Fiction > Popular Penguins

Anthony Burgess's A Clockwork Orange is the shocking seminal novel that spawned one of the most notorious films ever made. Fifteen-year-old Alex and his thrill-seeking gang regularly indulge in ultra-violence, rape and drugs, but when he is caught and brainwashed by a government psychologist Alex finds his new law-abiding life unbearable. Set in a terrifying dystopian future, A Clockwork Orange is a disturbing exploration of morality and free will. First published 1962; this edition with Blake Morrison introduction 1996.

In the foreground of All Visitor's Ashore is a set of bizarre characters, all of whom seem bent on escaping from New Zealand into a larger world. The 1951 waterfront lockout is on, the harbour is full of cargo vessels, but the passenger ships continue to sail. One by one or two by two the characters in the novel depart, leaving Curl Skidmore, the would-be poet and latterday professor (who is looking back on these events as an older man) alone on Takapuna Beach.

Truman Capote's Breakfast at Tiffany's is a brilliant glimmer of the excitement of 40's New York.
Holly Golightly - brashly beautiful with a slim black dress, a mysterious past and dark glasses over varicoloured eyes - entrances all the men she meets, including the young writer living above her, though her recklessness may yet catch up with her.
Also containing three short stories, this edition shows the elegance and warmth of Capote's writing at its most flawless. First published 1958.

Charles Ryder, a lonely student at Oxford, is captivated by the outrageous and decadent Sebastian Flyte. Invited to Brideshead, Sebastian's magnificent family home, Charles welcomes the attentions of its eccentric, aristocratic inhabitants, gradually becoming infatuated with them and the life of privilege they inhabit - in particular, with Sebastian's remote sister, Julia. But he gradually comes to recognize his spiritual and social distance from them, eventually discovering a world where duty and desire, faith and happiness are in... read more

For all the promise of his name, Jack Skeat cannot be a poet. His friend Rex Petley - eel-catcher, girl-chaser, motorbike rider - takes that prize. Is he also a murderer? And why, forty years later, does he drown out on the Gulf? Jack has to find out, and is drawn to examine their lives. Going West has long been regarded as one of the most autobiographical of Maurice Gee's novels.

In the deceptively quiet Waikato of the 1930s and 1940s, a number of lives connect in a complex web of family ties, desire and violence. The events of this story also take in boxing, farming, devotion and perversion, ranging as far as Tasmania and the Spanish Civil War. Alex, tall and solitary, striding through this novel ...Barbara, his first love ...Bet, strong and unobtrusive ...And the enigmatic man in the balaclava.

As a young man in the 1930s, Josef battled the Nazis on the streets of Vienna. He fled to New Zealand, only to be interned as a dangerous enemy on Somes Island in Wellington Harbour. After the war, he rebuilt his life and married Nancy. Despite his success, Josef still stands askew from his times. In his chosen home he is both an insider and an outsider, and the past has become a place in which to escape and perhaps even to resolve the troubles of the present.

Oracles and Miracles is Stevan Eldred-Grigg's best-selling debut novel about Ginnie and Fag, twin sisters growing up in poverty in Christchurch in the thirties and forties and living in a world of dreams. It's a city of 'peeling paint, flaking iron, cracked linoleum, dusty yards, lean-tos, and asphalts, dunnies and textile mills'. The novel is a heart-warming story of the girls' close relationship as they grow into women and attempt to escape their impoverished background.

First published in 1972, Pounamu Pounamu introduced an exciting new voice into New Zealand literature. Most of Witi Ihimaera's stories, based on the East Coast, describe a traditional rural, communal way of life facing huge pressures from the drift by many Maori to the cities. This was to be a constant theme in Ihimaera's future writing.

Set in the volatile Paris summer of 1938, The Age of Reason follows two days in the life of Mathieu Delarue, a philosophy teacher, and his circle in the cafes and bars of Montparnasse. Mathieu has so far managed to contain sex and personal freedom in conveniently separate compartments. But now he is in trouble, urgently trying to raise 4,000 francs to procure a safe abortion for his mistress, Marcelle. Beyond all this, filtering an uneasy light on his predicament, rises the distant threat of the coming of the Second World War.

Innovative, startlingly perceptive and aglow with colour, these fifteen stories were written towards the end of Katherine Mansfield's tragically short life. Many are set in New Zealand, others in England and the French Riviera. All are revelations of the unspoken, half-understood emotions that make up everyday experience - from the vivid, impressionistic evocation of family life in 'At the Bay' to the poignant, haunting, miniature masterpiece 'The Garden Party'.

When Bernadette Crichton finds her husband dead, under the beautiful grandiflora tree, she assumes a widowhood that is unconventional and strange. Exiled inside her large house, Bernadette refuses to 'see or be seen' by platitude-bearing visitors. Letters of condolence are divided into three piles: to be answered, not to be answered, not understood. But it is the discovery of Charlie's diary that forces her to address the unpleasant truth: Charlie and their marriage were not what they seemed. First published 1989.

Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray is the story of a man who makes a devilish pact never to grow old. Dorian Gray remains forever young, indulging in unspeakable pleasures while his portrait bears the mark of his corrupt existence. A beautifully decadent tale of the destructive allure of perpetual youth, The Picture of Dorian Gray is a masterpiece of Victorian gothic horror. First published 1891; this edition with introduction & notes 2000.

Romantic, heroic, comic and tragic, unconventional schoolmistress Jean Brodie has become an iconic figure in post-war fiction. Her glamour, freethinking ideas and manipulative charm hold dangerous sway over her girls at the Marcia Blaine Academy - the 'creme de la creme' - who become the Brodie Set, introduced to a world of adult games they will never forget.

Skinny Louie, daughter of Shanghai Lil, has a baby in the Begonia House on the day of the royal visit. Maura finds the baby and takes it home. Tia grows up with magical powers into the brave new world of the twenty-first century. Fiona Farrell's The Skinny Louie Book - always moving, often hilarious - is a breathtakingly accomplished debut. It presents a head-on confrontation with a New Zealand psyche rarely found in history books. First published 1882.

Simon Winchester's The Surgeon of Crowthorne was an international bestseller and tells an extraordinary true story of murder, madness and an extraordinary friendship in the nineteenth century. It is the tale of James Murray, the compiler of the first Oxford English Dictionary, and his most valued helper: Dr Minor of Crowthorne, who was also a homicidal lunatic, confined to Broadmoor asylum for murder. This is an enthralling and beautifully written work of literary detection.

Usage and Abusage is Penguin's classic linguistic reference book that not only tells you how to use English correctly, but is also a declaration of war on its misuse. Covering grammatical problems, words that are commonly abused and confused, matters of style, as well as providing advice on how to communicate clearly and elegantly, it is the perfect reader for every writer.