Penguin Modern Classics

'The greatest history of an event I know' - C.L.R. James

Regarded by many as among the most powerful works of history ever written, The History of the Russian Revolution offers an unparalleled account of one of the most pivotal and hotly debated events in world history. This book presents, from the perspective of one of its central actors, the profound liberating character of the early Russian Revolution.

Originally published in three parts, Trotsky's masterpiece is collected here in a single volume. It is still the most vital and inspiring record of the Russian Revolution ever published.

An anxious devil, a malicious old woman and a mid-century Jack the Ripper; a pursuit though a nightmarish city, a small boy's thrilling train ride with a female thief, and a town where the possibility of evil lurks behind perfect rose bushes. This is the world of Shirley Jackson, by turns frightening, funny, strange and unforgettably revealed in this collection of brilliant stories from the author of 'The Lottery'.

After Franz Kafka's death, in perhaps the most important of all acts of literary disobedience, his executor refused to agree to Kafka's wish that his great mass of unpublished fiction be destroyed. This fiction included not only The Castle and The Trial but also the amazingly varied, chilling and ingenious short works collected in The Burrow and Other Stories. These tales, some little more than a page, others much more substantial, are among the greatest works of Central European literature. They vary from the tiny and horrifying 'Little Fable' to the elaborate waking nightmares of 'Building the Great Wall of China' and the title story 'The Burrow', where an unidentified creature describes its creation of an endlessly elaborate burrow to protect itself from unidentified enemies, but with every trap or tunnel only creating further terrors and uncertainty.

Machen's weird tales of the creepy and fantastic finally come to Penguin Classics. With an introduction from S.T. Joshi, editor of American Supernatural Tales, The White People and Other Weird Stories is the perfect introduction to the father of weird fiction. The title story "The White People" is an exercise in the bizarre leaving the reader disoriented and on edge. From the first page, Machen turns even fundamental truths upside-down, as his character Ambrose explains, "there have been those who have sounded the very depths of sin, who all their lives have never done an 'ill deed'" setting the stage for a tale entirely without logic.

It's 1935 and discontent is rife in America. From the political margins appears Buzz Windrip, charismatic presidential candidate and 'inspired guesser at what political doctrines the people would like'. Sweeping to power amid mass elation, he promises wealth for all and the dawn of a glorious new era. Small-town newspaper editor Doremus Jessup is worried, especially when the new regime becomes increasingly authoritarian. But what can one individual do to fight an all-powerful state? Sinclair Lewis's terrifying cautionary tale pits liberal complacency against popular fascism and shows: yes, it really can happen here.

'[He] inspired a generation ... He changed the course of history' Barack Obama

As Martin Luther King, Jr. prepared for the Birmingham campaign in early 1963, he drafted the final sermons for Strength to Love, a volume of his best-known lectures. King had begun working on the sermons during a fortnight in jail in July 1962 and A Gift of Love includes these classic sermons, along with two new lectures.

Drawing inspiration from both his Christian faith and the non-violent philosophy of Mahatma Gandhi, A Gift of Love illustrates King's vision of love and peaceful action as social and political forces for change.

Since its first publication in 1967 as Penguin Modern Poets no. 10, The Mersey Sound has become an icon of British poetry. Gathering the early, enormously influential work of Roger McGough, Brian Patten and Adrian Henri (The Liverpool Poets), it went on to sell over half a million copies and to become the bestselling poetry anthology of all time. In the course of subsequent editions, old poems were removed and new poems introduced; but now, in time for its 50th anniversary, this volume introduces the restored original selection into Penguin Modern Classics. With its tales of Northern romance, petrol-pump attendants and bus conductors, these are the poems that first spoke so strongly to the real lives behind Beatlemania and the Mersey Beat.

''The whole tale is one of faith and folly, courage and greed, hope and delusion.'

The Christian and Muslim empires of the Middle East had fought each other for centuries, two ancient, powerful civilizations, in some ways very familiar to one another. In 1095 something extraordinary happened. The Pope issued an appeal to the leaders of western Europe to recover the Christian Holy Places from Islamic rule. The response to his appeal was overwhelming as, in scenes of hysteria, many thousands of men volunteered to leave their old lives behind and march to rescue Jerusalem. Now, across western Europe, everyone from monarchs to beggars were planning to travel many hundreds of dangerous miles in search of salvation, riches or both.

A triumph of prose-writing, argument and research, Steven Runciman's A History of the Crusades is an unimprovable account of events which changed the world and which still resonate today. In this first volume he tells the story of the First Crusade - from its unlikely beginnings to the horrors of the siege of Jerusalem and the carving out of aggressive new western European states on the edge of the eastern Mediterranean.

'The whole tale is one of faith and folly, courage and greed, hope and delusion'

The triumph of the First Crusade transformed the eastern Mediterranean, creating a series of European-ruled states along the coast and in Armenia. But the region's Muslim rulers were far from defeated and the major cities of inland Syria, Egypt and elsewhere now rallied to expel the colonisers. How could the crusaders stabilize their rule and continue to attract the thousands of new recruits needed to replace their terrible losses, both from battle and disease?

A triumph of prose-writing, argument and research, Steven Runciman's A History of the Crusades is an unimprovable account of events which changed the world and which still resonate today. In this second volume he tells the story of the catastrophic Second Crusade and the inexorable rise of the crusaders' nemesis, Saladin.

'The whole tale is one of faith and folly, courage and greed, hope and delusion'

In 1187 the catastrophic Battle of Hattin resulted in Saladin's destruction of the crusaders' main army. In an atmosphere of total crisis, the three principal leaders of Europe, Philip Augustus, Richard the Lionheart and Frederick Barbarossa decided that they should personally lead armies to relieve the beleaguered survivors.

A triumph of prose-writing, argument and research, Steven Runciman's A History of the Crusades is an unimprovable account of events which changed the world and which still resonate today. In this final volume he starts with the glamorous Third Crusade and then tells the later story as the crusader states collapsed - a less well-known but fascinating period where crusaders found themselves fighting everywhere from Egyptian swamps to the Great Hungarian Plain and the apparent clarity of the original urge to liberate Jerusalem seemed a distant dream.

A man at his desk is interrupted by the appearance of a woodland elf in his room; the piano maestro Bachmann ends his career; a barber shaves the face of a man who once tortured him; a shy dreamer makes a deal with the Devil. In these sixty-five stories of magic and melancholy, Nabokov displays an astonishing range of inventiveness, with dazzling sleight of hand, fantastical fairy tales, intellectual games and enchanting glimpses into lives of ambiguity and loss.

The collection displays Nabokov's astonishing range of technical and formal inventiveness: the dazzling sleight of hand, fanciful fairy tales, ingenious puzzles, enchanting vignettes and haunting melancholic narratives full of disturbing ambiguities.

'If he had searched his conscience, in all seriousness, for anything predisposing him to an eventful future, he would probably not have thought of a certain furtive, almost shameful emotion that disturbed him whenever he saw a train go by, a night train especially, its blinds drawn down on the mystery of its passengers.'

Something snaps in the mind of Kees Popinga when the Dutch shipping firm he works for collapses under dubious circumstances just before Christmas, taking all his money with it. From the shell of this model citizen emerges a calculating paranoiac, capable of random acts of violence - even murder. The fugitive Popinga makes his way to Paris, playing a bizarre game of cat and mouse with the police - determined to force an uncaring world to take notice of him.

Walter Mitty is an ordinary man living an ordinary life. But he has dreams - vivid, extraordinary day dreams - in which the life he leads is one of excitement and even adventure, in which he - a weary, put upon middle-aged man - is the hero of his own story.

A man can dream, can't he?

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty is just one of the brilliant humorous and witty stories written by James Thurber and collected here.

Jean Rhys wrote this autobiography in her old age, now the celebrated author of Wide Sargasso Sea but still haunted by memories of her troubled past: her precarious jobs on chorus lines and relationships with unsuitable men, her enduring sense of isolation and her decision at last to become a writer. From the early days on Dominica to the bleak time in England, living in bedsits on gin and little else, to Paris with her first husband, this is a lasting memorial to a unique artist.

'Feels incredibly modern... it is brutal, frank about sex and violence, and will make your flesh creep' Ian Rankin

A brilliant new translation of Simenon's critically acclaimed masterpiece.

'And always the dirty snow, the heaps of snow that look rotten, with black patches and embedded garbage ... unable to cover the filth.'

Nineteen-year-old Frank - thug, thief, son of a brothel owner - gets by surprisingly well despite living in a city under military occupation, but a warm house and a full stomach are not enough to make him feel truly alive in such a climate of deceit and betrayal. During a bleak, unending winter, he embarks on a string of violent and sordid crimes that set him on a path from which he can never return. Georges Simenon's matchless novel is a brutal, compelling portrayal of a world without pity; a devastating journey through a psychological no-man's land.

'Among the best novels of the twentieth century' New Yorker

'An astonishing work' John Banville

'So noir it makes Raymond Chandler look beige' Independent

'Magical' Daily Mail
'I finished it with an ache in my heart and a tear in my eye' Spectator

From the author of Cider With Rosie, Village Christmas is a moving, lyrical portrait of England through the changing years and seasons.

Laurie Lee left his childhood home in the Cotswolds when he was nineteen, but it remained with him throughout his life until, many years later, he returned for good. This collection brings to life the sights, sounds, landscapes and traditions of his home - from centuries-old May Day rituals to his own patch of garden, from carol singing in crunching snow to pub conversations and songs. Here too he writes about the mysteries of love, living in wartime Chelsea, Winston Churchill's wintry funeral and his battle, in old age, to save his beloved Slad Valley from developers.

Told with a warm sense of humour and a powerful sense of history, Village Christmas brings us a picture of a vanished world.

'Brings to life the landscapes and traditions of Lee's home in Gloucestershire, from centuries-old May Day rituals and carol-singing on Christmas Eve, to his battle in old age to save his beloved Slad valley from developers' Guardian

'Simply written, observant and shot through with Lee's characteristic humility ... Against his whitewashed prose are touches of beauty' The Times Literary Supplement