In honor of his 112th birthday, here is a comprehensive collection of John Steinbeck’s short novels. Steinbeck immortalized the lives of people who would have been forgotten, mere footnotes in the pages of history. Almost tenderly, yet with gripping realism, he lets us inside their worlds.

And with six novels for one price, think of this as a bargain for your brain.

The Short Novels of John Steinbeck: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition) by John Steinbeck. Amazon for $20.99. Collected here for the first time in a deluxe paperback volume are six of Nobel Prize winner John Steinbeck’s most widely read and beloved short novels—Tortilla Flat, The Red Pony, Of Mice and Men, The Moon Is Down, Cannery Row and The Pearl. From Steinbeck’s tale of commitment, loneliness, and hope in Of Mice and Men, to his tough yet charming portrait of people on the margins of Monterey society in Cannery Row, to The Pearl’s mythic examination of the fallacy of the American dream, Steinbeck created stories that were realistic, rugged, and imbued with energy and resilience.