A wry, observant masterpiece—one of the singular treasures of the French fin de siècleWritten between the age of twenty-three and his death at age forty-six, Jules Renard's Journal 1887–1910 is a triumph of introspection and wit. One of the most celebrated figures of Belle Époque Paris, Renard was also a prolific diarist whose private musings were first published in five volumes some fifteen years after his death. Acclaimed by everyone from Somerset Maugham...

"All is for the best in the best of all possible worlds"It was the indifferent shrug and callous inertia that this "optimism" concealed which so angered Voltaire, who found the "all for the best" approach a patently inadequate response to suffering, to natural disasters, not to mention the questions of illness and man-made war. Moreover, as the rebel whose satiric genius had earned him not only international acclaim, but two stays in the Bastille, flogging, and exi...

Celebrating the 80th anniversary of one of the most famous stories in the world, a beautiful Puffin paperback edition translated from the original French by Theo Cuffe.This is the enchanting story of the little prince who lives on a tiny planet with three volcanoes and a haughty flower, which he must protect from the baobabs, the bad seeds. The rulers of the other planets he visits all suffer from the cares and stupidities of the everyday world. Only the little prince, through his ...

Joris-Karl Huysmans's cult classic of deviance and decadence that inspired Oscar Wilde's Picture of Dorian Gray, now in a new translation by Theo CuffeA celebration of deviance, vanity, sensual abandon, and the aesthetics of artifice, Against Nature brings us the nineteenth-century rebel Jean Des Esseintes—disaffected, degenerate, and art obsessed. The last of a proud and noble family, Des Esseintes retreats from the world in disgust at bourgeois ...

Brought to you by Penguin.This Penguin Classic is performed by Ben Lloyd-Hughes, best known for Divergent, Me Before You and The Inbetweeners. This definitive recording includes an introduction by Michael Wood.Brought up in the household of a powerful Baron, Candide is an open-minded young man, whose tutor, Pangloss, has instilled in him the belief that 'all is for the best'. But when his love for the Baron's rosy-cheeked daughter is discovered, Candide is ...

Brought to you by Puffin.The timeless, enchanting story of the little prince who lives on a tiny planet with three volcanoes and a haughty flower, which he must protect from the baobabs, the bad seeds. The rulers of the other planets he visits all suffer from the cares and stupidities of the everyday world. Only the little prince, through his clear, loving eyes, knows that the simplest of things can be of the utmost importance.Translated by T. V. F. Cuffe.

Unassuming in plot and style, Heidi may none the less lay claim to rank as a world classic. In the first place, both background and characters ring true. The air of the Alps is wafted to us in every page; the house among the pines, the meadows, and the eagle poised above the naked rocks form a picture that no one could willingly forget. And the people, from the kindly towns-folk to the quaint and touching peasant types, are as real as any representation of human nature need be. Ev...

'My dear, I don't give a damn.' The pampered daughter of a wealthy Georgian plantation owner, sixteen-year-old Scarlett O'Hara soon realises that young men can't resist her charms, despite her forthright manners and her refusal to embrace her mother's ladylike ways. She enters into an early marriage, but when the war between the Union and the Southern States breaks out and she is left a young widow, Scarlett's life is turned upside down, and she finds herself embroiled, together with the w...

**As seen on Stranger Things, discover the ground-breaking, bestselling science fiction and fantasy classic that has delighted readers for over 60 years!NEWBERY MEDAL WINNER • TIME MAGAZINE’S 100 BEST FANTASY BOOKS OF ALL TIME • NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE FROM DISNEY**"A Wrinkle in Time is one of my favorite books of all time. I've read it so often, I know it by heart." —Meg CabotThis audiobook includes an introduc...

Brought to you by Penguin.This Penguin Classic is performed by Steve John Shepherd, whose theatre credits include Much Ado About Nothing at the Globe, The Good Canary directed by John Malkovich*, Bomber's Moon* and Piaf. His TV and film credits range from the iconic This Life to Silent Witness and Eastenders. This definitive recording includes an introduction by E V Rieu.One of the foremost achievements ...

Winner of the 1973 National Book Award, Gravity's Rainbow is a postmodern epic, a work as exhaustively significant to the second half of the twentieth century as Joyce's Ulysses was to the first. Its sprawling, encyclopedic narrative and penetrating analysis of the impact of technology on society make it an intellectual tour de force.For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more t...

The 30th anniversary edition of the virtuosic, wickedly comic modern classic about the pursuit of happiness in America, with a new foreword written and read by Michelle Zauner, author of the New York Times bestselling sensation Crying in H Mart.“To my mind, there have been two great American novels in the past fifty years. Catch-22 is one; this is the other.” —Stephen King, Entertainment WeeklySet in an a...