Len Deighton was born in 1929 in London. He did his national service in the RAF, went to the Royal College of Art and designed many book jackets, including the original UK edition of Jack Kerouac's On the Road. The enormous success of his first spy novel, The IPCRESS File (1962), was repeated in a remarkable sequence of books over the following decades. These varied from historical fiction (Bomber, perhaps his greatest novel) to dystopian alternative fiction (SS-GB) and a number of brilliant non-fiction books on the Second World War (Fighter, Blitzkrieg and Blood, Tears and Folly). 
 
His spy novels chart the twists and turns of Britain and the Cold War in ways which now give them a unique flavour. They preserve a world in which Europe contains many dictatorships, in which the personal can be ruined by the ideological and where the horrors of the Second World War are buried under only a very thin layer of soil. Deighton's fascination with technology, his sense of humour and his brilliant evocation of time and place make him one of the key British espionage writers, alongside John Buchan, Eric Ambler, Ian Fleming and John Le Carré.

Len Deighton

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John Steinbeck

'Guys like us, that work on ranches, are the loneliest guys in the world. They got no family. They don't belong no place.' 
 
George and his large, simple-minded friend Lennie are drifters, following wherever work leads them. Arriving in California's Salinas Valley, they get work on a ranch. If they can just stay out of trouble, George promises Lennie, then one day they might be able to get some land of their own and settle down some place. But kind-hearted, childlike Lennie is a victim of his own strength. Seen by others as a threat, he finds it impossible to control his emotions. And one day not even George will be able to save him from trouble. 
 
Of Mice and Men is a tragic and moving story of friendship, loneliness and the dispossessed.

Of Mice and Men

Petronius

Seneca

Perhaps the strangest - and most strikingly modern - work to survive from the ancient world, The Satyricon relates the hilarious mock epic adventures of the impotent Encolpius, and his struggle to regain virility. Here Petronius brilliantly brings to life the courtesans, legacy-hunters, pompous professors and dissolute priestesses of the age - and, above all, Trimalchio, the archetypal self-made millionaire whose pretentious vulgarity on an insanely grand scale makes him one of the great comic characters in literature. Seneca's The Apocolocyntosis, a malicious skit on 'the deification of Claudius the Clod', was designed by the author to ingratiate himself with Nero, who was Claudius' successor. Together, the two provide a powerful insight into a darkly fascinating period of Roman history.

The Satyricon: the Apocolocyntosis

Anthony Burgess

Tristram Foxe and his wife, Beatrice-Joanna, live in their skyscraper world where official family limitation glorifies homosexuality. Eventually, their world is transformed into a chaos of cannibalistic dining-clubs, fantastic fertility rituals, and wars without anger.

The Wanting Seed

J. D. Salinger

In May of 1942, Buddy Glass, second son of the eccentric Glass family, comes home on leave from military service. He is back in New York City to attend the wedding of his eldest brother, Seymour. But the celebration is overcast by a sense of suspended weight, a strange and muted dread. Perhaps everyone is aware, on some level, of what is to come. And in the years after the tragedy, Buddy is haunted by memories of Seymour, turning over in his mind everything that came to pass with his unhappy older brother. 
 
In two communicating stories from his acclaimed Glass series, J. D. Salinger unfolds a subtle and poignant story of family tragedy.

Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters; Seymour - an Introduction

Harriet Martineau

When the Ibbotson sisters, Hester and Margaret, arrive at the village of Deerbrook to stay with their cousin Mr Grey and his wife, speculation is rife that one of them might marry the  local apothecary Edward Hope.  Although he is immediately attracted to Margaret, Hope is ultimately persuaded to marry the beautiful Hester.  The unhappiness of their marriage is compounded when a malicious village gossip accuses Hope of grave-robbing.

Deerbrook

Raymond Chandler

Los Angeles PI Philip Marlowe is working for the Sternwood family. Old man Sternwood, crippled and wheelchair-bound, is being given the squeeze by a blackmailer and he wants Marlowe to make the problem go away. But with Sternwood's two wild, devil-may-care daughters prowling LA's seedy backstreets, Marlowe's got his work cut out - and that's before he stumbles over the first corpse ...

The Big Sleep

Nina Bawden

Fourteen-year-old Emmie Bean loves her family. But she worries about them too. Her mother is gone (no one will say where). Her father drinks instead of writing. Her younger brother Oliver has started stealing. And older sister Alice disappears on illicit dates.Then there is their isolated house’s menagerie of birds and animals, including Mo the squirrel and Murgatroyd the tortoise, all of which require Emmie’s love and attention. When the Sargents, a childless couple, move in next door, Emmie and the Beans find themselves drawn to this welcoming but aimless husband and wife.Emmie fears the darkness and chaos surrounding them all. But perhaps love burns bright . . .

Tortoise by Candlelight

Bryce Courtenay

Brutally kidnapped and separated in childhood, Tommo and Hawk are reunited at the age of fifteen in Hobart. Together they escape their troubled pasts and set off on a journey into manhood. From whale hunting in the Pacific to the Maori wars of New Zealand, from the Rocks in Sydney to the miners' riots at the goldfields, Tommo and Hawk must learn each other's strengths and weaknesses in order to survive. Especially in their last, worst confrontation between good and evil. 
 
Brilliantly evoking a time of struggle and triumph in the young colonies, Bryce Courtenay has created an unforgettable tale of the enduring bond between two brothers.

Tommo And Hawk

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

An official tie-in edition to accompany Richard Ayoade's brilliant new film based on Dostoyevsky's deliciously dark and slyly funny novel. The Double stars Oscar nominee Jesse Eisenberg (The Social Network) and Mia Wasikowska (Jane Eyre) with support from Chris O'Dowd, Sally Hawkins, Paddy Considine, Tim Key and Chris Morris. 
 
 A lonely government clerk - shy, awkward, blundering - finds himself pursued by a mysterious stranger. Somehow he looks familiar. In fact, he realizes, he looks exactly like him. He even has the same name. But, unlike him, he is charming and confident. 
 
 Soon the stranger starts insinuating himself into his life. He works at his office, stays at his apartment, ingratiates himself with his colleagues. No one seems surprised. 
 
 Who is he? What does he want? Is he a double, or something darker altogether? 
 
 Moscow-born Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821-1881) served time in a convict prison in Siberia for his political alliances, and in his later years his passion for gambling led him deeply into debt. His many brilliant novels include Crime and Punishment, The Idiot and The Brothers Karamazov. 
 
 Ronald Wilks has translated numerous Russian volumes for Penguin Classics, including works by Chekhov, Sologub, Tolstoy and Gogol. 
 
 If you enjoy this novel, you may want to read more by Dostoyevsky - his major novels and stories are all available in Penguin Classics, including Notes from Underground, Crime and Punishment, The Gambler and Other Stories, The Idiot, Demons, Netochka Nezvanova, The Brothers Karamazov, Poor Folk and Other Stories, The House of the Dead and The Village of Stepanchikovo.

The Double (Film Tie-in)

Margaret Kennedy

‘People seem to get over things, don’t they? I don’t know how, but they do – ordinary people. I’m very ordinary, so I expect I shall do what they do.’ 
 
Lucy Carmichael is jilted at the altar. But no matter. Her loving and kind family never liked her explorer fiancé anyway. 
 
Instead of moping or falling into her supportive family’s arms, however, Lucy abandons their suburban home. Heading for the country, she takes up a teaching position in the industrial town of Ravonsbridge. 
 
There, she finds solace in her work, in her new (rather gossipy) colleagues – and rediscovers her sensible young self. But if Lucy has, despite everything, kept her head – where lies her heart?

Lucy Carmichael

Eight years ago Moose Malloy and cute little redhead Velma were getting married - until someone framed Malloy for armed robbery. Now his stretch is up and he wants Velma back. PI Philip Marlow meets Malloy one hot day in Hollywood and, out of the generosity of his jaded heart, agrees to help him. Dragged from one smoky bar to another, Marlowe's search for Velma turns up plenty of dangerous gangsters with a nasty habit of shooting first and talking later. And soon what started as a search for a missing person becomes a matter of life and death . . .

Farewell, My Lovely

California's fertile Salinas Valley is home to two families whose destinies are fruitfully, and fatally, intertwined. Over the generations, between the beginning of the twentieth century and the end of the First World War, the Trasks and the Hamiltons will helplessly replay the fall of Adam and Eve and the murderous rivalry of Cain and Abel. 
 
East of Eden was considered by Steinbeck to be his magnum opus, and its epic scope and memorable characters, exploring universal themes of love and identity, ensure it remains one of America's most enduring novels.

East of Eden

H. E. Bates

'I should like to go to France,' said Ma. 
 
'God Almighty,' Pop said. 'What for?' 
 
'For a holiday of course,' Ma said. 'I think it would do us all good to get some sun.' 
 
And so at the end of a rainy English August the Larkins - all ten of them, including little Oscar, the family's new addition - bundle into the old Rolls and cross the Channel to escape the hostile elements. 
 
But far from being the balmy, sunny and perfick spot Ma Larkin hoped for, France proves less than welcoming to an eccentric English family. The tea's weak, the furniture breakable and the hotel manager is almost as hostile as the wind and the rain they've brought with them! And when the manager learns that Ma and Pop are unmarried yet sharing a room under his roof, the trouble really begins . . .

A Breath of French Air

Inspiration for the ITV drama The Larkins starring Bradley Walsh

Down-and-out drunk Terry Lennox has a problem: his millionaire wife is dead and he needs to get out of LA fast. So he turns to his only friend in the world: Philip Marlowe, Private Investigator. He's willing to help a man down on his luck, but later, Lennox commits suicide in Mexico and things start to turn nasty. Marlowe finds himself drawn into a sordid crowd of adulterers and alcoholics in LA's Idle Valley, where the rich are suffering one big suntanned hangover. Marlowe is sure Lennox didn't kill his wife, but how many more stiffs will turn up before he gets to the truth?

The Long Good-bye

'Teetotal!' Ma said. 'It's a libel. He'll never live it down. He'll never be able to hold his head up again. Whatever will people think? What's he going to say when anybody asks him to have one?' 
 
'No,' said Dr Conner. 
 
'You'll have to strap him down,' Ma said. 'You'll have to put the handcuffs on.' 
 
And so after a mild heart-attack - caused by rather too much of what you fancy - Pop Larkin finds himself off the booze, off the good food and off the good life generally, much to his own and everyone's else's horror and upset. 
 
And while Ma tries to find ways around 'doctor's orders', young Primrose is finding her own way round a rather flustered - not to say flushed - Mr Candy ...

A Little of What You Fancy

Her name is Orfamay Quest and she's come all the way from Manhattan, Kansas, to find her missing brother Orrin. Or leastways that's what she tells PI Philip Marlowe, offering him a measly twenty bucks for the privilege. But Marlowe's feeling charitable - though it's not long before he wishes he wasn't so sweet. You see, Orrin's trail leads Marlowe to luscious movie starlets, uppity gangsters, suspicious cops and corpses with ice picks jammed in their necks. When trouble comes calling, sometimes it's best to pretend to be out...

The Little Sister

E Nesbit

When Father mysteriously goes away, the children and their mother leave their happy life in London to go and live in a small cottage in the country. 'The Three Chimneys' lies beside a railway track - a constant source of enjoyment to all three. They make friends with the Station Master and Perks the Porter, as well as the jovial 'Old Gentleman' who waves to them everyday from the train. But the mystery remains: where is Father, and will he ever return?

The Railway Children

Fay Weldon

“Down among the women. What a place to be!” 
So says Wanda, a former radical who left her husband and raised her daughter Scarlet to be as liberated as she. But twenty-year-old Scarlet, with an abortion already behind her, is about to discover real liberation – as a single mother in Fifties’ London.Yet Scarlet’s not alone. Meet her friends: Sylvia, the born victim; respectable Jocelyn, willingly trapped in a dull, bourgeois marriage; Audrey, bristling to break free of her conventional life; and Helen, beautiful, vibrant – and very doomed. 
 
Over the course of twenty years, from the Fifties to the Seventies, Scarlet, Wanda and their friends will wonder if they can ever become the women they always dreamed of being.

Down Among the Women

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Film star George Hannaford oozes charm. Although women fall at his feet, his marriage is the most solid in the movie business. But when he sees his wife staring into another man&rsquo;s eyes and returns home to a blackmailer demanding fifty thousand dollars, he begins to doubt everything. 
 
United by the theme of love, the writings in the Great Loves series span over two thousand years and vastly different worlds. Readers will be introduced to love&rsquo;s endlessly fascinating possibilities and extremities: romantic love, platonic love, erotic love, gay love, virginal love, adulterous love, parental love, filial love, nostalgic love, unrequited love, illicit love, not to mention lost love, twisted and obsessional love&hellip;

Magnetism

Charlotte Brontë

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With an essay by Helene Moglen. 
 
'Alas, Experience! No other mentor has so wasted and frozen a face as yours: none wears a robe so black, none bears a rod so heavy ...' 
 
Struggling manufacturer Robert Moore has introduced labour saving machinery to his Yorkshire mill, arousing a ferment of unemployment and discontent among his workers. Robert considers marriage to the wealthy and independent Shirley Keeldar to solve his financial woes, yet his heart lies with his cousin Caroline, who, bored and desperate, lives as a dependent in her uncle's home with no prospect of a career. Shirley, meanwhile, is in love with Robert's brother, an impoverished tutor - a match opposed by her family. As industrial unrest builds to a potentially fatal pitch, can the four be reconciled?

Shirley

'There!' Pop said. 'There's the house. There's Gore Court for you. What about that, eh? How's that strike you? Better than St Paul's, ain't it, better than St Paul's?' 
 
And so Pop Larkin - junk-dealer, family man and Dragon's Blood connoisseur - manages to sell the nearby crumbling, tumbling country home to city dwellers Mr and Mrs Jerebohm for a pretty bundle of notes. Now he can build his daughter Mariette the pool she's long been nagging him for. 
 
But the Larkin's new neighbours aren't quite so accepting of country ways - especially Pop's little eccentricities. In fact, it's not long before a wobbly boat, a misplaced pair of hands and Mrs Jerebohm's behind have Pop up before a magistrate . . .

When the Green Woods Laugh

Kathleen Farrell

Idealistic Alexandra is throwing a party to meet a more glamorous crowd. Marianne, more sardonic, worries it’ll be the usual sort. 
 
The party is in Alexandra’s attic flat. Marianne will contribute a few bottles of red optimistically labelled Bordeaux. Can it be judged a success? There’s Donald the bus conductor with high-brow dreams, nervous bespectacled Bernhardt and Marius the ghostwriter. Not to mention a brace of Peters. It’s left to sexy, young Pisa and riotous, middle-aged Mummy (neither invited) to steal the show. 
 
Yet, after the party both Marianne and Alexandra find themselves caught in unexpected – sometimes far from romantic – relationships. Meeting people, it turns out, has the most peculiar consequences. 
 
Is that really the cost of living?

The Cost of Living

Anthony Trollope

With an essay by David Skilton and Peter Miles. 
 
'He was sickened also with all these lies. His very soul was dismayed by the dirt through which he was forced to wade. He had become unconsciously connected with the lowest dregs of mankind, and would have to see his name mingled with theirs in the daily newspapers' 
 
Mark Robarts is a clergyman with ambitions beyond his small country parish of Framley. In a naive attempt to mix in influential circles, he agrees to guarantee a bill for a large sum of money for the disreputable local Member of Parliament, while being helped in his career in the Church by the same hand. But the unscrupulous politician reneges on his financial obligations, and Mark must face the consequences this debt may bring to his family.

Framley Parsonage

Arthur Conan Doyle

'If I were assured of your eventual destruction I would, in the interests of the public, cheerfully accept my own.' 
 
In The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, the consulting detective's notoriety as the arch-despoiler of the schemes concocted by the criminal underworld at last gets the better of him. 
 
Though Holmes and his faithful sidekick Dr Watson solve what will become some of their most bizarre and extraordinary cases - the disappearance of the race horse Silver Blaze, the horrific circumstances of the Greek Interpreter and the curious mystery of the Musgrave Ritual among them - a criminal mastermind is plotting the downfall of the great detective. 
 
Half-devil, half-genius, Professor Moriarty leads Holmes and Watson on a grisly cat-and-mouse chase through London and across Europe, culminating in a frightful struggle which will turn the legendary Reichenbach Falls into a water double-grave . . .

The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes

Stella Gibbons

'We are not like other folk, maybe, but there have always been Starkadders at Cold Comfort Farm...' 
 
Sensible, sophisticated Flora Poste has been expensively educated to do everything but earn a living. When she is orphaned at twenty, she decides her only option is to descend on relatives - the doomed Starkadders at the aptly named Cold Comfort Farm. 
 
There is Judith in a scarlet shawl, heaving with remorse for an unspoken wickedness; raving old Ada Doom, who once saw something nasty in the woodshed; lustful Seth and despairing Reuben, Judith's two sons; and there is Amos, preaching fire and damnation to one and all. 
 
As the sukebind flowers, Flora takes each of the family in hand and brings order to their chaos. 
 
Cold Comfort Farm is a sharp and clever parody of the melodramatic and rural novel.

Cold Comfort Farm

Evelyn Waugh

'I knew Sebastian by sight long before I met him. That was unavoidable for, from his first week, he was the most conspicuous man of his year by reason of his beauty, which was arresting, and his eccentricities of behaviour, which seemed to know no bounds.' 
 
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, Charles welcomes the attentions of its eccentric, aristocratic inhabitants. But he also discovers a world where duty and desire, faith and earthly happiness are in conflict; a world which threatens to destroy his beloved Sebastian. 
 
A scintillating depiction of the decadent, privileged aristocracy prior to the Second World War, Brideshead Revisited is widely regarded as Evelyn Waugh's finest work.

Brideshead Revisited

The Sacred And Profane Memories Of Captain Charles Ryder

"When did two girls of our age have such a chance as we've got - to have a lark entirely on our own? No chaperone, no rules, no..." 
"No present income or future prospects," said Lucilla. 
 
It's 1919 and Jane and her cousin Lucilla leave school to find that their guardian has gambled away their money, leaving them with only a small cottage in the English countryside. In an attempt to earn their living, the orphaned cousins embark on a series of misadventures - cutting flowers from their front garden and selling them to passers-by, inviting paying guests who disappear without paying - all the while endeavouring to stave off the attentions of male admirers, in a bid to secure their independence.

The Lark

Introduction by Booker Prize-Winning Author Penelope Lively

George Gissing

Virginia and Alice Madden are 'odd women', growing old alone in Victorian England with no prospect of finding love. Forced into poverty by the sudden death of their father, they lead lives of quiet desperation in a genteel boarding house in London.  Meanwhile, their younger sister Monica, struggles to endure a loveless marriage she agreed to as her only escape from spinsterhood. But when the Maddens meet an old friend, Rhoda Nunn, they are soon made aware of the depth of their oppression. Astonishingly ahead of its time, The Odd Women is a pioneering work of early feminism. Gissing's depiction of the daring feminist Rhoda Nunn, it is an unflinching portrayal of one woman's struggle to reconcile her own desires with her deepest principles.

The Odd Women

Søren Kierkegaard

Johannes is an aesthete, dedicated to creating the possibility of seduction through the careful manipulation of young women. He stealthily pursues the innocent Cordelia until she becomes increasingly drawn to him. But when she is ready to give herself completely, she realizes she may have got everything wrong. 
 
United by the theme of love, the writings in the Great Loves series span over two thousand years and vastly different worlds. Readers will be introduced to love&rsquo;s endlessly fascinating possibilities and extremities: romantic love, platonic love, erotic love, gay love, virginal love, adulterous love, parental love, filial love, nostalgic love, unrequited love, illicit love, not to mention lost love, twisted and obsessional love&hellip;.

The Seducer's Diary

Hermann Hesse

'The unhappiness that I need and long for . . . is of the kind that will let me suffer with eagerness and die with lust. That is the unhappiness, or happiness, that I am waiting for.' 
 
Alienated from society, Harry Haller is the Steppenwolf, wild, strange and shy. His despair and desire for death draw him into an enchanted, Faust-like underworld. Through a series of shadowy encounters, romantic, freakish and savage by turn, Haller begins to rediscover the lost dreams of his youth. 
 
Adopted by the Sixties counterculture, Steppenwolf captured the mood of a disaffected generation that was beginning to question everything.

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