"** THE SUNDAY TIMES NO. 1 BESTSELLER ** Discover the dystopian novel that started a phenomenon. Offred is a Handmaid in The Republic of Gilead. She is placed in the household of The Commander, Fred Waterford – her assigned name, Offred, means ‘of Fred’. She has only one function: to breed. If Offred refuses to enter into sexual servitude to repopulate a devastated world, she will be hanged. Yet even a repressive state cannot eradicate hope and desire. As she recalls her pre-revolution life in flashbacks,...

"For fans of the hit Netflix docuseries The Last Dance. During his storied career as head coach of the Chicago Bulls and Los Angeles Lakers, Phil Jackson won more championships than any coach in the history of professional sports. Even more important, he succeeded in never wavering from coaching his way, from a place of deep values. Jackson was tagged as the 'Zen master' half in jest by sportswriters, but the nickname speaks to an important truth: this is a coach who inspired, not goaded; who led by awakening and...

"Mary Innes's classic prose translation of one of the supreme masterpieces of Latin literature, Ovid's Metamorphosis. Ovid drew on Greek mythology, Latin folklore and legend from ever further afield to create a series of narrative poems, ingeniously linked by the common theme of transformation. Here a chaotic universe is subdued into harmonious order: animals turn to stone; men and women become trees and stars. Ovid himself transformed the art of storytelling, infusing these stories with new life through his...

"The hilarious 1980s political satire by Jonathan Coe, published as a Penguin Essential for the first time. It is the 1980s and the Winshaw family are getting richer and crueller by the year: Newspaper-columnist Hilary gets thousands for telling it like it isn't; Henry's turning hospitals into car parks; Roddy's selling art in return for sex; down on the farm Dorothy's squeezing every last pound from her livestock; Thomas is making a killing on the stock exchange; and Mark is selling arms to dictators. But once...

"**Pre-order FREED, 'Fifty Shades Freed' as told by Christian** E L James revisits the world of Fifty Shades with a deeper and darker take on the love story that has enthralled millions of readers around the globe. Their scorching, sensual affair ended in heartbreak and recrimination, but Christian Grey cannot get Anastasia Steele out of his mind, or his blood. Determined to win her back, he tries to suppress his darkest desires and his need for complete control, and to love Ana on her own terms. But the horrors...

"Marguerite Duras was one of the leading intellectuals and novelist of post-war France, but her wartime writings were not published in full until after her death. The Wartime Notebooks trace Duras's formative experiences - including her difficult childhood in Indochina and her harrowing wait for her husband's return from Nazi internment - revealing the personal history behind her bestselling novels. The Lover is the best known of these; set in pre-war Indochina, its haunting tale of a tumultuous affair between an...

"Four sisters desperately seeking the blueprints to life the modern-day retelling of Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women like only Anna Todd (After, Imagines) could do. The Spring Girls Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy are a force of nature on the New Orleans military base where they live. As different as they are, with their father on tour in Iraq and their mother hiding something, their fears are very much the same. Struggling to build lives they can be proud of and that will lift them out of their humble station in life,...

"A young woman found murdered A scandal in the making When Mrs Bantry wakes to find a body in her library, there’s only one woman to call: her good friend Jane Marple. But she hasn’t called her old friend for comfort. The body in her library has been murdered and Miss Marple is so very good at solving murders. Her investigations uncover a scandal far darker than either of them could have imagined, and this time she may be out of her depth. ...

"Paul Auster's explosively suspenseful tale from the author of contemporary classic The New York Trilogy: 'a literary voice for the ages' (Guardian) 'Six days ago, a man blew himself up by the side of a road in northern Wisconsin . . .' The explosion that detonates the narrative of Paul Auster's thrilling novel also ends the life of its hero, Benjamin Sachs, and brings two FBI agents to the home of one of Sachs's oldest friends, the writer Peter Aaron. What follows is Aaron's story, an intricate, subtle and...

"Auster's unforgettable coming-of-age tale from the author of contemporary classic The New York Trilogy: 'a literary voice for the ages' (Guardian) Sinuously constructed in four interlocking parts, Invisible opens in New York City in the spring of 1967 when twenty-year-old Adam Walker, an aspiring poet and student at Columbia University meets the enigmatic Frenchman Rudolf Born, and his silent and seductive girlfriend Margot. Before long, Walker finds himself caught in a perverse triangle that leads to a...

"Brilliantly adapting Greek New Comedy for Roman audiences, the sublime comedies of Plautus (c. 254 -184 bc ) are the earliest surviving complete works of Latin literature. The four plays collected here reveal a playwright in his prime, exploring classic themes and developing standard characters that were to influence the comedies of Shakespeare, Moliere and many others. In The Ghost, a dissolute son who has squandered his father's money is thrown into disarray when he returns from abroad, a theme that is explored...

"Marrying deft social commentary to a rich, earthy comedy, the three comedies collected in Aristophanes' The Frogs and Other Plays offers a unique insight into one of the most turbulent periods in Ancient Greek history. This Penguin Classics edition is translated by David Barrett with revisions, an introduction and notes by Shomit Dutta. The master of ancient Greek comic drama, Aristophanes combined slapstick, humour and cheerful vulgarity with acute political observations. In The Frogs, written during the...

"Penelope has been waiting for her husband Odysseus to return from Troy for many years. Little does she know that his path back to her has been blocked by astonishing and terrifying trials. Will he overcome the hideous monsters, beautiful witches and treacherous seas that confront him? This rich and beautiful adventure story is one of the most influential works of literature in the world."

"Dirty Pretty Things is the international bestseller by Michael Faudet. A finalist in the 2015 Goodreads Readers Choice Awards, his whimsical and often erotic writing has already captured the hearts and minds of literally thousands of readers from around the world. He paints vivid pictures with intricate words and explores the compelling themes of love, loss, relationships, and sex. All beautifully captured in poetry, prose, quotes, and little short stories. * Self-published edition sold 40,000 copies in one...