recognition and with pure hilarity’ – Richard Ford A riotously satirical road trip through modern America from the brilliant author of Super Sad […]