Introducing Little Black Classics: 80 books for Penguin's 80th birthday. Little Black Classics celebrate the huge range and diversity of Penguin Classics, with books from around the world and across many centuries. They take us from a balloon ride over Victorian London to a garden of blossom in Japan, from Tierra del Fuego to 16th-century California and the Russian steppe. Here are stories lyrical and savage; poems epic and intimate; essays satirical and inspirational; and ideas that have sha...

Her last completed novel, marrying witty social realism to a 'Cinderella' love story, Jane Austen's "Persuasion" is edited with an introduction by Gillian Beer in "Penguin Classics". Anne Elliot, twenty-seven and still single, seems destined for spinsterhood. In her youth, she broke off an engagement to penniless Captain Wentworth at the insistence of her friend Lady Russell, acquiescing to the demands of her class at the expense of her happiness. But when Wentworth returns from the Napoleoni...

This eclectic, moving and wonderfully enjoyable collection is the essential introduction to Korean literature. Journeying through Korea's dramatic twentieth century, from the Japanese occupation and colonial era to the devastating war between North and South and the rapid, disorienting urbanization of later decades, The Penguin Book of Korean Short Stories captures a hundred years of Korea's vibrant short-story tradition.

Here are peddlers and donkeys travelling across moonlit fields; artists...

"A nonchalant string of anecdotes and wisecracks, told by a fellow who doesn't have a name, has never caught a mouse, and isn't much good for anything except watching human beings in action."--"The New Yorker"

IBIZA, THE EIGHTIES. At the dawn of the techno and ecstasy era a lonely teenager sees her world going into a tailspin. Marianne, born on the island to a hippie mother and a drug dealing father, is trying to keep the pieces of her life together while one of her parents is in prison in Liverpool and the other is chasing her spiritual endeavours.When an officer from the notorious Guardia Civil offers her a ride and shelter, Marianne becomes deeply fascinated by him. Embarking on a vodka and drug...

Mary wants to know what love is. After having been in a marriage without passion, she tries to get love from men who have nothing to offer her. Then she meets Richard. He tells her about his view on life and then everything changes. She talks to Richard once a month, to discuss matters as the circle of captivity, nonduality, concepts and how ‘to Richard’. Gradually, she realises that everything has changed and that she herself has also changed. In her search for love she is often desperat...

Fresh out of a relationship, Brooks finds himself overcome by insecurity towards the women he meets. After a while he coincidentally comes across a very special person who might just be what he needed in this depressed state of drinking and smoking. For Brooks it seems difficult to embrace this newly found connection. Realising he may have made a big mistake, Brooks desperately tries to cling on to the idea of fixing this before it might be too late. His buddy Lex keeps him on the right track...

Sam Collins is sent to a small bookshop in the heart of London for a college project, where he meets the young and beautiful Amy. She's willing to help him with his choice of book, but what else will she bring to him? Meanwhile, Sam's father keeps popping up in his life--something he is not excited about.

Follow Sam through one of the most exciting but also hardest years of his life as he tries to find his place in the world.

For Ezzie, life has always been like folding a thousand paper cranes: if one studies diligently, perseveres through the greatest of adversities (i.e. Blythe), and contributes to the greater scheme, all will be well in the end.

Blythe, on the other hand, would quickly get bored, crumple the paper up into a ball, declare it to be a planet stuck in a decaying orbit around a supermassive black hole and start whooshing it around your head in an ever-decreasing circle until it inevitably smashes ...

"A Tale of Two Cities" is a novel by Charles Dickens, set in London and Paris before and during the French Revolution. The story revolves around the lives of two men, Charles Darnay and Sydney Carton, who are physically alike but lead vastly different lives. Charles is a French aristocrat who chooses to live in England and becomes embroiled in the revolution, while Sydney is a dissipated lawyer who is drawn to Charles' wife, Lucie Manette.

The novel begins with the famous opening lines, "It ...