I am a woman's rights. I have plowed and reaped and husked and chopped and mowed, and can any man do more than that? I am as strong as any man that is now' A former slave and one of the most powerful orators of her time, Sojourner Truth fought for the equal rights of Black women throughout her life.…
A hairy mammoth takes a cheeky little baby on a thrilling ride through a moonlit landscape populated by a sabre-toothed tiger, a leaping hare, a laughing hyena and even, just maybe, by a big brown bear . . . But where are they going? And what has it to do with the babys scribblings on the cave wall?
'The story of the negro in America is the story of America ... it is not a very pretty story' James Baldwin's breakthrough essay collection made him the voice of his generation. Ranging over Harlem in the 1940s, movies, novels, his preacher father and his experiences of Paris, they capture the complexity of black life at the dawn of the…
Afropean. Here was a space where blackness was taking part in shaping European identity ... A continent of Algerian flea markets, Surinamese shamanism, German Reggae and Moorish castles. Yes, all this was part of Europe too ... With my brown skin and my British passport - still a ticket into mainland Europe at the time of writing - I set…
In over a year of on-the-ground reportage, Washington Post writer Wesley Lowery traveled across the US to uncover life inside the most heavily policed, if otherwise neglected, corners of America today. In an effort to grasp the scale of the response to Michael Brown's death and understand the magnitude of the problem police violence represents, Lowery conducted hundreds of interviews…
From Katie Cotugno and author of Sex and the City Candace Bushnell comes this fierce and feisty exploration of feminism: standing up, speaking out and rewriting the rules. Don’t be easy. Don’t give it up. Don’t be a prude. Don’t be cold. Don’t put him in the friendzone. Don’t act desperate. Don’t let things go too far. Don’t give him…
Oranges in No Man's Land brings Elizabeth Laird's emotional and gripping adventure to her next generation of fans. Since her father left Lebanon to find work and her mother tragically died in a shell attack, ten-year-old Ayesha has been living in the bomb-ravaged city of Beirut with her granny and her two younger brothers. The city has been torn in…
eter Hatcher's little brother, Fudge, is four. And he's as monstrous as ever! When Fudge discovers that his new baby sister can't play with him, he tries to sell her. When that doesn't work, he tries giving her away. And on his first day at school he kicks his teacher and calls her Rat Face. Can his big brother help…
A Poem For Every Day of the Year is a magnificent collection of 366 poems compiled by Allie Esiri, one to share on every day of the year. Reflecting the changing seasons and linking to events on key dates – funny for April Fool's Day, festive for Christmas – these poems are thoughtful, inspiring, humbling, informative, quiet, loud, small, epic,…
The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett is a magical novel for adults and children alike. This new hardback is one of five special Puffin Classics editions created in partnership with the world-famous V&A Museum, with exquisite cover designs from their William Morris collection. ‘I’ve stolen a garden,’ she said very fast. ‘It isn’t mine. It isn’t anybody’s. Nobody wants…
Previously adapted into a critically acclaimed film by Sofia Coppola starring Kirsten Dunst, this is the story of the five Lisbon sisters – beautiful, eccentric, and obsessively watched by the entire neighbourhood. The boys that once loved them from afar are now grown men, determined to understand a tragedy that has always defied explanation. For still, the question remains –…
And you thought your adolescence was scary. Suburban Seattle, the mid-1970s. We learn from the outset that a strange plague has descended upon the area's teenagers, transmitted by sexual contact. The disease is manifested any number of ways - from the hideously grotesque to the subtle (and concealable) - but once you've got it, that's it. There's no turning back.…
The story of a young man's coming of age, a tender tribute to a life lost, and a devastating analysis of a broken system. Aged 15 and living in LA, Michael Allen was arrested for a botched carjacking. He was tried as an adult and sentenced to thirteen years behind bars. After growing up in prison Michael was then released…
The incredible story of the death of Eric Garner, the birth of the BLACK LIVES MATTER movement and the new fault lines of race, protest, policing and the power of the people. On July 17, 2014, a forty-three-year-old black man named Eric Garner died in New York after a police officer put him in a "chokehold" during an arrest for…
In the mid-eighteenth century, as new ideas begin to sweep the continent, a young Jew of mysterious origins arrives in a village in Poland. Before long, he has changed not only his name but his persona; visited by what seem to be ecstatic experiences, Jacob Frank casts a charismatic spell that attracts an increasingly fervent following. In the decade to…
From one of our most powerful writers, a work of stunning frankness about losing a daughter. Richly textured with bits of her own childhood and married life with her husband, John Gregory Dunne, and daughter, Quintana Roo, this new book by Joan Didion examines her thoughts, fears, and doubts regarding having children, illness, and growing old. Blue Nights opens on…
Introduction and Notes by R.T. Jones, Honorary Fellow of the University of York. This edition of the poetry of Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) includes all the poems contained in the Definitive Edition of 1940. In his lifetime, Kipling was widely regarded as the unofficial Poet Laureate, and he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1907. His poetry is striking…
Of all John Fowles' novels The French Lieutenant's Woman received the most universal acclaim and today holds a very special place in the canon of post-war English literature. From the god-like stance of the nineteenth-century novelist that he both assumes and gently mocks, to the last detail of dress, idiom and manners, his book is an immaculate recreation of Victorian…
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 of the abolitionist and women's suffrage movements, Davis examines the racism and class prejudice inherent in so much of white feminism, and…
Soon to be a major film directed by Coky Giedroyc and starring Ladybird's Beanie Feldstein as Johanna Morrigan and Game of Thrones's Alfie Allen as John Kite My name’s Johanna Morrigan. I’m fourteen, and I’ve just decided to kill myself. I don’t really want to die, of course! I just need to kill Johanna, and build a new girl. Dolly…
The woman's place of power within each of us is neither white nor surface; it is dark, it is ancient, and it is deep The revolutionary writings of Audre Lorde gave voice to those 'outside the circle of this society's definition of acceptable women'. Uncompromising, angry and yet full of hope, this collection of her essential prose - essays, speeches,…
‘Why can’t you find a nice man to be happy with?’ my mother is saying. We are walking down Ninth Avenue after a noon-hour concert at Lincoln Centre. ‘Why do you pick one schlemiel after another? Do you do this to make me miserable?’ Vivian Gornick’s relationship with her mother is difficult. At the age of forty-five, she regularly meets…
'Fiercely feminist, fascinating. I have recommended this to several people. And I'm doing the same here' Sunday Times 'Do not read this book in public: it will make you cry' Anne Enright 'I am afraid of being the disruptive woman. And of not being disruptive enough. I am afraid. But I am doing it anyway.' In this dazzling debut, Emilie…
An incendiary debut taking the world by storm, Fight Like A Girl is an essential manifesto for feminists new, old and soon-to-be. Online sensation and fearless feminist heroine, Clementine Ford is a beacon of hope and inspiration to thousands of women and girls. In the wake of Harvey Weinstein and the #MeToo campaign, Ford uses a mixture of memoir, opinion…
In June, 1954, eighteen-year-old Emmett Watson is driven home to Nebraska by the warden of the juvenile work farm where he has just served fifteen months for involuntary manslaughter. With his mother long gone, his father recently deceased, and the family farm foreclosed upon by the bank, Emmett plans to pick up his eight-year-old brother Billy and head to California…
'Promises to make for one of 2021's must-read memoirs' Stylist The powerful, urgent manifesto on never giving up from Booker prize-winning trailblazer, Bernardine EvaristoIn 2019, Bernardine Evaristo became the first black woman to win the Booker Prize since its inception fifty years earlier - a revolutionary landmark for Britain. Her journey was a long one, but she made it, and…
The Dead Are Arising is a penetrating and riveting work that affirms the centrality of Malcolm X to the African American freedom struggle and the story of the twentieth century. Renowned Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist Les Payne paints vivid and dramatic scenes from start to finish, from Malcolm's clandestine meeting with the KKK in 1961 to a minute-by-minute account of…
Black Milk is the affecting and beautifully written memoir on motherhood and writing by Turkey's bestselling female writer Elif Shafak, author of Honour, The Gaze and The Bastard of Istanbul which was long-listed for the Orange prize. Postpartum depression affects millions of new mothers every year, and- like most of its victims- Elif Shafak never expected to be one of…
Gloria Steinem had an itinerant childhood. Every fall, her father would pack the family into the car and they would drive across the country, in search of their next adventure. The seeds were planted: Steinem would spend much of her life on the road, as a journalist, organizer, activist, and speaker. In vivid stories that span an entire career, Steinem…
Wry, compassionate, and glittering with wit, Penelope Lively's stories get beneath the everyday to the beating heart of human experience. In intimate stories of growing up and growing old, chance encounters and life-long relationships, Lively explores with keen insight the ways that individuals can become tangled in history, and small acts ripple through the generations. From new and never-before-published stories…
Francis Sancher always said he would come to an unnatural end. So when this handsome newcomer to the Guadeloupean village of Riviere au Sel is found dead, face down in the mud, no one is particularly surprised. Loved by some - especially women - and reviled by others, Francis was an enigmatic figure. Where did he come from? What caused…
Meet 30 positive male role models from throughout history. From activists like Mahatma Gandhi and Frederick Douglass to creative innovators like Prince and David Hockney, these men have fought conventional stereotypes to prove that modern-day masculinity can be defined freely. Instead of a single model of how a boy can grow into a man, this book offers 30 stories of…
The Rings of Saturn begins as the record of a journey on foot through coastal East Anglia. From Lowestoft to Bungay, Sebald's own story becomes the conductor of evocations of people and cultures past and present: of Chateaubriand, Thomas Browne, Swinburne and Conrad, of fishing fleets, skulls and silkworms.
The year is 1327. Franciscans in a wealthy Italian abbey are suspected of heresy, and Brother William of Baskerville arrives to investigate.When his delicate mission is suddenly overshadowed by seven bizarre deaths, Brother William turns detective. He collects evidence, deciphers secret symbols and coded manuscripts, and digs into the eerie labyrinth of the abbey where extraordinary things are happening under…
A celebratory 20th anniversary edition of this landmark collection from black writers across the literary spectrum This ground-breaking anthology was first published twenty years ago, into a different literary landscape. Showcasing the work of more than 100 black British authors, this 20th anniversary edition celebrates their lasting contributions to literature and to our wider culture. Including poetry from Roger Robinson,…
Jon Krakauer's Into Thin Air is the true story of a 24-hour period on Everest, when members of three separate expeditions were caught in a storm and faced a battle against hurricane-force winds, exposure, and the effects of altitude, which ended in the worst single-season death toll in the peak's history. In March 1996, Outside magazine sent veteran journalist and…
Cross & Nought . . . Years have passed since relationships between Crosses and Noughts were forbidden, but the secret, life-changing love story of Sephy Hadley and Callum McGregor has never been forgotten. Black and White . . . In many ways, people are more divided than ever. Aggressive lines are drawn on race, politics, class. Powerful dark corners of…
With carefully adapted text, new illustrations, language practise activities and additional online resources, the Penguin Readers series introduces language learners to bestselling authors and compelling content. Titles include popular classics, exciting contemporary fiction, and thought-provoking non-fiction. Ballet Shoes, a Level 2 Reader, is A1+ in the CEFR framework. Sentences contain a maximum of two clauses, introducing the future tenses will…
Ella Rubinstein has a husband, three teenage children, and a pleasant home. Everything that should make her confident and fulfilled. Yet there is an emptiness at the heart of Ella's life - an emptiness once filled by love. So when Ella reads a manuscript about the thirteenth-century Sufi poet Rumi and Shams of Tabriz, and his forty rules of life…
'One of the most electrifying writers at work in America today, among the sharpest and most supple thinkers of her generation' - Olivia Laing So often deployed as a jingoistic, even menacing rallying cry, or limited by a focus on passing moments of liberation, the rhetoric of freedom both rouses and repels. Does it remain key to our autonomy, justice,…
Breathtaking' – Haruki Murakami author of Norwegian Wood A New York Times 'Notable Book of 2020' and one of Elena Ferrante's 'Top 40 Books by Female Authors' On a hot summer’s day in a poor suburb of Tokyo we meet three women: thirty-year-old Natsuko, her older sister Makiko, and Makiko’s teenage daughter Midoriko. Makiko, an ageing hostess despairing the loss…
A producer. A novelist. An actress. It is summer in 1968, the year of the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy. While the world is reeling our trio is involved in making a rackety Swingin' Sixties British movie in sunny Brighton. All are leading secret lives. As the film is shot, with its usual drastic ups and downs,…
Fear and loathing on the 2020 campaign trail... '26 February, White House Briefing Room The coronavirus feels like it is changing everything. Suddenly it's not just a public health emergency; it has the potential to upend this whole election...' In UnPresidented: Politics, pandemics and the race that Trumped all others, BBC North America Editor Jon Sopel presents a diary of…
How has feminism developed? What have feminists achieved? What can we learn from the global history of feminism? Feminism is the ongoing story of a profound historical transformation. Despite being repeatedly written off as a political movement that has achieved its aim of female liberation, it has been continually redefined as new generations of women campaign against the gender inequity…
‘Nothing like Vertigo is likely to be encountered in the course of one's regular reading. One emerges from it shaken, seduced, and deeply impressed’ Anita Brookner, Spectator What could possibly connect Stendhal's unrequited love, a series of murders by a clandestine organisation, the Great Fire of London, a story by Kafka and a closed-down pizzeria in Verona? Part fiction, part travelogue, the narrator…
Global warming has reached terrifying heights of severity, human consumption has caused the extinction of countless species and neoliberalism has led to a destructive divide in wealth and a polarization of mainstream politics. The climate crisis demands action. Your planet needs you! Can we shop our way out of a crisis? Will technology save the day? What does it mean…
A defining collection from Alistair Cooke's legendary BBC Radio broadcasts, guiding us through nearly sixty years of changing life in the United States 'No one else succeeded in explaining to the English-speaking world ... the idiosyncrasies of a country at once so familiar, and yet so utterly foreign' Independent When Alistair Cooke retired in February 2004 he was acclaimed as one…
'I am one of few Jewish survivors of World War Two, but one of many Jewish people to fight the Nazi regime. My story illustrates what happened to thousands of Jews and non-Jews alike. I have recorded the small details that made up our lives, the sheer luck that saved some of us and the atrocities that led to the…
BUY FROM 'Illuminating ... Johnson has not only lifted a corner of the curtain which covers China's reality beyond its glittering eastern cities; he has drawn the whole curtain' The Times Literary Supplement In Wild Grass, Pulitzer Prize-winning Ian Johnson describes a China caught between the desire for change percolating up from below and the ossified political structure above. He recounts the stories…
'I want to press it on every schoolgirl who thinks that feminism is uncool, any woman who thinks the most important gender battles are won, pretty much every man I know, and say, have you thought about this?' Sophie McBain, New Statesman 'Kate Manne is the Simone de Beauvoir of the 21st century' - Amanda Marcotte Male entitlement takes many forms.…
Surging out of the sea, the Bass Rock has for centuries watched over the lives that pass under its shadow on the Scottish mainland. And across the centuries the fates of three women are linked: to this place, to each other. In the early 1700s, Sarah, accused of being a witch, flees for her life. In the aftermath of the…
The Second World War. Poland. Our narrator has no intention of being a hero. He plans to survive this war, whatever it takes. Meticulously he recounts his experiences: the slow unravelling of national events as well as uncomfortable personal encounters on the street, in the café, at the office, in his love affairs. He is intimate but reserved; conversational but…
'This is a captivating book ... Min Jin Lee's novel takes us through four generations and each character's search for identity and success. It's a powerful story about resilience and compassion' BARACK OBAMA. Yeongdo, Korea 1911. In a small fishing village on the banks of the East Sea, a club-footed, cleft-lipped man marries a fifteen-year-old girl. The couple have one…
In Baxter’s Beach, Barbados, Lala’s grandmother Wilma tells the story of the one-armed sister, a cautionary tale about what happens to girls who disobey their mothers. For Wilma, it’s the story of a wilful adventurer, who ignores the warnings of those around her, and suffers as a result. When Lala grows up, she sees it offers hope – of life…
A decade ago, Caitlin Moran thought she had it all figured out. Her instant bestseller How to Be a Woman was a game-changing take on feminism, the patriarchy, and the general ‘hoo-ha’ of becoming a woman. Back then, she firmly believed ‘the difficult bit’ was over, and her forties were going to be a doddle. If only she had known:…
I wanted to change the world, but the world I was born into changed me first. My name is Jeremiah Emmanuel. I'm twenty one years old. I'm an activist, an entrepreneur, a former deputy young mayor of Lambeth and member of the UK Youth Parliament. Raised in south London, I lived in an area where crime and poverty were everywhere…
This is the story of Precious Jones, a sixteen year old illiterate black girl who has never been out of Harlem. She is pregnant by her own father for the second time, and kicked out of school. Placed in an alternative teaching programme, she learns to read and write. This is Precious's diary, in which she honestly records her relationships…
Penguin Readers is an ELT graded reader series for learners of English as a foreign language. With carefully adapted text, new illustrations and language learning exercises, the print edition also includes instructions to access supporting material online. Titles include popular classics, exciting contemporary fiction, and thought-provoking non-fiction, introducing language learners to bestselling authors and compelling content. The eight levels of Penguin Readers follow the Common…
As a child Gifty would ask her parents to tell the story of their journey from Ghana to Alabama, seeking escape in myths of heroism and romance. When her father and brother succumb to the hard reality of immigrant life in the American South, their family of four becomes two - and the life Gifty dreamed of slips away. Years…
The Handmaid's Tale meets The Village in this stunning feminist debut . . . Shortlisted for the GoodReads Choice Awards 2020 for Best Debut Novel and Best Horror Novel . . . 'A magnificent, raw slice of folk horror, dark with threat and clenched with suspense . . . a brilliant debut to chill the brightest summer day' DAILY MAIL…
The Simulmatics Corporation, founded in 1959, mined data, targeted voters, accelerated news, manipulated consumers, destabilized politics, and disordered knowledge–decades before Facebook, Google, Amazon, and Cambridge Analytica. Silicon Valley likes to imagine it has no past but the scientists of Simulmatics are the long-dead grandfathers of Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk. Borrowing from psychological warfare, they used computers to predict and…
'Vonnegut is George Orwell, Dr Caligari and Flash Gordon compounded into one writer...a zany but moral mad scientist' Time A diabolical government asserts control by eliminating orgasms. A scientist discovers the secret to unlocking instant happiness, with unexpected consequences. In an America where everyone is equal every which way, a tennage boy plans to overthrow the system. Welcome to the…
If I Had Your Face plunges us into the mesmerizing world of contemporary Seoul - a place where extreme plastic surgery is as routine as getting a haircut, where women compete for spots in secret 'room salons' to entertain wealthy businessmen after hours, where K-Pop stars are the object of all-consuming obsession, and ruthless social hierarchies dictate your every move.…
Escape to the ocean this summer with the entrancing, unforgettable winner of the Costa Book of the Year 2020. 'A unique talent' Bernardine Evaristo Near the island of Black Conch, a fisherman sings to himself while waiting for a catch. But David attracts a sea-dweller that he never expected - Aycayia, an innocent young woman cursed by jealous wives to…