Penguin

?Didn?t I tell you they were only windmills? And only someone with windmills on the brain could have failed to see that!? Don Quixote has become so entranced by reading romances of chivalry that he determines to become a knight errant and pursue bold adventures, accompanied by his squire, the cunning Sancho Panza. As they roam the world together,...

?Now, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else.? Coketown is dominated by the figure of Mr Thomas Gradgrind, school headmaster and model of Utilitarian success. Feeding both his pupils and family with facts, he bans fancy and wonder from any...

Oscar Wilde called James?s chilling The Turn of the Screw ?a most wonderful, lurid poisonous little tale?. It tells of a young governess sent to a country house to take charge of two orphans, Miles and Flora. Unsettled by a sense of intense evil within the house, she soon becomes obsessed with the belief that something malevolent is stalking the...

A young man and woman meet by chance and fall instantly in love. But their families are bitter enemies, and in order to be together the two lovers must be prepared to risk everything. Set in a city torn apart by feuds and gang warfare, Romeo and Juliet is a dazzling combination of passion and hatred, bawdy comedy and high tragedy....

The story of the orphan Oliver, who runs away from the workhouse only to be taken in by a den of thieves, shocked readers when it was first published. Dickens?s tale of childhood innocence beset by evil depicts the dark criminal underworld of a London peopled by vivid and memorable characters ? the arch-villain Fagin, the artful Dodger, the...

In a great courtroom drama, Maigret has to explain why he does not believe that Gaston Meurant was capable of slitting his aunt's throat for money and smothering a small child. But in saving him from the gallows, Maigret must expose some dark secrets about Meurant's life. This is a painful story of an oppressive domestic tragedy and the...