The Penguin English Library edition of North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell 'How am I to dress up in my finery, and go off and away to smart parties, after the sorrow I have seen today?' Elizabeth Gaskell's compassionate, richly dramatic novel features one of the most original and fully-rounded female characters in Victorian fiction, Margaret Hale. It shows how, forced to move from the country to an industrial northern town, she develops a passionate sense of social justice, and a turbulent relationship with mill-owner John Thornton. North and South depicts a young woman discovering herself, in a nuanced portrayal of what divides people, and what brings them together. The Penguin English Library - 100 editions of the best fiction in English, from the eighteenth century and the very first novels to the beginning of the First World War.

Een aand in 1914 word Koos de la Rey op pad na ’n rebellie noodlottig gewond. Die teiken was die bendelid William Foster. Dat De la Rey in die spervuur beland het, was pure toeval. Of was dit?

Die roman is 'n verweefde tapisserie waarin die verhale van vele vertel word: die storie van o.a. Billy Foster se dogter, Helena; die trawalle van die hensopper Segrys Heyns en sy agterryer Tappies Mahlangu; die speurtog van poliesman Isak Heyns.

’n Merkwaardige, hoogs leesbare geskiedkundige roman.

'Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.'

Hidden away in the Record Department of the sprawling Ministry of Truth, Winston Smith skilfully rewrites the past to suit the needs of the Party. Yet he inwardly rebels against the totalitarian world he lives in, which demands absolute obedience and controls him through the all-seeing telescreens and the watchful eye of Big Brother, symbolic head of the Party.

In his longing for truth and liberty, Smith begins a secret love affair with a fellow-worker Julia, but soon discovers the true price of freedom is betrayal.

George Orwell's dystopian masterpiece, Nineteen Eighty-Four is perhaps the most pervasively influential book of the twentieth century.

The breathtaking new novel about the boundaries between worlds and individuals, from the internationally bestselling author of 1Q84.

When a young man’s girlfriend mysteriously vanishes, he sets his heart on finding the imaginary city where her true self lives. His search will lead him to take a job in a remote library with mysteries of its own.

When he finally makes it to the walled city, a shadowless place of horned beasts and willow trees, he finds his beloved working in a different library – a dream library. But she has no memory of their life together in the other world and, as the lines between reality and fantasy start to blur, he must decide what he’s willing to lose.

A love story, a quest, an ode to books and to the libraries that house them, The City and Its Uncertain Walls is a parable for these strange times.

A young woman is murdered in her flat and a tiny red diamond in the shape of a five-pointed star is found behind her eyelid. Detective Harry Hole is assigned to the case, alongside his long-time adversary Tom Waaler, and initially wants no part in it.

But Harry is already on his final warning and has little alternative but to drag himself out of his alcoholic stupor when it becomes apparent that Oslo has a serial killer on its hands.

Die nuutste roman van topverkoperskrywer Helena Hugo. Caroline is maar dertig jaar oud toe sy haar agtste kind in die wêreld bring. Al waarop sy gehoop het was om te sterf. Die kloof tussen haar en Willem is so wyd dit lyk asof hulle mekaar nooit weer sal vind nie. Intussen dan pak die onweerwolke van oorlog op die horison saam. Maar die hoop beskaam nie: Genesing begin by 'n weggooikind en 'n gekneusde veldblom.

Mangi and his fiancée, Aza, have been living together in Linden for the past eight years. One day while cleaning their bedroom, Mangi discovers Aza’s secret. The uncovering of Aza's lie is the catalyst to the unravelling of their already tumultuous relationship. When Aza eventually ends their relationship, Mangi is left destitute.

Mangi searches for meaning as he makes his way through the streets of Joburg in The City Is Mine.

When FBI profiler Kaely Quinn's mother is diagnosed with cancer, Kaely takes time off work to go to Dark Water, Nebraska, to help her brother care for their mother. Upon her arrival, she learns of a series of fires in the small town, attributed by the fire chief to misuse of space heaters in the frigid winter. But Kaely is skeptical, and a search for a pattern in the locations of the fires bolsters her suspicions.

After yet another blaze devastates a local family, Kaely is certain a serial arsonist is on the loose. Calling upon her partner from St. Louis, Noah Hunter, and her brother's firefighter neighbor who backs Kaely's suspicions, Kaely and her team begin an investigation that swiftly leads them down a twisted path.

When the truth is finally revealed, Kaely finds herself confronting a madman who is determined his last heinous act will be her death.

Eva Esch and her sisters are in a predicament. With the passing of their widowed mother, Eva's older brother Menno plans to move his growing family into the Eden Valley farmhouse where they all grew up, leaving little room for his three single sisters. Surely, Menno reasons, at least one of them will marry this coming wedding season.

Eva does hope to marry, but she isn't sure she wants to give up her sweet shop for the life of a farmer's wife, and she has no other prospects.

When younger sister, Lily, disappears in the night, leaving only a brief note, Eva fears she has been wooed away from the People by an outsider. And when Jed Stutzman, a young Amish buggy maker from Ohio, shows up in Lancaster with a photo of a Plain young woman, Eva's world begins to tilt. She feels powerfully drawn to the quietly charming stranger--but the woman in the forbidden photograph is no stranger at all. . . .

Begin your journey into Middle-earth.

Sauron, the Dark Lord, has gathered to him all the Rings of Power – the means by which he intends to rule Middle-earth. All he lacks in his plans for dominion is the One Ring – the ring that rules them all – which has fallen into the hands of the hobbit, Bilbo Baggins.

In a sleepy village in the Shire, young Frodo Baggins finds himself faced with an immense task, as the Ring is entrusted to his care. He must leave his home and make a perilous journey across the realms of Middle-earth to the Crack of Doom, deep inside the territories of the Dark Lord. There he must destroy the Ring forever and foil the Dark Lord in his evil purpose.

Shortlisted for the International Booker Prize 2020, an enthralling Orwellian novel about the terrors of state surveillance from one of Japan's greatest writers.

Hat, ribbon, bird rose.

To the people on the island, a disappeared thing no longer has any meaning. It can be burned in the garden, thrown in the river or handed over to the Memory Police. Soon enough, the island forgets it ever existed.

When a young novelist discovers that her editor is in danger of being taken away by the Memory Police, she desperately wants to save him. For some reason, he doesn't forget, and it's becoming increasingly difficult for him to hide his memories. Who knows what will vanish next?

The Wonder of You, continues the story of the Christiansens, another member of this large family learns what it means to trust in family, faith, and love.
Mortified after her semester abroad is cut short, Amelia Christiansen returns to Deep Haven, certain she isn’t brave enough for the adventures she’s dreamed of. The last thing she expects is for the man who broke her heart to cross the Atlantic and beg forgiveness.

Heir to a European hotel dynasty, Roark St. John has trekked from one exotic locale to another, haunted by tragedy and the expectations that accompany his last name. Amelia is the first woman to give him a reason to stop running. He’ll do anything for a second chance―even contend with Amelia’s old flame, who is intent on sending Roark packing.

While one surprise after another leaves Amelia reeling, Roark’s continued presence only highlights the questions pursuing her. Like him, is she running from the life God has called her to? Could finding her new place mean leaving home behind?

In 1943, there was an urgent need for Animal Farm. The Soviet Union had become Britain’s ally in the war against Nazi Germany, and criticism of Stalin’s brutal regime was either censored or discouraged. In any case, many intellectuals on the left still celebrated the Soviet Union, claiming that the terrors of its show trials, summary executions and secret police were either exaggerated or necessary. But, to Orwell, Stalin was always a “disgusting murderer” and he wanted to remind people of this fact in a powerful and memorable way. But how to do it? A political essay would never reach a wide enough audience; a traditional novel would take too long to write. Orwell hit on the inspired idea of combining the moralism of the traditional ‘beast fable’ with the satire of Gulliver’s Travels.

A group of farmyard animals, led by the pigs, overthrow their human masters. Their revolution is inspired by high ideals: the farm will be run in the interests of its animals with no more slaughtering, plenty of food for all and comfort in retirement. But when Napoleon the pig takes command, he quickly corrupts their principles, creating a new tyranny worse than the old.

Orwell wrote Animal Farm in the middle of the Second World War, but at first no publishers wanted to touch it. It was finally published in August 1945, once the war was over. This little book quickly became a seminal text in the emerging ‘cold war’ (a phrase that Orwell himself coined). It also became a site of that conflict itself, suffering various attempts to subvert or change its meaning. Today, Animal Farm remains a powerful fable about the nature of tyranny and corruption which applies for all ages.

Our edition also includes the following essays:

• Shooting an Elephant;
• Charles Dickens;
• Inside the Whale;
• The Frontiers of Art and Propaganda;
• Literature and Totalitarianism;
• Fascism and Democracy;
• Patriots and Revolutionaries;
• Catastrophic Gradualism;
• Some Thoughts on the Common Toad;
• Why I Write;
• Writers and Leviathan

Aside from the fact that they are brothers, Peter and Ivan Koubek seem to have little in common.

Peter is a Dublin lawyer in his thirties - successful, competent and apparently unassailable. But in the wake of their father's death, he's medicating himself to sleep and struggling to manage his relationships with two very different women - his enduring first love Sylvia, and Naomi, a college student for whom life is one long joke.

Ivan is a twenty-two-year-old competitive chess player. He has always seen himself as socially awkward, a loner, the antithesis of his glib elder brother. Now, in the early weeks of his bereavement, Ivan meets Margaret, an older woman emerging from her own turbulent past, and their lives become rapidly and intensely intertwined.

For two grieving brothers and the people they love, this is a new interlude - a period of desire, despair and possibility - a chance to find out how much one life might hold inside itself without breaking.

They knew they were changing history.
They didn’t know they would change each other.

Oxford, 1920. For the first time in its 1000-year history, the world’s most famous university has admitted female students. Giddy with dreams of equality, education and emancipation, four young women move into neighbouring rooms on Corridor Eight. They have come here from all walks of life, and they are thrown into an unlikely, life-affirming friendship.

Dora was never meant to go to university, but, after losing both her brother and her fiancé on the battlefield, has arrived in their place. Beatrice, politically-minded daughter of a famous suffragette, sees Oxford as a chance to make her own way – and her own friends – for the first time. Socialite Otto fills her room with extravagant luxuries but fears they won’t be enough to distract her from her memories of the war years. And quiet, clever, Marianne, the daughter of a village vicar, arrives bearing a secret she must hide from everyone – even The Eights – if she is to succeed.

But Oxford’s dreaming spires cast a dark shadow: in 1920, misogyny is still rife, influenza is still a threat, and the ghosts of the Great War are still very real indeed. And as the group navigate this tumultuous moment in time, their friendship will become more important than ever.

The Eights is a captivating debut novel about sisterhood, self-determination, courage, and what it means to come of age in a world that is forever changed.

Having firmly established the characters of Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson in the novels A Study in Scarlet and The Sign of the Four, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was retained by The Strand Magazine to contribute a series of twelve short stories, which began with 'A Scandal in Bohemia' in 1891 and were published monthly for the next year. The stories, in which the master sleuth receives a stream of clients presenting him with baffling and bizarre mysteries in his consulting room at 221B Baker Street, were instantly popular and by the time of the publication of the final story, 'The Copper Beeches', they had become the mainstay of the magazine. They included such classic tales as 'The Five Orange Pips' and 'The Adventure of the Speckled Band', and were gathered together in a collection known as The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, representing some of the finest detective stories ever written.

Welcome aboard the Hankyu Line train!

Come along on a heartwarming, funny, and perfectly cozy voyage with the charming and relatable passengers—including one dashing dachshund—whose lives intersect and affect each other on one of Japan’s most romantic railway lines from international bestselling author Hiro Arikawa.

Between the two beautiful towns of Takarazuka and Nishinomiya, in a stunning mountainous area of Japan, rattles the Hankyu Line train. Passengers step on and off, lost in thought, contemplating the tiny knots of their existence. On the outward journey, we are introduced to the emotional dilemmas of five characters, and on the return journey six months later, we watch them find resolutions.

A young man meets the young woman who always happens to borrow a library book just before he can check it out himself, a woman in a white bridal dress boards looking inexplicably sad, a university student heads home after class, a girl prepares to leave her abusive boyfriend, and an old lady discusses adopting a dog with her granddaughter.

With stories that crisscross like the railway lines, the Hankyu train trundles on, propelling the lives and loves of its passengers ever forward.

Most people don’t even notice them—three tiny figures sitting at the end of a long pier in the corner of one of the most famous paintings in the world. Most people think it’s just a depiction of the sea. But Louisa, an aspiring artist herself, knows otherwise, and she is determined to find out the story of these three enigmatic figures.

Twenty-five years earlier, in a distant seaside town, a group of teenagers find refuge from their bruising home lives by spending long summer days on an abandoned pier, telling silly jokes, sharing secrets, and committing small acts of rebellion. These lost souls find in each other a reason to get up each morning, a reason to dream, a reason to love.

Out of that summer emerges a transcendent work of art, a painting that will unexpectedly be placed into eighteen-year-old Louisa’s care. She embarks on a surprise-filled cross-country journey to learn how the painting came to be and to decide what to do with it. The closer she gets to the painting’s birthplace, the more nervous she becomes about what she’ll find. Louisa is proof that happy endings don’t always take the form we expect in this stunning testament to the transformative, timeless power of friendship and art.

 Five men survive a South Seas shipwreck and wash up on a seemingly deserted beach, only to discover that five beautiful, winged women inhabit the island. Dazzled and soon in love, the men will do anything to possess these flying women . . . but what they plan, and how the magical women respond, is tellingly—and predictably—human.

First published in 1914, and praised by Ursula K. LeGuin as “a real rediscovery—romantic, satiric, funny, fanciful, and a good read,” Angel Island is an adventure story and a genre-defining tale about women’s rights. 

A young wife following her heart. A husband with the law on his side. Their daughter, caught in the middle. Forty years later, a family secret changes everything in this “perfect” (Elin Hilderbrand) debut novel.

1982. Dawn is a young mother, still adjusting to life with her husband, when Hazel lights up her world like a torch in the dark. Theirs is the kind of connection that’s impossible to resist, and suddenly life is more complicated, and more joyful, than Dawn ever expected. But she has responsibilities and commitments. She has a daughter.

2022. Heron has just received news from his doctor that turns everything upside down. He’s an older man, stuck in the habits of a quiet existence. Telling Maggie, his only child—the person around whom his life has revolved—seems impossible. Heron can’t tell her about his diagnosis, just as he can’t reveal all the other secrets he’s been keeping from her for so many years.

A Family Matter is a heartbreaking and hopeful exploration of love and loss, intimacy and injustice, custody and care, and whether it is possible to heal from the wounds of the past in the changed world of today.

From the author of the international bestseller Lie with Me comes the tale of an affair between an aristocratic teenager and a soldier, as they discover the possibilities and perils of first love.

Summer, 1916. With German Zeppelins on the skyline, the men of Paris are off at war. For Vincent, sixteen and still too young to fight, this moment of dread is also a moment of possibility. An electrifying encounter with Marcel, an enigmatic middle-aged writer, draws Vincent’s desires out into the light. As he’s taken under Marcel’s wing, Vincent begins a dangerous affair with Arthur, the son of his governess and a young soldier on leave. Together, they share a secret that everyone seems to know and yet everyone remains silent about.

In this stunning portrait of young love, Philippe Besson depicts a young man who plays by his own rules and is not afraid of who he is. In the afternoons, Vincent is mentored by Marcel, the great novelist, in the city’s opulent cafés as they draw the judgment of society. And at night, he hides Arthur in his bedroom as the two risk everything to be together. Their affair initiates them into a world of pleasure and shields them from the encroaching war. During this magical week away from the trenches, Vincent shelters Arthur with happiness, reassuring him, “Nothing will happen to you.”

Tender and harrowing, In the Absence of Men captures how exhilarating and heart-crushing it is to fall in love for the first time. Besson’s award-winning novel “beautifully captures the romance and amorality of gilded youth” (The Independent).

A singular, extraordinary debut about Zoe and Jack, Harvard students who find themselves propelled into the intoxicating biotech startup world when they announce they’ve discovered the cure for aging. A different kind of love story where the thirst for achievement consumes and the stakes are forever.

Zoe, the daughter of an MIT professor who grew up in her brother’s shadow, can envision her future anew at Harvard. Jack, a boy in Zoe’s organic chemistry class with unruly hair and a gleam of competitiveness, matches her intellect and curiosity with every breath. When Jack refers Zoe for a position in a prestigious professor’s lab, the two become entwined as colleagues, staying up late to discuss scientific ideas. They find themselves on the cusp of a breakthrough: the promise of immortality through a novel antiaging drug.

Zoe and Jack set off on their new project in secret. Finding encouraging results, they bring their work to an investor, drop out of Harvard, and form a startup. But after the money, the magazine covers, and the national news stories detailing their success, Zoe and Jack receive a startling accusation that threatens to destroy both the company they built and their partnership.

A captivating novel about young love, the allure of immortality, and the recklessness that can come with early success, Notes on Infinity asks: How far would you go to achieve your dreams?