Fiction - Popular Penguins - Fiction

A Room of One's Own grew out of a lecture that Virginia Woolf had been invited to give at Girton College, Cambridge in 1928. Ranging over Jane Austen and Charlotte Bronte and why neither of them could have written War and Peace, over the silent fate of Shakespeare's gifted (and imaginary) sister, over the effects of poverty and chastity on female creativity, she gives us one of the greatest feminist polemics of the century.

Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre to this day entrances readers with its passionate portrayal of a woman struggling to make a life for herself in a cruel and indifferent world. As orphan Jane becomes governess at Thornfield Hall, she falls in love with her employer, Mr Rochester, only to discover that he has a terrible secret, one which may jeopardize their future happiness. Jane Eyre's struggle for independence has echoed with readers ever since.

'That's Auckland, mate - the Queen of the North.' 'The what?' 'The Queen of the North. That's what they call it - in Auckland. This is God's own, this country.' Man Alone is a literary landmark that has haunted our writing for decades. John Mulgan's vision of New Zealand society as detached and unsentimental, with the power to reject and alienate, enriches our understanding of who, and what, we are. First published 1939.

Skinny Louie, daughter of Shanghai Lil, has a baby in the Begonia House on the day of the royal visit. Maura finds the baby and takes it home. Tia grows up with magical powers into the brave new world of the twenty-first century. Fiona Farrell's The Skinny Louie Book - always moving, often hilarious - is a breathtakingly accomplished debut. It presents a head-on confrontation with a New Zealand psyche rarely found in history books. First published 1882.

For all the promise of his name, Jack Skeat cannot be a poet. His friend Rex Petley - eel-catcher, girl-chaser, motorbike rider - takes that prize. Is he also a murderer? And why, forty years later, does he drown out on the Gulf? Jack has to find out, and is drawn to examine their lives. Going West has long been regarded as one of the most autobiographical of Maurice Gee's novels.

The year is 1977, and Adrian is nine. He lives with his gran and his uncle Rory; his best friend is Clinton Tull. He loves to draw and he wants a dog; he's afraid of quicksand and self-combustion. Adrian watches his suburban world, but there is much he cannot understand. He does not, for instance, know why three neighbourhood children might set out to buy ice-cream and never come back home...

Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest captured the radical anti-establishment mood of 1960s America. Tyrannical Nurse Ratched rules her psychiatric ward with an iron fist and a penchant for electric shock therapy, so when the boisterous McMurphy arrives - intent on disruption and showing the other patients a good time - a titanic battle of wills emerges. Kesey explores the shadowy boundaries between conformity and individuality, sanity and madness, with devastating effect. First published 1962.

D. H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover scandalized the world when it was first published in paperback, and helped put Penguin Books on trial. The powerful depiction of the sexual liaison of Constance Chatterley with the gamekeeper Mellors, while her invalid husband quietly seethes, brilliantly captures the perennial struggle between the classes and the sexes. First published 1928.

Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita is a dark and daring story of obsessive love and transgression. Humbert Humbert's lust for his pubescent step-daughter, Lolita, shocked readers when it was first published in the 1950s; yet the novel was also celebrated for its beautifully lyrical writing. Almost fifty years after its first publication, Lolita remains a powerful tale of perversion and love gone wrong. First published 1955.

Anais Nin's Delta of Venus is a stunning collection of sexual encounters from the queen of literary erotica. From Mathilde's lust-filled Peruvian opium den to the Hungarian baron driven insane by his insatiable desire, the passions and obsessions of this dazzling cast of characters are vivid and unforgettable. Delta of Venus is a deep and sensual world that evokes the very essence of sexuality.

Jack Kerouac's On the Road rocked the establishment with its seminal, stream-of-consciousness portrayal of 1950s underground America. Amidst a whirlwind of sex, drugs and jazz, writer Sal Paradise and his hero 'the holy con-man with the shining mind', Dean Moriarty traverse the country in search of life and experience. Wild and exuberant, this life-changing novel defined the Beat generation and inspired countless others. First published 1957.

Evelyn Waugh's A Handful of Dust is a satirical depiction of the 'sterile' generation between the wars. It tells the story of bored Lady Brenda Last, who abandons her husband's Gothic pile to conduct an affair with shallow socialite John Beaver of the Belgravia set. A Handful of Dust remains one of the finest tragedies and comedies of ill manners.

In his final years, Freud devoted most of his energies to a series of highly ambitious works on the broadest issues of religion and society. Here, he argues that civilised values - and the impossible ideals of Christianity - inevitably distort our natural aggression and impose a terrible burden of guilt.

Leonard Cohen made his name as a poet before he came to worldwide attention as a singer and songwriter. Book of Longing was twenty years in the making and written in Montreal, Mumbai and during his retreat in Mt Baldy. These poems show the full range of one of the most influential and enigmatic writers of his generation.

This selection of poems covers the period 1972 to 2002. This beautifully elegant volume excludes the cartoon element, focusing on Leunig's brilliant texts, with all their absurdity, hilarity, poignancy and joyfulness. Michael Leunig pokes fun at human folly and pretentiousness, deplores the idiocy of war, and revels in the redeeming power of love.

First published in 1972, Pounamu Pounamu introduced an exciting new voice into New Zealand literature. Most of Witi Ihimaera's stories, based on the East Coast, describe a traditional rural, communal way of life facing huge pressures from the drift by many Maori to the cities. This was to be a constant theme in Ihimaera's future writing.

In her opulent novel, Eva Luna, Isabel Allende uses exquisite prose to describe the survival of a young Latin American woman whose powers as a storyteller bring her friendship and love, during a time of political unrest in South America. Born in the back room of the mansion where her mother is a servant, the enchanting Eva Luna defies oppression by telling stories to a series of vibrant characters.

Barbara Vine's The Chimney Sweeper's Boy is one of the finest, most accomplished and chilling tales of psychological suspense ever written. When a sudden heart attack kills author Gerald Candless, his adoring daughter Sarah embarks on a memoir of her beloved father. But Sarah's investigations turn up someone very different from the man she had known - proof that he wasn't Gerald Candless at all. The Chimney Sweeper's Boy is a troubling tale of taboo, family guilt and personal identity.

"Somebody must have laid false information against Josef K., for he was arrested one morning without having done anything wrong." From this first sentence onwards, Josef K. is on trial for his right to exist in a novel which, more than any other, is infinitely perceptive about the nature of terror and the futility of human life.

In a world struggling back from the brink of apocalypse, life is harsh. But for Elspeth Gordie, born with enhanced mental abilities that would see her sterilised or burned if discovered, it is also dangerous. There is only survival by secrecy, and so she determines never to use her forbidden powers. But it is as if they have their own imperative, and their use inevitably brings her to the attention of the totalitarian Council that rules the Land...