Title
Author
Description
Level
Of Mice and Men
Steinbeck,
John
A parable of commitment, loneliness, hope and loss, Of Mice And
Men is a powerful and moving portrayal of two men striving to
understand their own unique place in the world. Drifters in search
of work, George and his simple-minded friend Lennie have nothing
in the world except each other - and a dream. A dream that one
day they will have some land of their own. But things do not go
quite to plan…
*
Anita and Me
Syal,
Meera
The story of nine-year-old Meena, the daughter of the only Punjabi
family in the Midlands' mining village of Tollington. The novel
provides a vision of British childhood in the 1960s, a childhood
caught between two cultures, each on the brink of enormous
change.
*
Fever Pitch
Hornby,
Nick
Fever Pitch is both an autobiography and a footballing bible rolled
into one. Nick Hornby pinpoints 1968 as his formative year – the
year he turned 11, the year his parents separated, and the year his
father first took him to watch Arsenal play. The author quickly
moved "way beyond fandom" into an extreme obsession that has
dominated his life, loves, and relationships. (see also About A Boy,
High Fidelity etc)
*
Chocolat
Harris,
Joanne
Lansquenet-sous-Tannes -a blip on the fast road between Toulouse
and Bourdeaux - and new home to Vianne Rocher and her six-yearold daughter Anouk. Vianne opens a luxuriant chocolate shop,
which bubbles over with the most tempting of confections. It's
Lent, the shop is opposite the church Francis Reynaud, the austere
parish priest is not exactly happy. When Vianne advertises a Grand
Festival of Chocolate to start on Easter Sunday, it's all-out war
between church and chocolate…
*
Mister Pip
Jones,
Lloyd
In a village on the Papua New Guinea island of Bougainville during a *
brutal civil war there in the 1990s, Matilda, the 13-year-old
narrator, begins her story: a blockade has begun, helicopters circle,
the generators are empty and all the teachers have fled. One white
man remains. Mr Watts has a home in the jungle and an abiding
love for Dickens; he believes in the power of literature to set minds
free…
Devil May Care
Faulks,
Sebastian
Picking up where Fleming left off, Sebastian Faulks takes Bond back
to the height of the Cold War in a story of almost unbearable pace
and tension. An Algerian drug runner is savagely executed in the
desolate outskirts of Paris. Bond is assigned to shadow the
mysterious Dr. Julius Gorner, a power-crazed pharmaceutical
magnate, whose wealth is exceeded only by his greed. Gorner has
lately taken a disquieting interest in opiate derivatives, both legal
and illegal, and this urgently bears looking into…
*
A Gathering Light
Donnelly,
Jennifer
It's 1906 and 16-year-old Mattie Gokey is at a crossroads in her life.
She's escaped the overwhelming responsibilities of helping to run
her father's brokedown farm in exchange for a paid summer job as
a serving girl at a fancy hotel in the Adirondacks. At the hotel,
Mattie gets caught up in the disappearance of a young woman,
Grace Brown. When Grace is found drowned, Mattie reads the
letters and finds that she holds the key to unravelling the girl's life.
*
Genesis
Beckett,
Bernard
If robots began to self-evolve, learning to feel and create as we do,
what traits would set humans apart--and help us survive? As the
young historian Anax endures an examination by the Academy –
the rulers of the future, we learn of the history of the twenty-first
century: accelerating climate change, dust storms, rising fear and
the Last War, and the rise of a new island republic sealed behind
the Great Sea Fence. Plagues decimate human populations outside,
while the Republic's surveillance society flourishes – until it falls to
forces led by the young rebel Adam Forde.
*
Black Rabbit Summer
Brooks,
Kevin
Pete Boland was busy doing nothing that summer. Long, stiflingly
*
hot, lazy days stretched ahead of him. Then she called. 'Listen, Pete
...you know that funfair, up at the recreation ground ...I thought we
could all meet up ...You know, for old times' sake.' But, where there
are old times, there are old tensions. And as secrets, bitterness and
jealousies resurface, five old friends are plunged into the worst
night of their lives...
Survivor
Palahniuk,
Chuck
Survivor is a deranged comedy. From the very opening of the book
Palahniuk lets us know that his narrator, Tender Branson, the last
surviving member of a religious death cult, is on a path to selfdestruction. The tension in this book lies not in the outcome, but in
the intricate plot that takes Tender from farm boy to media
celebrity and ruin. This is a novel that examines what happens
when religion meets the overindulgences of our consumerist
society.
**
The Way Home
Pelecanos,
George
**
The Catcher in the
Rye
Salinger,
J.D.
The latest crime novel from one of the writers of The Wire: When
Thomas Flynn leaves his son, seventeen year old Chris, at Pine
Ridge, a juvenile prison near Washington, D.C., his heart is broken
but his mind is made up: Chris will have to pay for the mistakes he's
made. Inside, Chris is exposed to kids from a different world than
the comfortable one he knew. A decade later, Chris and the friends
he made at Pine Ridge seem reformed. But when he and the others
are inadvertently caught up in a burglary, old habits and worse
instincts rise to the surface, threatening this new-found stability…
Since his debut in 1951 as The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield
has been synonymous with the ‘cynical adolescent’. Holden
narrates the story of a couple of days in his 16-year-old life, just
after he's been expelled from prep school, in a slang that sounds
edgy even today and keeps this novel on banned book lists. A great
novel which deals with the nature of grief and how it feels to be an
outsider.
**
White Teeth
Smith,
Jade
Epic in scale and intimate in approach, White Teeth is an ambitious
novel. Genetics, eugenics, gender, race, class and history are the
book's themes but Zadie Smith is gifted with the wit and
inventiveness to make these weighty ideas seem effortlessly light.
The story travels through Jamaica, Turkey, Bangladesh and India
but ends up in a scrubby North London borough, home of the
book's two unlikely heroes: prevaricating Archie Jones and
intemperate Samad Iqbal.
**
The Abortionist’s
Daughter
Hyde,
Elisabeth
Nineteen-year-old Megan Thompson is beautiful, cool, clever and
beautiful -and has consequently never been short of boyfriends.
She has a love-hate relationship with her mother, Diana Duprey, an
abortion doctor and, following the death of her younger brother,
has mostly steered clear of family life. That is until the day her
father calls to tell her that Diana has been found dead in their
pool…
**
To Kill a Mockingbird
Lee,
Harper
One of the greatest novels written in the 20th century, this book
explores the nature of many issues including racism and prejudice
in the southern states of America. The novel is written from the
point of view of a young girl at the time and follows her journey as
she grows up and witnesses the trial of an African-American
accused of rape.
**
1984
Orwell,
George
The greatest dystopian novel ever written. Hidden away in the
Record Department of the sprawling Ministry of Truth, Winston
Smith skilfully rewrites the past to suit the needs of the Party. Yet
he inwardly rebels against the totalitarian world he lives in, which
demands absolute obedience and controls him through the allseeing telescreens and the watchful eye of Big Brother, symbolic
head of the Party. In his longing for truth and liberty, Smith begins
a secret love affair with a fellow-worker Julia, but soon discovers
the true price of freedom.
**
Casino Royale
Fleming,
Ian
**
Neuromancer
Gibson,
William
Bond is sent to a casino in Royale-les-Eaux to disgrace the lethal
Russian agent ‘Le Chiffre’ by ruining him at baccarat and forcing his
Soviet spymasters to ‘retire’ him, where he soon finds that his
quarry is not content to go without a fight. Preferring to work
alone, 007 is annoyed to be assigned a female assistant, but his
compelling attraction to the enigmatic Vesper Lynd only leads him
into further danger.
A science-fiction classic, which invented the ‘cyberpunk’ genre.
Case was the best interface cowboy who ever ran in Earth's
computer matrix. Then he double- crossed the wrong people. Fate
has a way of making amends, when he is forced to do one last job
in the infinite bytes of cyberspace.
**
Lord of the Flies
Golding,
William
Lord of the Flies, William Golding's classic tale about a group of
English schoolboys who are plane-wrecked on a deserted island, is
just as chilling and relevant today as when it was first published in
1954.
**
The Reluctant
Fundamentalist
Hamid,
Mohsin
Changez, a Pakistani Muslim from a once wealthy family in Lahore,
experiences his own version of the American Dream when his
talent and his Princeton scholarship lead him to a high-flying job in
the world of New York finance and to relationship with a beautiful,
enigmatic all-American girl. But, over aromatic food and exotic
drinks back in Lahore, Changez relates in a one-sided conservation
with an American traveller how he never felt entirely at ease and
how the attacks on the World Trade Centre and the subsequent
repercussions - both political and personal ones - roused him from
his American Dream…
**
Miss Wyoming
Coupland,
Douglas
The heroine of this outstanding tale of love is Susan Colgate, Miss
Wyoming’s teen beauty-queen and talentless soap actress. Pushed
into stardom by her demonically pushy mother, Susan's career is at
rock-bottom. When she finds herself sole survivor of an air-crash,
she views it as her opportunity to vanish, embarking on a voyage of
personal discovery…
**
Captain Corelli’s
Mandolin
De
Bernieres,
Louis
An extremely popular novel that is both compelling war story and
romance. During WWII on the Greek island of Cephallonia, a young
Italian captain is billeted in the doctor's house. Captain Corelli turns
out to be an accomplished musician, and for a while the war seems
to suit them well. But then the brutality of the conflict catches up
with them…
**
Rebecca
Du
Maurier,
Daphne
Rebecca is real page-turner: there are numerous twists and turns in
the plot and a wonderful cast of grotesque but believable
characters. The story follows a young woman who, after accepting
the much older Maxim de Winter's sudden proposal of marriage
merely days after they meet in Monte Carlo, must contend with
Maxim's stunningly beautiful late first wife, Rebecca, as she takes
her place at her new husband's equally beautiful home Manderley.
**
My Family and Other
Animals
Durrell,
Gerald
When the unconventional Durrell family can no longer endure the
damp, gray English climate, they do what any sensible family would
do: sell their house and relocate to the sunny Greek isle of Corfu.
My Family and Other Animals was intended to embrace the natural
history of the island but ended up as a delightful account of
Durrell’s family’s experiences.
**
The Virgin Suicides
Eugenides,
Jeffrey
A beautiful, heartfelt coming of age tale addressing the love and
darkness of adolescence. The novel tells the story of the Lisbon
sisters, living in 1970's suburban America, who in turn each commit
suicide. The story is told from the position of the neighbourhood
boys who are obsessed with the sisters and try to piece together
their lives.
**
After the First Death
Cormier,
Robert
Girlfriend in a Coma
Coupland,
Douglas
Cider with Rosie
Lee,
Laurie
A Room With A View
Forster,
E.M.
Brighton Rock
Greene,
Graham
Pride and Prejudice
Austen,
Jane
Jane Eyre
Bronte,
Charlotte
The Woman in White
Collins,
Wilkie
On the outskirts of a small American town, a bus-load of young
children is being held hostage. The hijackers are a cold and ruthless
group, opposed to the secret government agency Inner Delta. At
the centre of the battle are three teenagers. Miro is the terrorist
with no past and no emotions. Kate is the bus driver, caught up in
the nightmare, and Ben is the General's son who must act as a gobetween.
A novel about the end of the world, and what comes after it. Karen,
an attractive, popular student, goes into a coma one night in 1979.
Whilst in it, she gives birth to a healthy baby daughter. Eighteen
years later, she wakes up and finds herself a middle-aged mother
whose friends have all grown up but become lost along the way.
But fate has much more in store for Karen in this apocalyptic tale...
Cider with Rosie is a wonderfully vivid memoir of childhood in a
remote Cotswold village, a village before electricity or cars, a
timeless place on the verge of change. Growing up amongst the
fields and woods and characters of the place, Laurie Lee depicts a
world that is both immediate and real and belongs to a now-distant
past.
E. M. Forster is one of the great twentieth century authors. In this
piece of social comedy, Forster is concerned with one of his
favourite themes - "the undeveloped heart" of the English middle
classes, who are here represented by a group of tourists and
expatriates in Florence. Lucy Honeychurch finds self-knowledge in
Italy, but what will she do with it on returning to Surrey?
A gang war is raging through the dark underworld of Brighton.
Seventeen-year-old Pinkie, malign and ruthless, has killed a man.
Believing he can escape retribution, he is unprepared for the
courageous, life-embracing Ida Arnold. Greene's gripping thriller,
exposes a world of loneliness and fear, of life lived on the
'dangerous edge of things'.
Elizabeth Bennet is at first determined to dislike Mr. Darcy, who is
handsome and eligible. This misjudgement is only matched in folly
by Darcy's arrogant pride. Their first impressions give way to truer
feelings in a comedy concerned with happiness and how it might
be achieved.
Orphaned Jane Eyre grows up in the home of her heartless aunt,
where she endures loneliness and cruelty, and at a charity school
with a harsh regime. But when she finds love with her sardonic
employer, Rochester, the discovery of his terrible secret forces her
to make a choice. Should she stay with him and live with the
consequences, or follow her convictions, even if it means leaving
the man she loves?
'There, as if it had at that moment sprung out of the earth or
dropped from the heaven - stood the figure of a solitary Woman,
dressed from head to foot in white garments'. Walter Hartright's
encounter with the nameless and distressed woman in white
begins one of the greatest mystery thrillers in the English language.
A gripping tale, intricately plotted and compellingly told.
**
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