Steinbeck's tough yet charming portrait of people on the margins of society, dependant on one another for both physical and emotional survival
Published in 1945, "Cannery Row"" "focuses on the acceptance of life as it is: both the exuberance of community and the loneliness of the individual. Drawing on his memories of the real inhabitants of Monterey, California, including longtime friend Ed Ricketts, Steinbeck interweaves the stories of Doc, Dora, Mack and his boys, Lee Chong, and the other characters in this world where only the fittest survive, to create a novel that is at once one of...

Jody Tiflin is given a red pony, and later he is promised the colt of a bay mare. Yet both of these gifts bring him tragedy as well as joy, and Jody is taught not only the harsh lessons of life and death, but made painfully aware of the fallibilty of adults.

A controversial tale of friendship and tragedy during the Great Depression
Over seventy-five years since its first publication, Steinbeck s tale of commitment, loneliness, hope, and loss remains one of America s most widely read and taught novels. An unlikely pair, George and Lennie, two migrant workers in California during the Great Depression, grasp for their American Dream. They hustle work when they can, living a hand-to-mouth existence. For George and Lennie have a plan: to own an acre of land and a shack they can call their own. When they land jobs on a ranch in the Salinas Valley,...

While fulfilling his dead father's dream of creating a prosperous farm in California, Joseph Wayne comes to believe that a magnificent tree on the farm embodies his father's spirit. His brothers and their families share in Joseph's prosperity and the farm flourishes - until one brother kills the tree.

A collection of short stories, set in the idyllic Salinas Valley in California, where simple people farm the land and struggle to find a place for themselves in the world. This book includes the tales: The Murderer and The Chrysanthemums.

In Monterey, on the California coast, Sweet Thursday is what they call the day after Lousy Wednesday, which is one of those days that are just naturally bad. Returning to the scene of Cannery Row the weedy lots and junk heaps and flophouses of Monterey, John Steinbeck once more brings to life the denizens of a netherworld of laughter and tears from Doc, based on Steinbeck s lifelong friend Ed Ricketts, to Fauna, new headmistress of the local brothel, to Hazel, a bum whose mother must have wanted a daughter. This Penguin Classics edition features an introduction and notes by Robert DeMott....

Occupied by enemy troops, a small, peaceable town comes face-to-face with evil imposed from the outside and betrayal from within the close-knit community. This book explores the effects of invasion on both the conquered and the conquerors.

Amateur astronomer Pippin Heristal is drafted in to rule the unruly French. His royal court includes his social-climbing wife Maria, his star-struck daughter Clotilde and her Californian beau, Todd.

In 1940 John Steinbeck sailed in a sardine boat with his friend the biologist Edward F. Ricketts to collect marine invertebrates from the beaches of the gulf of California. The day-to-day story of the trip is given in the log which combines science, philosophy and high-spirited adventure. This edition also includes Steinbeck's profile of his fellow traveller.

A collection of interconnected tales devoted to a family living in a fertile valley on the outskirts of Monterey, California, and the effects that one particular family has on them all.