198 x 129 mm

East of Eden by John Steinbeck (Penguin Modern Classics) — Steinbeck’s self-declared masterpiece: a retelling of Cain and Abel across three generations of California families, asking whether a person is capable of choosing good in a fallen world. Vast, ambitious, and completely unmistakable — the book he spent his whole life preparing to write, carrying the weight of a writer’s deepest convictions about what it means to be human. Published by Penguin Modern Classics.

Bonjour Tristesse by Françoise Sagan (Penguin Modern Classics) — written at eighteen, published to enormous scandal in 1954, this perfect short novel follows seventeen-year-old Cécile as she sets in motion a scheme to protect her summer that destroys something she did not know she valued. One of the sharpest analyses ever written of adolescent cruelty — cool, precise, and slightly amused by its narrator. Published by Penguin Modern Classics.

Mercies by Kiran Millwood Hargrave (Picador) — a novel of extraordinary atmospheric power set in seventeenth-century northern Norway, where a Scottish witch-hunter, a survivor of a devastating storm, and the hunter’s wife are drawn into a triangle of desire, power, and accusation. Renders the Arctic darkness and cold with physical precision — a deeply moving, beautifully written historical novel. Published by Picador.

Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka (Penguin) — Gregor Samsa wakes to find himself transformed into a monstrous insect, and his first thought is whether he will make it to work. In this fresh, acclaimed Penguin edition, Kafka’s most famous story recovers its capacity to surprise — to feel immediate and strange rather than merely canonical. One hundred pages that contain more than most novels manage in three hundred. 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.

White Nights by Fyodor Dostoevsky (Penguin) — Dostoevsky’s most delicate and lyrical work, a novella of romantic longing set during the luminous white nights of St Petersburg. A young man meets Nastenka on a bridge and falls into the most intense four nights of his life — a perfect introduction to Dostoevsky in a beautiful Penguin Little Black Classic edition.