Modern Classics

The Ultimate Modern Classics Collection: Volume One is the first instalment in our classics collection focusing on the most important and iconic novels, stories, and poems of the 20th century. Featuring 18 essential modern classics from Orwell, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Woolf, and many more, and read by a cast of incredible narrators including Iwan Rheon, Ben Allen, Karen Cass, Nathan Osgood, amongst others, this is an essential addition to your library.

Brought to you by Penguin. 'I've done my damndest to rip a reader's nerves to rags, I don't want him satisfied.' Shocking and controversial when it was first published, The Grapes of Wrath is Steinbeck's Pultizer Prize-winning epic of the Joad family, forced to travel west from Dust Bowl era...

Brought to you by Penguin. Embattled agent Bernard Samson is used to being passed over for promotion as his younger, more ambitious colleagues - including his own wife Fiona - rise up the ranks of MI6. When a valued agent in East Berlin warns the British of a mole at the heart of the Service...

Meet the gamblers, whores, drunks, bums and artists of Cannery Row in Monterey, California, during the Great Depression. They want to throw a party for their friend Doc, so Mack and the boys set about, in their own inimitable way, recruiting everyone in the neighbourhood to the cause. But along the way they can't help but get involved in a little mischief and misadventure. It wouldn't be Cannery Row if it was otherwise, now would it?

Brought to you by Penguin. Peter and Paul, the two sons of German businessman Harald Winter, are bonded together by a childhood trauma. But as they grow up the brothers also grow apart. When the shadow of the Third Reich falls they become divided by war and their differing ideals - only to meet...

Drifters in search of work, George and simple-minded friend Lennie have nothing in the world except each other - and a dream. A dream that one day they will have some land of their own. Eventually they find work on a ranch, but their hopes are doomed as Lennie - struggling against extreme cruelty, misunderstanding and jealousy - becomes a victim of his own strength. 

Brought to you by Penguin. Ranging from the age of slavery to contemporary injustices, this groundbreaking history of race, gender and class inequality by the radical political activist Angela Davis offers an alternative view of female struggles for liberation. Tracing the intertwined histories...

Brought to you by Penguin. 'There is only one book to a man,' Steinbeck wrote of East of Eden, his most ambitious novel. Set in the rich farmland of the Salinas Valley, California, this powerful, often brutal novel, follows the intertwined destinies of two families - the Trasks and the Hamiltons...

Brought to you by Penguin. Now a new six part ITV drama starring Joe Cole, as iconic spy Harry Palmer, Lucy Boynton and Tom Hollander. A high-ranking scientist has been kidnapped. A secret British intelligence agency must find out why. But as the quarry is pursued from grimy Soho to the other...

Brought to you by Penguin. Bernard Samson returns to Berlin in the first novel in the classic spy trilogy, FAITH, HOPE and CHARITY. Bernard has known that he is not getting the full picture from London Central ever since discovering that his wife Fiona was a double agent. Werner Volkmann has...

Brought to you by Penguin. A sunken U-Boat has lain undisturbed on the Atlantic ocean floor since the Second World War - until now. Inside its rusting hull, among the corpses of top-rank Nazis, lie secrets people will kill to obtain. The sequel to Len Deighton's game-changing debut The IPCRESS...

Brought to you by Penguin. Of all the mysteries Bernard Samson has encountered, the greatest is his wife Fiona. Dedicated agent of the Service and a woman of secrets, she will risk everything to play the long game. As the truth about the decision that shattered their marriage is gradually...

Brought to you by Penguin. Bernard Samson returns to Berlin in the second novel in the classic spy trilogy, FAITH, HOPE and CHARITY. Bernard is trying hard to readjust his life in the face of questions about his wife Fiona, and her defection to the East. Is she the brilliant high-flyer that her...

Brought to you by Penguin. Long-suffering spy Bernard Samson has, against all the odds, enticed a Soviet agent to defect to London - but this proves to be the start of something even bigger. For he learns that there is treachery within his own Service, and no one is free from suspicion. To...

Brought to you by Penguin. Frantz Fanon's urgent, dynamic critique of the effects of racism on the psyche is a landmark study of the black experience in a white world. Drawing on his own life and his work as a psychoanalyst to explore how colonialism's subjects internalize its prejudices...

Brought to you by Penguin. George Orwell's paean to the end of an idyllic era in British history, Coming Up for Air is a poignant account of one man's attempt to recapture childhood innocence as war looms on the horizon. George Bowling, forty-five, mortgaged, married with children, is an...

This anthology features a wide array of thought-provoking, genre-defining works from the 1900s, showcasing the range of modern storytelling—from existential musings to dark humour and intricate social commentary. These are the stories that have shaped modern literature, offering timeless insights into human nature and society. This collection brings together the finest modernist narratives, political reflections, and social commentaries that have shaped literature as we know it.

Brought to you by Penguin. 31 June, 1943. An RAF crew prepare for their next bombing raid on Germany. It is a night that many will never forget. Len Deighton's devastating novel is a gripping minute-by-minute account of what happens over the next twenty-four hours. Told through the eyes of...

Brought to you by Penguin. Driven mad by three years of endless telegrams, phonecalls, mail, reporters and snoopers in the wake of his hugely successful novel On the Road, Jack Kerouac, 'King of the Beats', needs peace, quiet and sobriety: surrounded and outnumbered he has to 'get away to...

Caro, gallant and adventurous, is one of two Australian sisters who have come to post-war England to seek their fortunes. Courted long and hopelessly by young scientist, Ted Tice, she is to find that love brings passion, sorrow, betrayal and finally hope. The milder Grace seeks fulfilment in an...