What's New at Penguin Classics?

Thea Astley's The Multiple Effects of Rainshadow joins the Penguin Modern Classics livery. The book forecasts the tragedies of the twenty-first century, proving itself more powerfully relevant than ever.

'Formidable . . . uniquely provocative, acerbic and glittering' - The Australian

On a January morning in 1930, in an island mission off the Queensland coast, the superintendent goes on a rampage that rips the community apart. Afterwards, only a few are free to leave, but even back on the mainland they cannot escape the effects of the brutality they've witnessed. Two decades later, violence once again erupts on the island. Here is a paradise turned hell, where the winds of change have slowed to the feeblest of breezes.

Based on an actual incident that took place on Palm Island, this award-winning novel brilliantly allegorises an Australia still living in the shadow of its past. And in forecasting the tragedies of the twenty-first century, it proves itself more powerfully relevant than ever.

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Elizabeth Jolley's An Accomodating Spouse joins the Penguin Modern Classics livery. The book is vintage Jolley, filled with quiet wit and keen observations of the frailities of human relationships.

'A fantastic book in all senses of that word' - Sydney Morning Herald

The Professor is married to Hazel, a diligent and generous (but rather plain) woman. She is so close to her twin, Chloe, that both women live under one roof with the Professor.

Back from an overseas trip come their daughters - triplets - ready to celebrate their twenty-first birthday. Family life in the otherwise peaceful house swells to a chaotic crescendo on the evening of the party, as the Professor feels the tender sting of his wife's accommodating ways.

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Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton: The Illustrated Edition

A tale of despair, forbidden emotions, and sexual undercurrents in the New England countryside.

Ethan Frome works his unproductive farm and struggles to maintain a bearable existence with his difficult, suspicious, and hypochondriac wife, Zeenie. But when Zeenie’s vivacious cousin enters their household as a “hired girl,” Ethan finds himself obsessed with her and with the possibilities for happiness she comes to represent.

In one of American fiction’s finest and most intense narratives, Edith Wharton moves this ill-starred trio toward their tragic destinies.

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain: The Illustrated Edition

Of all the contenders for the title of The Great American Novel, none has a better claim than The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Intended at first as a simple story of a boy's adventures in the Mississippi Valley—a sequel to Tom Sawyer—the book grew and matured under Twain's hand into a work of immeasurable richness and complexity. More than a century after its publication, the critical debate over the symbolic significance of Huck's and Jim's voyage is still fresh, and it remains a major work that can be enjoyed at many levels: as an incomparable adventure story and as a classic of American humour.

Moby-Dick, or The Whale by Herman Melville: The Illustrated Edition

Over a century and a half after its publication, Moby-Dick still stands as an indisputable literary classic. It is the story of an eerily compelling madman pursuing an unholy war against a creature as vast and dangerous and unknowable as the sea itself. But more than just a novel of adventure, more than an encyclopedia of whaling lore and legend, Moby-Dick is a haunting, mesmerizing, and important social commentary populated with several of the most unforgettable and enduring characters in literature.

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte: The Illustrated Edition

Charlotte Brontë’s sweeping Victorian romance is reborn through the striking illustrations of the inimitable Dame Darcy.A devoted readership will recognize Dame Darcy as the creator of highly original and off-kilter comic books. Here she uses her lavishly detailed illustrations to bring the best-loved Victorian novel Jane Eyre back into the spotlight. Darkly elegant illustrations draw back the novel’s curtain, revealing the depths of human depravity, despair, and ultimate redemption.

A terrifying encounter with an escaped convict in a graveyard on the wild Kent marshes; a summons to meet the bitter, decaying Miss Havisham and her beautiful, cold-hearted ward Estella; the sudden generosity of a mysterious benefactor – these form a series of events that change the orphaned Pip's life forever...

William S. Burroughs was born February 5, 1914. His first published novel was the largely autobiographical Junky, which remains a classic depiction of the constant cycle of drug dependency, cures and relapses he was victim to for most of his life. He was part of the Beat movement of the 1950s and his avant-garde writing profoundly influenced Twentieth Century popular culture.

An opium addict is lost in the jungle; young men wage war against an empire of mutants; a handsome young pirate faces his execution; and the world's population is infected with a radioactive epidemic. These satirical stories are woven together in a single tale of mayhem about modern society.

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A fascinating mix of autobiographical episodes and extraordinary Egyptian theology, Burroughs's final novel is poignant and melancholic. Blending war films and pornography, and referencing Kafka and Mailer, The Western Lands confirms his status as one of America's greatest writers.

'Will be read with the same shock of terror and pleasure in a hundred years’ time’ - Angela Carter

The Western Lands confirms Burroughs' status as one of America’s greatest writers. Burroughs explores the after-life by dream scenarios, hallucinatory passages, occultism, superstition, and his characteristic view of the nature of reality.

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'Heartwarming acecdotes. Burroughs ventures galaxies away from his usual twisted literary turf.' - Time

There is an unexpected side to William Burroughs: the author of weird and disturbing fictions had a great fondness for cats.

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Burroughs was itinerant not just by disposition but often by legal necessity (his accidental, fatal shooting of his wife and constant drug troubles required regular relocation), so letters were lifelines for the outcast and works-in-progress for the writer. Here they track his turbulent journey across three continents and two decades...

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