THE #1 SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER and NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

Winner of the Goodreads Choice Best Debut Novel Award

Hay Festival Book of the Year

A Book of the Year in: Guardian, Times, Sunday Times, Good Housekeeping, Woman and Home, Stylist, TLS, Oprah Daily, Newsweek, Mail on Sunday, New York Times Notable, and many others

'Sparky, rip-roaring, funny, with big-hearted fully formed, loveable characters' SUNDAY TIMES

'The most charming, life-enhancing novel I've read in ages. Strongly recomme...

The classic translation of the cornerstone work of western philosophy Plato's Republic is widely acknowledged as one of the most influential works in the history of philosophy. Presented in the form of a dialogue between Socrates and three different interlocutors, it is an inquiry into the notion of a perfect community and the ideal individual within it. During the conversation other questions are raised: what is goodness; what is reality; what is knowledge; what is the purpose of education? ...

One of the great landmarks of modern history publishing, Simon Schama's Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution is the most authoritative social, cultural and narrative history of the French Revolution ever produced.

It was Thomas Jefferson who envisioned the United States as a great 'empire of liberty.' In the first new one-volume history in two decades, David Reynolds takes Jefferson's phrase as a key to the saga of America - helping unlock both its grandeur and its paradoxes. He examines how the anti-empire of 1776 became the greatest superpower the world has seen, how the country that offered liberty and opportunity on a scale unmatched in Europe nevertheless founded its prosperity on the labour of bl...

Winston Smith works for the Ministry of Truth in London, chief city of Airstrip One. Big Brother stares out from every poster, the Thought Police uncover every act of betrayal. When Winston finds love with Julia, he discovers that life does not have to be dull and deadening, and awakens to new possibilities. Despite the police helicopters that hover and circle overhead, Winston and Julia begin to question the Party; they are drawn towards conspiracy. Yet Big Brother will not tolerate dissent ...

Self-consciously staging itself in the psychotherapy sessions of a disturbed young man, Peter Shaffer's Equus is a shocking exploration of the limits of faith, of the intersecting worlds of the sacred and profane, and of the paltry value of a 'mundane' life, published in Penguin Modern Classics. When a deranged boy, Alan Strang, blinds six horses with a metal spike he is sentenced to psychiatric treatment. Dr Dysart is the man given the task of uncovering what happened the night Strang commit...

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, Tennessee Williams's A Streetcar Named Desire is the tale of a catastrophic confrontation between fantasy and reality, embodied in the characters of Blanche DuBois and Stanley Kowalski. This Penguin Modern Classics edition includes an introduction by Arthur Miller. 'I have always depended on the kindness of strangers'Fading southern belle Blanche DuBois is adrift in the modern world.

When she arrives to stay with her sister Stella in a crowded, boisterous corner ...

A FINANCIAL TIMES AND NEW STATESMAN BOOK OF THE YEAR 2023‘Johnson’s stories bring … this history chillingly alive’ Christina Patterson, Sunday Times'An indelible feat of reporting and an urgent read ... It's a privilege to read books like these' Te-Ping Chen, author of Land of Big NumbersA documentary filmmaker who uncovered a Mao-era death camp; an independent journalist who gave voice to the millions who suffered through Covid; a magazine publisher who dodged the secret police: thes...