American Literature Collection

A Penguin Classic First published in 1938, this volume of stories collected with the encouragement of his longtime editor Pascal Covici serves as a wonderful introduction to the work of Nobel Prize winner John Steinbeck. Set in the beautiful Salinas Valley of California, where simple people farm...

Working as a courier delivering mail and packages to corporate businesses in Houston, she becomes hungry for a better life and to fulfill her dream of one day operating an art gallery. She takes a job as an escort for a legit businesswoman. The men she assists are intriguing. How cool is it to get paid for talking about art, a subject she loves so deeply? She meets Jax and Jameson Spaulding, two very wealthy retired soldiers who have invented things and also provide protection for important clients.

From one of the world's most beloved and outspoken public intellectuals comes an illuminating book on the nature of criticism "Readers will be surprised, stimulated, instructed, impressed."―The New Yorker “What is a beginning? What must one do in order to begin? What is special about...

Now available for the first time in audio as a digital download, a selection of stories from Grace Paley. Whether writing about relationships, little girls, loving and bickering couples, angry suburbanites, frustrated job-seekers, or Jewish children performing a Christmas play, GRACE PALEY...

A man walks into a trendy Los Angeles restaurant -- a disgruntled ex-employee with an automatic weapon -- and seconds later, thirteen people are dead and thirty-two more have been wounded. It is a heinous act of mass slaughter that haunts Homicide Detective Peter Decker. But, though eyewitnesses...

“This stunning collection from one of the great writers on Black culture covers the gamut: aging, love, poverty, trauma and plenty of lightness in between.”—People From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of How Stella Got Her Groove Back and Waiting to Exhale comes a remarkable...

From one of the world’s foremost experts on terrorism and post-traumatic stress disorder, comes an intimate and astonishingly frank examination of her own rape at 15, the life of her rapist, and how both shaped her life and work. Jessica Stern is one of the world’s foremost experts on...

Three tales from The Canterbury Tales, read in the original Middle English by Richard Bebb under the direction of Britain's foremost Chaucer scholar, Derek Brewer.

A dazzling debut, a blazingly original voice: the ten stories in St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves introduce a radiant new talent. In the collection’s title story, a pack of girls raised by wolves are painstakingly reeducated by nuns. In “Haunting Olivia,” two young boys make...

With a newborn in tow, Bubbles Jones escapes a brutal sanctuary for “wayward girls” to confront the hypocritical shame of her pastor father and the betrayal of a lover. But Bubbles is accompanied by a woman who offers her shelter and a dream. Forging an unpredictable path ahead, Bubbles will not yield and will not hide in her unwavering commitment to make a big life real in a world determined to keep her small.

The writer whom Fran Lebowitz compared to the author of The Great Gatsby, calling him “the real F. Scott Fitzgerald,” makes his Penguin Classics debut with this beautiful deluxe edition of his best-loved book. One of the great novels of small-town American life, Appointment in Samarra is...

John Updike reads six stories he has selected from the hundred-odd he has published. "A&P", recounting a moral crisis on the checkout counter, is his most anthologized story. "Pigeon Feathers," the longest story included, tells of a fourteen-year-old boy's fear of death and the answer he finds...

Written after two years of artistic silence, during which the world came to a halt due to the COVID-19 pandemic and Minneapolis became the epicenter of protest following the murder of George Floyd, Bluff is Danez Smith's powerful reckoning with their role and responsibility as a poet and with their hometown of the Twin Cities. This is a book of awakening out of violence, guilt, shame, and critical pessimism to wonder and imagine how we can strive toward a new existence in a world that seems to be dissolving into desolate futures.

A stunning collection of work from beloved poet John Ashbery, his first posthumous book Renowned for his inventive mind, ambitious play with language, and dexterity with a wide range of tones and styles, John Ashbery has been a major artistic figure in the cultural life of our time. Parallel...

A dazzling novel from one of our finest writers—an epic yet intimate family saga about three generations of all-American radicals At the center of Jonathan Lethem’s superb new novel stand two extraordinary women: Rose Zimmer, the aptly nicknamed Red Queen of Sunnyside, Queens, is an...

A collection of self-contained chapters exploring human imperfections, life, and death through humor and raw introspection, perfect for readers who enjoy character-driven, literary fiction. The characters in Dominic Hoffman's tales of Late Rehearsals are familiar. Their choices are recognizable...

In twenty-two wonderfully articulate essays, Barbara Kingsolver raises her voice in praise of nature, family, literature, and the joys of everyday life while examining the genesis of war, violence, and poverty in our world From the author of High Tide in Tucson, comes Small Wonder, a new...

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Man Booker Prize-winning novel Lincoln in the Bardo and the story collection Tenth of December, a 2013 National Book Award Finalist for Fiction. Talking candy bars, baby geniuses, disappointed mothers, castrated dogs, interned teenagers...

“The most convincing portrait I know of contemporary America . . . a great American novel.”— James Atlas, The Atlantic Monthly From acclaimed author Russell Banks, a masterful novel of hope lost and gained—a gripping, indelible story of fragile lives uprooted and transformed by...

“Allende is one of the most important novelists to emerge from Latin America in the past decade.”—Boston Globe An enthralling tale of one man's search for love and his struggle to contend with the pain and deprivation that shaped him. Born in the Hispanic barrio of Los Angeles, Gregory...