Modern and Contemporary Fiction

Evelyn Waugh's acidly funny and formally daring satire, Vile Bodies reveals the darkness and vulnerability that lurks beneath the glittering surface of the high life. In the years following the First World War a new generation eme

Since it was first published in 1954, William Golding's classic debut novel has remained a stark allegory of civilization, survival, and human nature. As dystopian stories like Hunger Games and Battle Royale surge in popularity, t

The classic, Pulitzer Prize-winning novel that made Alice Walker a household name. Set in the deep American South between the wars, The Color Purple is the classic tale of Celie, a young black girl born into poverty and segregatio

Now the basis of a major Radio 4 drama, Maya Angelou's debut memoir paints a portrait of 'a brilliant writer, a fierce friend and a truly phenomenal woman' (Barack Obama)Maya Angelou's debut memoir has become an classic beloved wo

'The best fictional report of the Spanish Civil War that we possess' Anthony BurgessHigh in the pine forests of the Spanish Sierra, a guerrilla band prepares to blow up a vital bridge. Robert Jordan, a young American volunteer, ha

'The great, urgent, passionate American writer of our century, who offers us a model of the kind of compassionate thinking that might yet save us from ourselves.' George SaundersPrisoner of war, optometrist, time-traveller - these

Anthony Burgess's nightmare vision of a society overrun by nihilistic violence and governed by a menacing totalitarian state, A Clockwork Orange includes an introduction by Blake Morrison in Penguin Modern Classics. Fifteen-year-o

'There is only one book to a man,' Steinbeck wrote of East of Eden, his most ambitious novel. Set in the rich farmland of the Salinas Valley, California, this powerful, often brutal novel, follows the intertwined destinies of two

A landmark new novel from Harper Lee, set two decades after her beloved Pulitzer Prize-winning masterpiece To Kill a Mockingbird. Maycomb, Alabama. Twenty-six-year-old Jean Louise Finch - 'Scout' - returns home from New York City

A gang war is raging through the dark underworld of Brighton. Seventeen-year-old Pinkie, malign and ruthless, has killed a man. Believing he can escape retribution, he is unprepared for the courageous, life-embracing

Brideshead Revisited is Evelyn Waugh's stunning novel of duty and desire set amongst the decadent, faded glory of the English aristocracy in the run-up to the Second World War. The most nostalgic and reflective of Evelyn Waugh's n

In 1918 Ernest Hemingway went to war, to the 'war to end all wars'. He volunteered for ambulance service in Italy, was wounded and twice decorated. Out of his experiences came his early masterpiece, A Farewell to Arms.
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'Lolita is comedy, subversive yet divine ... You read Lolita sprawling limply in your chair, ravished, overcome, nodding scandalized assent' Martin Amis, ObserverPoet and pervert, Humbert Humbert becomes obsessed by twelve-year-ol

One of the BBC's '100 Novels That Shaped Our World''Rhys took one of the works of genius of the 19th Century and turned it inside-out to create one of the works of genius of the 20th Century' Michele RobertsJean Rhys's masterpiece

Drifters in search of work, George and his childlike friend Lennie, have nothing in the world except the clothes on their back - and a dream that one day they will have some land of their own. Eventually they find work on a ranch