A. Igoni Barrett was born in Port Harcourt, Nigeria, in 1979 and lives in Lagos. He is a winner of the 2005 BBC World Service short story competition, the recipient of a Chinua Achebe Center Fellowship, a Norman Mailer Center Fellowship, and a Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center Residency. His short story collection, Love is Power, or Something Like That, was published in 2013. In 2014 he was named on the Africa39 list of sub-Saharan African writers under 40. Blackass is his first novel.

A. Igoni Barrett

The short life of A.J.A. Symons (1900-41) was described by his biographer as an intricate and largely harmless confidence trick. His many interests included the collection of musical boxes and rare books as well as the study and practice of forgery; they left him time to edit an anthology of Edwardian verse and compose studies of H.M. Stanley and other notable figures. He is remembered for The Quest for Corvo, one of the most remarkable biographies ever written, and for co-founding the Wine and Food Society.

A. J. A. Symons

A. J. Liebling, born in Manhattan in 1904, joined the staff of the New Yorker in 1935 and contributed innumerable articles to the magazine throughout his lifetime, on subjects ranging from food to boxing and France to horse racing. As a war correspondent during the Second World War, he reported from France, England and Algeria, and participated in the Normandy landings. In later life he married the writer Jean Stafford, his third wife. He died in 1963.

A. J. Liebling

A. J. Rosen is an author of YA fantasy novels and is an ambassador for Wattpad, known as @agatharoza. Entwined is her first novel.

A. J. Rosen

A. K. Davidson

A. O. Scott has been a film critic at the New York Times since 2000. His writing has appeared in many other publications, including the New York Review of Books, Slate, the New Yorker and the Nation. A finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in criticism in 2010, Scott is currently Distinguished Professor of Film Criticism at Wesleyan University. He lives with his family in Brooklyn, New York. 
 
@aoscott

A. O. Scott

A.S. Byatt (1936-2023) was a novelist, short-story writer and critic of international renown. Her novels include Possession (winner of the Booker Prize 1990), the Frederica Quartet and The Children’s Book, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction. She was appointed CBE in 1990 and DBE in 1999, and was awarded the Erasmus Prize 2016 for her ‘inspiring contribution to life writing’ and the Pak Kyongni Prize 2017. In 2018 she received the Hans Christian Andersen Literature Award.

A. S. Byatt

A. T. Williams won the George Orwell Prize for Political Writing in 2013 for his book A Very British Killing: The Death of Baha Mousa. He lives in Warwickshire.

A. T. Williams

A. W. Chase

Dubbed ‘The new queen of spy fiction’ by the Guardian newspaper, and ‘the real thing’ by the Washington Post, A.C. 'Ava' Glass is the CWA Dagger-shortlisted author of Alias Emma (The Chase), The Traitor and The Trap. The Traitor was a 2023 Richard and Judy Bookclub pick. Alias Emma was a Barnes and Noble book of the month. A former crime reporter and communications consultant, for five years Ava worked closely with spies. Her time in that world fascinated her, and the people she met back then inspire every book she writes.

A.C. Glass

A.E. Housman

Arthur Edward Waite was the designer and co-creator of the now famous Rider Waite Tarot deck. 
 
An American-born British poet and scholarly mystic, his strong interest in all esoteric matters - divination, magic, Kabbalism, alchemy and Freemasony - led to him penning a number of books. These include the Key to the Tarot, The Book of Ceremonial Magic and A New Encyclopedia of Freemasony.

A.E. Waite

A.E. Warren is the author of the Tomorrow's Ancestors series, which consists of Subject Twenty-One, The Hidden Base, The Fourth Species and The Final Rising. 
 
After spending eight years working as a lawyer, she began to write in the evenings and early mornings as a form of escapism from life in a very small cubicle with lots of files. She self-published her first novels in her spare time, which were picked up by Del Rey UK which is the science fiction/fantasy imprint of Penguin Random House. 
 
 She is an avid reader, occasional gamer and fair-weather runner. She lives in the UK with her husband, daughter and hopefully, one day, a wise border terrier named Austen.

A.E. Warren

A.G.D. Maran

A.J. Ayer

A.J. Cronin

A K Benedict writes crime and speculative fiction in a room filled with clowns, mannequins and Doctor Who figures. Her first novel, The Beauty of Murder, was nominated for an eDunnit award and is in development for a major 8-part TV series by Company Pictures. Her second, Jonathan Dark or The Evidence of Ghosts, came out in February 2016. She's written Torchwood audio dramas for Big Finish and her short stories have featured in anthologies including Great British Horror and Best British Short Stories. She lives in St Leonards-on-Sea with her dog, Dame Margaret Rutherford.

A.K.Benedict

A. L. Kennedy has twice been selected as one of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists and has won a host of other awards – including the Costa Book of the Year for her novel Day. She lives in Essex.

A.L. Kennedy

A.M. Ellis is a speculative fiction author and lover of everything steeped in myth and mystery. Her stories often lean into diverse voices, not only in her identity as a Black woman, but in exploring neurodivergence and mental health. A proud introvert and nostalgic gamer, she lives in Maryland, USA, with her husband and three children.

A.M. Ellis

A.N. Wilson was born in 1950 and educated at Rugby and New College, Oxford. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, he holds a prominent position in the world of literature and journalism. He is an award-winning biographer and a celebrated novelist, winning prizes for much of his work. He lives in North London.

A.N. Wilson

A. T. Emerald lives with her husband and baby daughter in Nottinghamshire. She discovered her love of writing in 2020 and has not shut up about enemies to lovers ever since. She loves iced matcha, torrid love confessions with knives pressed to throats (fictional, of course) and does not accept bills for any therapy her books might incur.

A.T. Emerald

A.W. Priest

A.B.C. Merriman-Labor was a barrister, writer and munitions worker born in Freetown, Sierra Leone in 1877. His published works include A Series of Lectures on the Negro Race and The Story of the African Slave in a Nutshell. He also edited two editions of the Handbook of Sierra Leone. He arrived in the UK in 1904 to study law. In 1907, he organised a centenary commemoration of the abolition of the slave trade in Westminster Abbey. He later embarked on an 'entertainment-lecture' tour called Life and Scenes in Britain, travelling across thousands of miles of West, South West and Central Africa, which he expanded on to create Britons Through Negro Spectacles.

ABC Merriman-Labor

AJ Cronin

AJ Molloy

Aabria Iyengar is an American actress and author.

Aabria Iyengar

Aaliya Jaleel is a freelance illustrator, designer, and visual development artist, currently majoring in Animation at the University of Texas at Dallas. She is also the illustrator of Under My Hijab and Muslim Girls Rise. You can visit her online at www.aaliyamj.com.

Aaliya Jaleel

Aaron Allston

After more than fifteen years of experience as a clinical psychotherapist, Dr Aaron Balick has taken the amazing insights from psychology and psychotherapy out of the consultation room and made them accessible to the wider world. 
 
He has been an ‘agony uncle’ for many years for both CBBC and BBC Radio 1, as well as on television, including BBC Worldwide, BBC 3 and BBC Learning.

Aaron Balick

Aaron Carroll

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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 Indian Muslim. But a mysterious incident occurs while they are exploring the Marabar caves with Aziz, and the well-respected doctor soon finds himself at the centre of a scandal that rouses violent passions among both the British and their Indian subjects. A masterly portrait of a society in the grip of imperialism, A Passage to India compellingly depicts the fate of individuals caught between the great political and cultural conflicts of the modern world.

A Passage to India

Len Deighton

<a href="https://shop.penguin.co.uk/collections/book-bundles-modern-classics/?&amp;utm_source=Penguin.co.uk&amp;utm_medium=Linked_text&amp;utm_campaign=Penguin_Modern_Classics_Series_26_06">Choose 3 timeless classics for only £21 over on the Penguin Shop</a>

January 1942. Rommel's seemingly invincible Afrika Korps is at the gates of Egypt - perhaps soon to threaten Cairo itself. 
 
And Rommel has a spy in the city - a source so well-informed that the German commander knows in advance every movement of the allied forces. 
 
Amongst the teeming streets and bazaars, the British, led by Major Albert Cutler, must find him. But Cairo is a city of fool's gold, where nothing and nobody, not even Cutler, can be taken at face value...

City of Gold

Goodbye Mickey Mouse is a vivid evocation of wartime England, the story of a group of American fighter pilots flying escort missions over Germany in the winter of 1943-4. 
 
At the centre of the novel are two young men: the deeply reserved Captain Jamie Farebrother, estranged son of a deskbound colonel, and the cocky Lieutenant Mickey Morse, well on his way to becoming America's Number One Flying Ace. Alike only in their courage, they forge a bond of friendship in battle with far-reaching consequences for themselves, and for the future of those they love.

Goodbye Mickey Mouse

11 June, 1940 - where is Winston Churchill? 
 
A private aircraft takes off from a small town in central France, while Adolf Hitler, the would-be conqueror of Europe, prepares for a clandestine meeting near the Belgian border. 
 
For more than forty years the events of this day have been Britain's most closely guarded secret. Anyone who learns of them must die - with their file stamped: 
 
XPD - expedient demise.

Computer games run in a classified war studies centre in London. Nuclear submarines prowl beneath Arctic ice. And war games go into real time. Patrick Armstrong - possibly the same reluctant hero of The IPCRESS File - is sent to investigate. 
 
Patrick Armstrong is a tough, dedicated agent and war-games player. But in Armstrong's violent, complex world, war-games are all too often played for real. Soon the chase (or is it escape?) is on. 
 
From the secretive computerized college of war studies in London via a bleak, sinister Scottish redoubt to the Arctic ice cap where nuclear submarines prowl ominously beneath frozen wastes, a lethal web of violence and double-cross is woven. And Europe's whole future hangs by a deadly thread... 
 
Spy Story is the most authentic and brilliant novel of espionage yet from the world's greatest writer of spy thrillers.

Spy Story

A Soviet space scientist defects to win academic freedom, but western intelligence has other plans for him, and sends an unnamed spy - perhaps the same reluctant hero of The IPCRESS File - to look after him. But what follows is a blood-streaked trail across three continents... 
 
Twinkle, Twinkle Little Spy reveals a more mature Deighton exploring relationships between couples: professional rivals and private allies, spy and counter-spy, master and slave. Some are drawn together mutual comfort, others for exploitation. With an uncanny feeling for landscape, he begins his story in the awesome emptiness and remorseless heat of the Sahara desert. From there a trail of blood leads to Manhattan, Paris, Dublin and halfway back across Africa. 
 
In a narrative as compelling as it is tantalizing, Deighton surpasses all his previous triumphs and holds the reader spellbound to the very last page.

Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Spy

Sinister rumours link clandestine Arab arms dealing with a hero of the French resistance. Time to re-open the master file on yesterday's spy...

Yesterday's Spy

Bernard Samson returns to Berlin in the final novel in the classic spy trilogy, FAITH, HOPE and CHARITY. 
 
Bernard continues to chip away at the mystery of his sister-in-law Tessa Kosinski's death in Berlin on the crucial night when his wife Fiona was brought out of the East. Fighting to uncover the truth, he must also confront the key relationships in his own life: Fiona is still far from stable now that she has returned to work, and their children remain in the clutches of his wealthy and manipulative father-in-law. Meanwhile, Werner Volkmann, Bernard's friend since childhood, is reluctant to get involved in Bernard's crusade. 
 
A wonderful depiction both of covert operations and office politics, Charity is packed with action, incident and intrigue, bringing to a triumphant conclusion a series of ten novels that represents one of the great achievements of modern English fiction.

Charity

Penguin Modern Classics

Bernard Samson returns to Berlin in the first novel in the classic spy trilogy, FAITH, HOPE and CHARITY. 
 
Bernard has known that he is not getting the full picture from London Central ever since discovering that his wife Fiona was a double agent. 
 
Werner Volkmann has been cast out by London Central as untrustworthy. Yet Werner still seems able to pick up information that Bernard should have been told...

Faith

Bernard Samson returns to Berlin in the second novel in the classic spy trilogy, FAITH, HOPE and CHARITY. 
 
Bernard is trying hard to readjust his life in the face of questions about his wife Fiona, and her defection to the East. Is she the brilliant high-flyer that her Department seems to think she is? Or is she a spent force, a wife and mother unwilling or unable to face her domestic responsibilities? Bernard doesn't know but is determined to find out. 
 
Bernard's boos Dicky Cruyer is certainly not anxious to reveal what he knows, as he jostles for power with Fiona herself in London Central, and takes to the road with Bernard on a mysterious mission to Poland.

Hope

Millions of pounds have gone missing, and the Department have sent agent Bernard Samson to Washington to track them down. But this mission is just the start of something far deeper and darker. It will take him from the English suburbs to Berlin, the South of France to Los Angeles and the heart of a maelstrom. In the first part of the Hook, Line and Sinker trilogy, friends become enemies, pursuer becomes victim and no one - not even Bernard himself - is above suspicion. 
A BERNARD SAMSON NOVEL

Spy Hook

Bernard Samson is a spy on the run. But in the murky streets of Berlin, he knows where to hide. Wanted for an act of treachery he has not committed, he must not only escape the grasp of London Central, but get to the bottom of a tangled conspiracy that is about to change everything. In the thrilling penultimate instalment of the Hook, Line and Sinker trilogy, Bernard's personal and professional life collide with devastating consequences. 
 
A BERNARD SAMSON NOVEL

Spy Line

Of all the mysteries Bernard Samson has encountered, the greatest is his wife Fiona. Dedicated agent of the Service and a woman of secrets, she will risk everything to play the long game. As the truth about the decision that shattered their marriage is gradually revealed, the web of deception that has snared Bernard for ten years begins to unravel. In the gripping, tragic finale of the Hook, Line and Sinker trilogy, everything we thought we knew is brought into question. 
 
A BERNARD SAMSON NOVEL

Spy Sinker

Antonio Tabucchi

In the sweltering summer of 1938, with Lisbon in the grip of Portugal's dictatorship of António Salazar, a journalist is coming to terms with the rise of fascism around him and its insidious impact on his work. Consumed by the passing of his wife and the child he never had, Pereira lives a quiet and lonely existence. One day, the young and charismatic Monteiro Rossi enters his life, changing everything. A man who once shied away from criticising Portugal's authoritarian regime finds himself unable to stay quiet any longer, resulting in his political awakening and a devastating act of rebellion.

Pereira Maintains

A Testimony

Long-suffering spy Bernard Samson has, against all the odds, enticed a Soviet agent to defect to London - but this proves to be the start of something even bigger. For he learns that there is treachery within his own Service, and no one is free from suspicion. To discover who really controls the game of spies, he must attempt a desperate gamble. As the Game, Set and Match trilogy reaches its shattering finale, who will make the winning move?

London Match

'Deighton is a marvel ... a tale told by an author at the height of his power' Chicago Tribune 
 
World-weary agent Bernard Samson is losing control of his personal and professional life. Sent to Mexico to aid the defection of a KGB agent to the West, he has a chance to prove his worth. Instead he is torn between conflicting loyalties, and lost in a maze of double-dealing and duplicity. The second novel in the Game, Set and Match trilogy is a gripping portrayal of a man who can trust no one, not even those closest to him. 
 
A BERNARD SAMSON NOVEL

Mexico Set

31 June, 1943. An RAF crew prepare for their next bombing raid on Germany. It is a night that many will never forget. Len Deighton's devastating novel is a gripping minute-by-minute account of what happens over the next twenty-four hours. Told through the eyes of ordinary people in the air and on the ground - from a young pilot to the inhabitants of a small town in the Ruhr - Bomber is an unforgettable portrayal of individuals caught up in the wreckage of war.

Bomber

Peter and Paul, the two sons of German businessman Harald Winter, are bonded together by a childhood trauma. But as they grow up the brothers also grow apart. When the shadow of the Third Reich falls they become divided by war and their differing ideals - only to meet again years later at the Nuremberg trials. An epic prelude to the Bernard Samson Game, Set and Match trilogy, Winter is a rich, tragic portrait of the fortunes of a family, and a nation, over half a century.

Winter

1963 Berlin is dark and dangerous. The anonymous hero of The IPCRESS File has been sent to help arrange the defection - in an elaborate mock coffin - of a leading Soviet scientist. But, as he soon discovers, this deception hides an even deadlier truth. One of the first novels written after the construction of the Berlin Wall, Funeral in Berlin revels in the murky, chilling atmosphere of a divided city.

Funeral in Berlin

A sunken U-Boat has lain undisturbed on the Atlantic ocean floor since the Second World War - until now. Inside its rusting hull, among the corpses of top-rank Nazis, lie secrets people will kill to obtain. The sequel to Len Deighton's game-changing debut The IPCRESS File, Horse Under Water sees its nameless, laconic narrator sent from fogbound London to the Algarve, where he must dive through layers of deceit in a place rotten with betrayals.

Horse Under Water

A high-ranking scientist has been kidnapped. A secret British intelligence agency must find out why. But as the quarry is pursued from grimy Soho to the other side of the world, what seemed a straightforward mission turns into something far more sinister. With its sardonic, cool, working-class hero, Len Deighton's sensational debut The IPCRESS File rewrote the spy thriller and became the defining novel of 1960's London.

The IPCRESS File

Sylvia Townsend Warner

Don Juan, that notorious libertine, has disappeared. Has he been dragged down to hell by demons, as rumoured - or has he escaped? Doña Ana, the woman he tried to seduce, will stop at nothing to discover the truth. Set in a rural eighteenth-century Spain rife with suspicion and cruelty, and featuring a glorious cast of peasants, aristocrats and vengeful ghosts, this moving, surprising tragicomedy is also Sylvia Townsend Warner's response to the dark days of the Spanish Civil War.

After the Death of Don Juan

Russell Hoban

It is 1097 and a traveller arrives in the great, walled city of Antioch with a vision of a beautiful and mysterious geometric design that will change the lives of all those who see it. Pilgermann is a mesmerising recreation of the world of the Crusades, following its unlikely hero and those he meets on a journey of picaresque horror across a Europe of hatreds, visions and a desperate wish for salvation.

Pilgermann

Leaving her orphanage at sixteen, Sukey Bond finds employment as a servant in the remote New Easter Farm, deep within the Essex Marshes. There she falls in love with simple, gentle Eric, the son of the rector's wife. But when their relationship is discovered, they are swiftly separated. So begins Sukey's quest to be reunited, a quest that will take her through every layer of Victorian society...

The True Heart

The story of a young English aristocrat, who - cut adrift by tragedy - is led by her husband's former mistress deep into the fervour, chaos and bloodshed of the French revolution, Summer Will Show is a fearless and wildly entertaining tale of loss and self-discovery.

Summer Will Show

Sylvia Townsend Warner's portrayal of a fourteenth-entury nunnery is widely considered to be one of the greatest historical novels of all time. An often hilarious ode to community living, it is also a poignant, delicate exploration of spirituality's relationship to the material world.

The Corner That Held Them

Claude McKay

While stowed away on a transatlantic freighter, Lafala is discovered and locked away in an icy-cold closet, resulting in the loss of his frostbitten legs. When his successful lawsuit against the shipping company brings big bucks, Lafala returns to Marseille to resume his affair with Aslima, a Moroccan prostitute. With its scenes of black bodies seeking pleasure and fighting for freedom even when stolen, shipped, and sold for parts, Romance in Marseille explores the heritage of slavery amid a predatory modern economy.

Romance in Marseille

Patrick Süskind

Survivor, genius, perfumer, killer: this is Jean-Baptiste Grenouille. He is abandoned on the filthy streets as a child, but grows up to discover he has an extraordinary gift: a sense of smell more powerful than any other human's. Soon, he is creating the most sublime fragrances in Paris. Yet there is one odour he cannot capture. It is exquisite, magical: the scent of a young virgin. And to get it he must kill. And kill. And kill ...

Perfume

L. P. Hartley

When one long, hot summer, young Leo is staying with a school friend at Brandham Hall, he begins to act as a messenger between Ted, the farmer, and Marian, the beautiful young woman up at the hall. He becomes drawn deeper and deeper into their dangerous game of deceit and desire, until his role brings him to a shocking and premature revelation. The haunting story of a young boy's awakening into the secrets of the adult world, The Go-Between is also an unforgettable evocation of the boundaries of Edwardian society.

The Go-between

Romain Gary

A New York Times Notable Book 2018 
 
'A rebel French writer ... a brilliant storyteller, a master craftsman and one of France's most original writers' Independent 
 
'The Kites is a novel touched from beginning to end with grace, a great saga about the innate dignity of love that succeeds in the feat of being funny and poetic, tender and sharp, committed and fierce, with a touch of brilliance in the art of dialogue' Muriel Barbery, author of The Elegance of the Hedgehog 
 
A quiet village in Normandy, 1932. Ludo is ten years old and lives with his uncle, a kindly, eccentric creator of elaborate kites. One day, sitting in a strawberry field, Ludo meets the beautiful young Polish aristocrat Lila. And so begins Ludo's lifelong adventure of love and longing for Lila, who only begins to return his feelings just as Europe descends into the devastation of World War 2. After Poland and France fall, Lila and Ludo are separated. Ludo's friends in the village must find their own ways of resisting: the local restaurateur who is dedicated above all to France's haute cuisine, a Jewish brothel madam who sleeps with her unwitting enemies and Ludo, who cycles past the Nazis every day, passing on messages for the French Resistance - thinking always of Lila.

The Kites

A Private Thriller

A series of children's modern classic novels by renowned 20th century children's writers. All the titles in this series have the A Puffin Book logo, contemporary-style covers, and child-friendly endnotes.

A Puffin Book

A Ripley Novel

A Slice of the Moon

A Victorian Mystery

A Walk in...

A Women’s Murder Club Thriller

A chef Paul Delamare Mystery

Aberrations

Across the Universe

Actiphons

Adelia Aguilar

Adrian Mole

Adventures in Time

Aftermath

Against War

Age of X

Agent 21

Agent Z

Detective Aidan Waits is a troubled junior detective haunted by his past. Facing an uncertain future, and disconnected from his history, DC Waits and his partner, Detective Inspector Peter 'Sutty' Sutcliffe work on Manchester's streets to uncover the city's worst criminals among the grime of the underworld.

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