Star by Yukio Mishima (Penguin) — a short, brilliant novella in which a young film star discovers that celebrity has made him a surface onto which audiences project what they need, while behind the screen there is less and less of him. A contemporary, darkly satirical Mishima — neglected until now, and essential for anyone who wants to understand his full range. Published by Penguin.

The Besieged City by Clarice Lispector (Penguin Modern Classics) — Lispector’s third novel follows Lucrécia Neves as a new road transforms her small Brazilian town, in a novel about consciousness and place written in a prose style of radical formal ambition. One of the most formally adventurous works of its era, now finally available in English. Essential Lispector. Published by Penguin Modern Classics.

The Deal of a Lifetime by Fredrik Backman (Penguin) — a masterful novella in which a dying CEO tells his estranged son a story about a boy in a hospital and the deal he traded away without knowing its cost. Backman’s emotional ambush is perfectly timed — brief enough to read in one sitting, deep enough to stay with you for a long time. Published by Penguin.

On the Road by Jack Kerouac (Penguin Modern Classics) — the novel that launched the Beat Generation and defined a way of being alive that has influenced every writer, musician, and filmmaker who came after it. Written in three weeks of inspired composition, it has the energy and immediacy of something too urgent to be edited. Essential American literature. Published by Penguin Modern Classics.

Investigations of a Dog by Franz Kafka (Penguin) — one of Kafka’s most loved late stories, in which a philosophically obsessed dog investigates the great questions of canine existence with deadpan rigour. A precise satire of intellectual inquiry, a meditation on the limits of bounded knowledge, and a masterpiece of dark Kafkaesque comedy. A Penguin Little Black Classic. Published by Penguin.

Philosophy in the Bedroom by the Marquis de Sade (Penguin) — the most philosophically explicit of de Sade’s works, presenting his radical libertine philosophy through a dialogic structure that combines argument and narrative. Essential for serious students of the European radical Enlightenment, the history of ideas, and the limits of philosophical reason. Published by Penguin.