My Side of the Matter


Truman Capote - 1945
    Penguin Modern Classics publish the full range of Capote's novels and short stories, and the four tales in this collection show to the full the blend of cynicism, humour and love that characterized his finest work.

Design Faults in the Volvo 760 Turbo


Will Self - 2005
    All his fiction is available in Penguin editions and the two stories in this collection illustrate Self's gift for finding the extraordinary, the surreal and the downright absurd amidst the mundanities of modern life.- Design Faults in the Volvo 760 Turbo- A Story for Europe

The School Inspector Calls


Gervase Phinn - 2005
    Penguin have published each of Phinn's four books and in The School Inspector Calls, he reveals how even a jaded school inspector can be left speechless by straight-talking children.

Ali Smith's Supersonic 70s


Ali Smith - 2005
    Ali Smith's Supersonic 70s collects together some of Ali Smith's best writing of the last ten years and also includes a brand new story.

The Secret Annexe: from The diary of Anne Frank


Anne Frank - 2005
    She kept it from 12 June 1942 to 1 August 1944. In this diary, which she addressed to an imaginary friend called Kitty, Anne wrote about her life - first in Nazi-occupied Amsterdam and then, when the Nazi persecution of Jews forced her family into hiding, in the sealed-off back rooms of an Amsterdam office building, which they referred to as 'the Secret Annexe'. Anne had always dreamed of being a writer and hoped one day to publish her diary.

Otherwise Pandemonium / Not a Star


Nick Hornby - 2005
    The first one was previously published in McSweeney's Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales (Penguin, 2004), the second one was written specially for this volume.

A Taste of the Unexpected


Roald Dahl - 2003
    This collection gathers together three sinister tales that fully exhibit Dahl's mastery of suspense and his unsurpassed ability to tease the reader until the very last sentence.- Taste- The Way Up to Heaven- The Landlady.

The Unabridged Pocketbook of Lightning


Jonathan Safran Foer - 2005
    First published in the New Yorker magazine, 2002. And extracts from: Extremely loud and incredibly close (first published: Boston : Houghton Mifflin, 2005).

Forgetting Things


Sigmund Freud - 2005
    Taken from one of his most important works, The Psychopathology of Everyday Life, published in a new translation by Penguin Modern Classics, this volume explores why we forget, how we remember and why our memories can sometimes prove deceptive.

The Murder


John Steinbeck - 2005
    These four tales consider the struggle for survival in 1940s America, against a backdrop of majestic beauty.- The Chrysanthemums- Breakfast- The Vigilante- The Murder.

Idiot Nation


Michael Moore - 2005
    Stupid White Men was published by Penguin in the UK in 2002 and has since sold well over 1.5 million copies. These hilarious and scorching extracts show exactly why Moore is the man that everyone has an opinion on.

Look at Me


Jennifer Egan - 2001
    She returns to New York still beautiful but oddly unrecognizable, a virtual stranger in the world she once effortlessly occupied.With the surreal authority of a David Lynch, Jennifer Egan threads Charlotte’s narrative with those of other casualties of our infatuation with the image. There’s a deceptively plain teenaged girl embarking on a dangerous secret life, an alcoholic private eye, and an enigmatic stranger who changes names and accents as he prepares an apocalyptic blow against American society. As these narratives inexorably converge, Look at Me becomes a coolly mesmerizing intellectual thriller of identity and imposture.

Nothing Bad Ever Happens in Tiffany's


Marian Keyes - 2005
    No stranger to the roadless commonly travelled herself, Marian has also written two collections of tales and observations from her own life. Nothing Bad Ever Happens in Tiffany's is a small but perfectly formed selection of these.

Innocent House


P.D. James - 2005
    James has been writing extremely popular, highly praised crime novels for more than forty years, and Penguin is proud to publish them in paperback. Her most famous and enduring creation is the poet-detective Adam Dalgliesh, and in Innocent House - taken from Original Sin - he is confronted with a suspicious death and a puzzle at a respected publishing house.

Happy Birthday, Jack Nicholson


Hunter S. Thompson - 2005
    Thompson was renowned for his counterculture masterpiece Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, which described his chemical-addled adventures in 1970s America. Taken from Thompson's brilliantly entertaining autobiography, Kingdom of Fear - the last book published before his death earlier this year - these pieces provide a hilarious but now also painful insight into the life and the mind of a true literary outlaw.