Browse by category
How Language Works: Popular Penguins by David Crystal
$16.00 NZD
Category: Non-fiction general | Series: Popular Penguins500 | Reading Level: very good
David Crystal's How Language Worksis a fascinating tour through the world of language from one of today's most renowned experts. It ranges over everything from how children learn to read to what makes words rude or polite, from eyebrow flashes to whistling languages. Unlocking the secrets of communicati ...Show more
I, Claudius: Popular Penguins by Robert Graves
$15.99 NZD
Category: Historical fiction | Series: Popular Penguins Ser. | Reading Level: very good
Bringing to life the subterfuge and double-dealing of Roman nobility, Robert Graves's I, Claudius brings the ancient world to life with startling clarity and meticulous realism. This Penguin Modern Classics edition is a includes an introduction by Barry Unsworth.Despised for his weakness and regarded by ...Show more
In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
$14.00 NZD
Category: World fiction | Series: Popular Penguins | Reading Level: very good
Truman Capote's masterpiece, In Cold Blood, created a sensation when it was first published, serially, in The New Yorker in 1965. The intensively researched, atmospheric narrative of the lives of the Clutter family of Holcomb, Kansas, and of the two men, Richard Eugene Hickock and Perry Edward Smith, wh ...Show more
Journey into Fear by Eric Ambler
$14.00 NZD
Category: No Category | Series: Green Popular Penguins | Reading Level: very good
In the early stages of the Second World War, a British engineer and arms expert holds secret talks with the Turkish government. Shaken by an attempt on his life, he departs for home on an Italian freighter, with the knowledge that Nazi assassins aim to prevent his return. Friend and foe become quickly i ...Show more
Junky by William S. Burroughs
$14.00 NZD
Category: World fiction | Series: Popular Penguins | Reading Level: very good
Junk is not, like alcohol or a weed, a means to increased enjoyment of life. Junk is not a kick. It is a way of life. In his debut novel, Junky, Burroughs fictionalized his experiences using and peddling heroin and other drugs in the 1950s into a work that reads like a field report from the underworld o ...Show more
Keep the Aspidistra Flying: Popular Penguins by George Orwell
$14.00 NZD
Category: World fiction | Series: Popular Penguins Ser. | Reading Level: very good
A novel by the author of 1984 about a man determined to reject middle-class values who finds living in noble poverty more difficult than expected. Gordon Comstock despises the materialism and shallowness of middle-class life--the worship of money, the striving for dull, stuffy respectability. To live ...Show more
Let the River Stand (Popular Penguin) by Vincent O'Sullivan
$14.50 NZD
Category: NZ Fiction | Series: Popular Penguins
In the deceptively quiet Waikato of the 1930s and 1940s, a number of lives connect in a complex web of family ties, desire and violence. The events of this story also take in boxing, farming, devotion and perversion, ranging as far as Tasmania and the Spanish Civil War. Alex, tall and solitary, striding ...Show more
Live Bodies (Popular Penguin) by Maurice Gee
$14.50 NZD
Category: World fiction | Series: Popular Penguins
As a young man in the 1930s, Josef battled the Nazis on the streets of Vienna. He fled to New Zealand, only to be interned as a dangerous enemy on Somes Island in Wellington Harbour. After the war, he rebuilt his life and married Nancy. Despite his success, Josef still stands askew from his times. In hi ...Show more
Lolita: Popular Penguins by Vladimir Nabokov
$16.00 NZD
Category: World fiction | Series: Popular Penguins | Reading Level: good-very good
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 a ...Show more
Love in a Cold Climate: Popular Penguins by Nancy Mitford
$16.00 NZD
Category: Classic Fiction | Series: Popular Penguins | Reading Level: good
A sparkling romantic comedy that vividly evokes the lost glamour of aristocratic life in England between the wars. Polly Hampton has long been groomed for the perfect marriage by her mother, the fearsome and ambitious Lady Montdore. But Polly, with her stunning good looks and impeccable connections, i ...Show more
Man Alone by John Mulgan
$14.50 NZD
Category: Classic Fiction | Series: Popular Penguins | Reading Level: Very Good
'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 unsentim ...Show more
Meditations by Marcus Aurelius
$16.00 NZD
Category: Philosophy | Series: Popular Penguins | Reading Level: very good
Originally written only for his personal consumption, Marcus Aurelius's Meditations has become a key text in the understanding of Roman Stoic philosophy. This Penguin Classics edition is translated with notes by Martin Hammond and an introduction by Diskin Clay.Written in Greek by an intellectual Roman ...Show more