A Start in Life (Penguin Essentials)

Nick Hornby’s internationally bestselling first novel, available as a Penguin Essential for the first time. Do you know your desert-island, all-time, top five most memorable split-ups? Rob does. He keeps a list, in fact. But Laura isn’t on it – even though she’s just become his latest ex. He’s got his life back, you see. […]

Fast, thrilling, compulsively addictive – The Circle is Dave Eggers’s timely novel about our obsession with the internet, now available as a Penguin Essential for the first time. When Mae is hired to work for the Circle, the world’s most powerful internet company, she feels she’s been given the opportunity of a lifetime. Run out […]

The gap year classic, available as a Penguin Essential for the first time in the year of its 20th anniversary. A devastatingly funny satire on the whole idea of student travel,and particularly the India back-pack trail. Dave travels to India with Liz because he thinks he might be able to get her into bed. Liz […]

Any Human Heart is William’s Boyd’s classic, bestselling novel, now available as a Penguin Essential for the first time. Every life is both ordinary and extraordinary, but Logan Mountstuart’s – lived from the beginning to the end of the twentieth century – contains more than its fair share of both. As a writer who finds […]