Introducing Little Black Classics: 80 books for Penguin's 80th birthday. Little Black Classics celebrate the huge range and diversity of Penguin Classics, with books from around the world and across many centuries. They take us from a balloon ride over Victorian London to a garden of blossom in Japan, from Tierra del Fuego to 16th-century California and the Russian steppe. Here are stories lyrical and savage; poems epic and intimate; essays satirical and inspirational; and ideas that have shaped the lives of millions. Sappho (c.630-570 BCE). Sappho's Stung with Love is available in Penguin Classics.

    Since she never did find the story she was looking for all those years ago, she decided to write it.In Book I of the trilogy, Tamras arrives in Merin's house to begin her apprenticeship as a warrior, but her small stature causes many, including Tamras herself, to doubt that she will ever become a competent swordswoman. To make matters worse, the Lady Merin assigns her the position of companion, little more than a personal servant, to a woman who came to Merin's house, seemingly out of nowhere, the previous winter, and this stranger wants nothing to do with Tamras.

    Voth throws himself into his work, obsessively researching the life of Jack Sheppard, a legendary eighteenth century thief. No one knows Jack’s true story—his confessions have never been found. That is, until Dr. Voth discovers a mysterious stack of papers titled Confessions of the Fox. Dated 1724, the manuscript tells the story of an orphan named P. Sold into servitude at twelve, P struggles for years with her desire to live as “Jack.” When P falls dizzyingly in love with Bess, a sex worker looking for freedom of her own, P begins to imagine a different life. Bess brings P into the London underworld where scamps and rogues clash with London’s newly established police force, queer subcultures thrive, and ominous threats of an oncoming plague abound. At last, P becomes Jack Sheppard, one of the most notorious—and most wanted—thieves in history. Back in the present, Dr. Voth works feverishly day and night to authenticate the manuscript. But he’s not the only one who wants Jack’s story—and some people will do whatever it takes to get it. As both Jack and Voth are drawn into corruption and conspiracy, it becomes clear that their fates are intertwined—and only a miracle will save them both. An imaginative retelling of Brecht’s Threepenny Opera, Confessions of the Fox blends high-spirited adventure, subversive history, and provocative wit to animate forgotten histories and the extraordinary characters hidden within.

    She can't commit herself to a man when in her heart she knows it is relationships with women that she really wants to explore. Café owner Steph McKenzie inherited Anna's Place from her grandmother, but her ex-girlfriend’s betrayal has left her struggling both financially and emotionally. First Larissa stole her heart. Then she stole her money. Is Steph’s luck beginning to turn when a visiting stranger says she’s a business coach specializing in re-energizing flailing businesses and offers her help? The timing couldn’t be worse for either of them, but the attraction is undeniable. When ghosts from their pasts return to intrude on their fragile, budding relationship, hidden secrets may destroy any chance of a future together. Will Kara and Steph have the courage to stop running from love, and run toward it together?

    The seventeen-year-old, new to everything around her—college, the East Coast, bodies of literature, and the sexual flurries of student life—is shocked by her desire to follow this wherever it will take her. When Flannery finds herself enrolled in a class with the remote, brilliant older woman, she is intimidated at first, but gradually becomes Anne Arden's student—Baudelaire, lipstick colors, or how to travel with a lover—Flannery proves an eager pupil, until one day learns more about Anne than she ever wanted to know.

    But beautiful Grace, with her mysterious past and her fierce dedication to Ireland's freedom, opens Caroline's eyes to worlds she has never imagined. As their friendship blossoms into romance, Caroline finds the greatest happiness she has ever known. But can their love survive the condemnation of a repressive society-and Grace's involvement in the approaching Easter Rising? A passionate story of personal, sexual, and national liberation, set against the backdrop of an unforgettable moment in Irish history.

    There, removed from the eyes of the world, they hoped to live out their quiet lives. But the world outside gradually came to claim the Ladies—first out of curiosity, but eventually on the basis of profound respect, and even love. Visited by such luminaries as Edmund Burke, William Wordsworth, Walter Scott, and Horace Walpole, among many others, Eleanor and Sarah became known throughout Britain and to history as the “Ladies of Llangollen.”

    In Portland, Oregon, Julie moves through her days in a series of negatives: the skaters she doesn’t think are cute, the trinkets she doesn’t buy at the craft fair, the umbrella she refuses to carry despite the incessant rain. Her family life is routine and restrained, and no one talks about Julie’s older brother, a one-time Olympic-hopeful swimmer who now lives in self-imposed exile in Berlin. Julie has never considered swimming herself, until Alexis, the girls’ swim team captain, tries to recruit her. It’s a dare, and a flirtation—and a chance for Julie to find her brother, or to finally let him go. Anything could happen when her body hits water.

    When her friend, Josie Whittle, the editor-in-chief of the magazine, asks Robin to take a group of writers and photographers out for a week Robin is happy to do it until she finds out that one of the writers going on the trip has never even been camping, let alone gone on a multi-day hike. After getting fired from a business magazine, her life in ruins, and forced to go home to Colorado where her father has her under his thumb, Marianne Jones is lucky to be writing for anyone. Her new boss at Back Lands magazine, Josie, insists Marianne go out on a weeklong hike with some other writers and photographers from the magazine. The only hiking Marianne does is at the mall and she’s never been camping, so she is not happy about this trip. Marianne makes Robin mad before the hike even starts, and Robin assumes Marianne is just another snooty socialite forced to work by her parents. Both women try to ignore the sparks flying between them on the trails in vain. These two women with nothing in common, except broken hearts, are thrown together by fate. Can they find common ground, or will tragedy take away the chance for them to find out what they could have had?

    Stuck in her hometown over the holidays. Stuck in a Wi-Fi dead zone. Stuck watching her longtime crush make out with her ex-best-friend. The small town of Sunrise Falls thrives on gossip, and everyone’s talking about the mess she’s made of her life back in San Francisco. One festively decorated bar and two vodka tonics later, a game of truth or dare seems like just the thing to distract her. Until the dare to seduce the next woman who walks through the door brings her face-to-face with librarian Emma Prescott.Emma’s a good girl with a mind dirty enough to make a sex worker blush. A painful experience as a teenager has left her anxious and afraid of her own desire, but when gorgeous Lauren West kisses her senseless, Emma thinks maybe she’s finally found the perfect person to help her break free. That is, until Lauren comes clean about what really turns her on and reveals passions far darker than Emma ever anticipated.Reader Advisory: If You Dare contains explicit fantasies of non-consent.

    This story explores contrasting versions of bisexuality: Adina's open preference for women vs. the closets and dangers of Rose's era.

    Living in the poor, segregated quarter of Little Tunis, Ivoe immerses herself in printed matter as an escape from her dour surroundings. She earns a scholarship to the prestigious Willetson College in Austin, only to return over-qualified to the menial labor offered by her hometown’s racially-biased employers.Ivoe eventually flees the Jim Crow South with her family and settles in Kansas City, where she and her former teacher and lover, Ona, found the first female-run African American newspaper, Jam! On the Vine. In the throes of the Red Summer—the 1919 outbreak of lynchings and race riots across the Midwest—Ivoe risks her freedom, and her life, to call attention to the atrocities of segregation in the American prison system.Skillfully interweaving Ivoe’s story with those of her family members, LaShonda Katrice Barnett’s Jam! On the Vine is both an epic vision of the hardships and injustices that defined an era and a moving and compelling story of a complicated history we only thought we knew.

    There will be begging and there will be bruises, but all leading to an obliterating climax. The fifteen lesbian stories of dominance and submission contained within the pages of From Top To Bottom will make you flinch like the characters do, will make you squirm and want to turn the pages faster and faster. You will find first-time players and long-term couples. A plethora of paddles and the occasional flogger—and a great number of sore backsides. Be warned.With stories from experienced writers at the top of their game and thrilling new talents alike, all of them exploring power dynamics from top to bottom, this collection is kinky, daring and, at times, deliciously violent. Read at your own risk.Chasing the Dragon by S.E. HillDance for Me by Janelle RestonSerious Swimmer by J. Belle LambCall for Submission by Elna HolstTell Me by Robyn NyxTaking the Lead by Lauren JadeThe Antisocial Sister by Lucy FelthouseOne Hundred Strokes by Sinclair SexsmithThe Encounter by Eden DarrySecretly Submissive by Brooke WintersInside by Leandra VaneVegas Mistress by Samantha LuceHit The Top by Robin WatergroveNot Yet by Harper BlissLatin Lessons by Lise MacTagueFifteen truly exceptional stories that WILL make you squirm in your seat

    Isabel is experimenting with the new medium of photography, and is inspired by Annie, who becomes her muse. The two form a close relationship, but when Eldon devises his own plans for the young maid, Annie nearly loses herself, until disaster reveals her power over the Dashells' work and hearts.

    PHALLOS is the tale of a tale, recounting the pursuit of mystic knowledge throughout the Mediterranean world in the reign of the emperor Hadrian. Filled with wit and erudition - and deeply homoerotic - this is a Lacanian riddle to delight and intrigue the growing number of admirers of Delany's more recent fiction, Hogg (1995), and The Mad Man (1996). Delany is a novelist, critic, and professor of English at Temple University and has also written an award-winning autobiography, The Motion of Light in Water (1988).