K I N G E D W A R D V I F I V E W AY S S C H O O L
KS4
READING LIST
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CONTENTS
Introduction
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Pre-1900
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Bildungsroman
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Science Fiction and Dystopia
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Poetry
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World Literature
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Literary Non-Fiction
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Horror and Thriller
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American Literature
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Drama
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Detective and Crime
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Relationships
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Adventure and Journey
15
Humour
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Have You Read Them All‌?
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INTRODUCTION Welcome to the King Edward VI Five Ways English Department Reading List. We want you to enjoy literature as much as we do; not only is it key to exam success, but reading improves your imagination, memory, verbal skills, and reduces stress. Exploring novels opens your mind to new places, cultures and ways of thinking. Books are organised by genre or period, so you can get a sense of the variety of literature you are reading. There is a handy contents page and a checklist at the end where you can track of and tick off each book. B Y T H E E N D O F K E Y S TA G E 4 ( Y 1 1 ) , W E I N T H E E N G L I S H D E PA R T M E N T T H I N K Y O U S H O U L D H AV E R E A D ‌
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PRE-1900 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens Great Expectations opens unforgettably on the eerie Kent marshes. There the orphan Pip is disturbed to meet an escaped convict, Magwitch, in an encounter that is to haunt both their lives.
Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy Set in Hardy’s semi-fictional Wessex, Tess is both beautiful and sad. Manipulated and misled, Tess is a tragic figure, and makes a striking heroine for this classic novel of suffering. But be warned - there are no happy endings to be found here!
Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen Few have failed to be charmed by the independent spirit of Elizabeth Bennet. Her determination to dislike Mr. Darcy is a prejudice only matched by the folly of his pride. Their first impressions give way to true feelings in a comedy profoundly concerned with happiness and how it might be achieved.
The Count of Monte Cristo - Alexander Dumas The story of Edmund Dantes, self-styled Count of Monte Cristo. The victim of a miscarriage of justice, Dantes is fired by a desire for retribution and empowered by a stroke of providence. In his campaign of vengeance, he becomes an anonymous agent of fate. The sensational narrative of intrigue, betrayal, escape, and triumphant revenge moves at a cracking pace.
The Picture of Dorian Grey - Oscar Wilde Horror hides behind an attractive face in The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde's tale of a notorious Victorian libertine and his life of evil excesses. Be warned - you will find some of the attitudes expressed in this novel unacceptable today, and the language can be rather florid. But if you can accept these limitations, you will be fascinated by Dorian Gray and his ultimate sacrifice.
A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens ‘It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.’
Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
After eighteen years as a political prisoner in the Bastille, the ageing Doctor Manette is finally released and reunited with his daughter in England. There the lives of two very different men, Charles Darnay, an exiled French aristocrat, and Sydney Carton, a disreputable but brilliant English lawyer, become enmeshed through their love for Lucie Manette. From the tranquil lanes of London, they are drawn against their will to the vengeful, bloodstained streets of Paris at the height of the Reign of Terror, and they soon fall under the lethal shadow of La Guillotine.
Joseph Conrad's enduring portrait of the ugliness of colonialism in the African Congo, Heart of Darkness is the thrilling tale of Marlow, a seaman and wanderer recounting his physical and psychological journey in search of the infamous ivory trader Kurtz. The Complete Tales and Poems - Edgar Allan Poe Edgar Allan Poe is credited with having pioneered the short story, having perfected tales of psychological horror and stories of detection. 4
BILDUNGSROMAN The Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger
The Perks of Being a Wallflower - Stephen Chbosky
Holden Caulfield's account of his adolescence at odds with a troubling world. Watch out for the ‘phonies’.
Charlie is a shy, introspective teenager, who prefers to look on from the sidelines, and has his own unique perspective on the high school world he sees around him. But Charlie can't remain a 'wallflower' on the fringes of things forever, and through a distinctive narrative voice, he documents his experiences as he begins to encounter all the challenges of growing up.
Cider with Rosie - Laurie Lee A vivid memoir of childhood in a remote Cotswold village before electricity or cars, a timeless place on the verge of change.
Doing It - Melvin Burgess The Help - Kathryn Stockett
This is a book about sex. The main characters spend 330 pages talking, fantasising, worrying, planning and thinking about sex. Oh yes, and doing it. This is Melvin Burgess writing, and you know he’s going to be ruthlessly honest as well as funny, and that he’ll dig down to some liberating truths as well.
The story of a young white woman in Jackson, Mississippi in the 1960s and a group of black maids for the families of her friends, embarking on a clandestine plan together.
The Rotters’ Club - Jonathon Coe Set in 1970s Birmingham, against a distant backdrop of strikes, terrorist attacks and growing racial tension. A group of young friends inherit the editorship of their school magazine and begin to put their own distinctive spin on events in the wider world.
About a Boy - Nick Hornby About two boys, it tells the story of 36-year-old gadget-obsessed big-kid Will, and Marcus, 12, a folk-music-singing, vegetarian hippy. An unlikely pair, somehow their lives become intertwined. In the process, Will finally grows up, and Marcus somehow ‘grows down.’
Never Let Me Go - Kazuo Ishiguro Kathy, Ruth, and Tommy were students at Hailsham, a boarding school secluded in the countryside. Now, years later, Kathy is a young woman, and for the first time she is beginning to look back and understand just what it is that makes them special–and how that gift will shape the rest of their time together.
Just In Case - Meg Rosoff Fate is watching David Case and he soon becomes consumed by the fear that it is going to catch up with him. In trying to escape fate, he embarks on a voyage of self discovery. But will he find the strength to fight fate in one last terrifying encounter? 5
SCIENCE FICTION AND DYSTOPIA The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Douglas Adams
The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood The Republic of Gilead offers Offred only one option: to breed. If she deviates, like all dissenters, be hanged out the wall, or sent out to die slowly of radiation sickness.
F r a n t i c a n d f u n n y. S e c o n d s before the Earth is demolished to make way for a galactic freeway, Arthur Dent is plucked off the planet by his friend Ford Prefect, and heads off on an interstellar adventure, taking in everything from poetry-spouting Vogons to the birth of human civilisation.
Patrick Ness - More Than This 'Haven't you ever felt like there has to be more? Like there's more out there somewhere, just beyond your grasp, and if you could only get to it?’ A teenage boy named Seth drowns in the ocean. But just when he believes his life is over, he awakes in a strange, deserted town. The place is familiar, and Seth soon recognises it as the suburban English town where he lived as a child, before the terrible event that led his family to relocate to America. Alone and afraid, Seth tries to make sense of his situation.
Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell Six interlocking lives - one amazing adventure. In a narrative that circles the globe and reaches from the 19th century to a post-apocalyptic future, Cloud Atlas erases the boundaries of time, genre and language to offer an enthralling vision of humanity's will to power, and where it will lead us. Fahrenheit 451 - Ray Bradbury A masterwork of twentiethcentury literature set in a bleak, dystopian future. Guy Montag is a fireman. In his world, where television rules and literature is on the brink of extinction, firemen start fires rather than put them out. His job is to destroy the most illegal of commodities, the printed book, along with the houses in which they are hidden.
Aldous Huxley - Brave New World Published in 1932, Huxley creates an imaginary world in the future, a seeming paradise where illness and poverty have been defeated. Everyone is happy. Really? No, of course they're not! Read on to find out why not.
The Girl With All the Gifts - M.R. Carey
How I Live Now - Meg Rosoff
Melanie is a very special girl who loves school. She tells her favourite teacher all the things she'll do when she grows up. Melanie doesn't know why this makes Miss Justineau look sad. Currently being filmed in Birmingham!
New Yorker Daisy is sent to England to spend a summer with her unconventional cousins in a rambling English country house. So far so perfect, but the shadow of war hangs over this idyllic existence, eventually breaking in with great force and throwing everything into chaos. 6
POETRY Selected Poems: 1923-58 - E.E. Cummings
Anthem for Doomed Youth - John Stallworthy
The 156 poems here, arranged in twelve sections and introduced by E. E. Cummings's biographer, Richard S. Kennedy, include his most popular poems, spanning his earliest creations, his vivacious linguistic acrobatics, up to his last valedictory sonnets.
‘Too terrible to remember, too important to forget’, the poetry of the First World War never fails to stir up a yearning outrage that such things happened, were allowed to happen. The twelve poets included here are both the chroniclers of war and its casualties.
Essential Poems to Fall In Love With
Falling Hard - ed. Betsy Franco
Passionate, amusing and touching, this poetic journey explores the highs and lows of romance through the world’s most memorable love poems. From Shakespeare to Wendy Cope; from Tennyson to Maya Angelou; from D.H. Lawrence to John Hegley, the themes of love’s pain, ecstasy, uncertainty and fulfilment have been explored in beautiful, touching, bitter and witty verse.
The poets are straight, gay, lesbian, bi, or transgender. They live next door or across an ocean; they are innocent or experienced; their lyric explorations range from new love to stale love, obsession to ennui, ecstasy to heartbreak, and every nuance in between. Whether the romantic escapades described are touching, comical, or tragic, whether the feelings expressed are tender and sweet or brutal and biting, readers will find the love these young poets openly share to be e x q u i s i t e l y, e x c r u c i a t i n g l y, e n d l e s s l y fascinating.
Sonnets: William Shakespeare "The Sonnets" of William Shakespeare are a collection of 154 loosely connected 14 line poems. Considered by many to be among some of the greatest love poetry ever written, much debate surrounds the context of the poetry. It has been suggested that the work may be semiautobiographical but no real evidence firmly supports this notion. Regardless of their context, "The Sonnets" can be appreciated individually or as a whole as examples of William Shakespeare's true literary genius.
AND SOME SHORT STORIES… Kiss Kiss - Roald Dahl What could go wrong when a wife pawns the mink coat that her lover gave her as a parting gift? Can a wronged woman take revenge on her dead husband? A series of dark, disturbing stories in which Roald Dahl explores the sinister side of human nature.
Ariel - Sylvia Plath
Collected Stories - Katherine Mansfield
Plath's famous collection, as she intended it. When Sylvia Plath died, she not only left behind a prolific life but also her unpublished literary masterpiece, Ariel. When her husband, Ted Hughes brought this collection to life, it garnered worldwide
Katherine Mansfield is widely regarded as a writer who helped create the modern short story. Graceful, delicate and quietly devastating, these stories observe apparently trivial incidents to create sensitive, often painful revelations of her characters' inner lives.
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WORLD LITERATURE Slaughterhouse Five - Kurt Vonnegut
Yo u ’ r e N o t P r o p e r - Ta r i q Mehmood
Prisoner of war, optometrist, timetraveller - these are the life roles of Billy Pilgrim, hero of this miraculously moving, bitter and funny story of innocence faced with apocalypse. This is one of the world's great anti-war books, centring on the infamous fire-bombing of Dresden in WW2.
Karen, Kiran, Karey - Kiran’s name is just one of things she’s feeling conflicted over. With a white Christian mother and a father from Pakistan who has relaxed from his Muslim practices, life at home isn’t giving her any clues about where she should fit in. None of the cliques in school will have her, she’s not ‘proper’ enough for any of them.
Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie Saleem Sinai is born at the stroke of midnight on August 15, 1947, the very moment of India’s independence. Greeted by fireworks displays, cheering crowds, and Prime Minister Nehru, Saleem grows up to learn the ominous consequences of this coincidence.
One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez Often prize-winning books aren’t as brilliant as we are led to believe they are. This novel is. Journey into South America, following the fortunes of the Buendia family as they found and then strive to retain the town of Macondo.
Things Fall Apart - Chinua Achebe
The Kite-Runner - Khaled Hosseini
About the tragic fall of the protagonist, Okonkwo, and the Igbo culture. Okonkwo is a respected and influential leader within the Igbo community of Umuofia in pre-colonial eastern Nigeria.
The unforgettable, heartbreaking story of the unlikely friendship between a wealthy boy and the son of his father’s servant, The Kite Runner is a beautifully crafted novel set in 1970s Afghanistan, a country that is in the process of being destroyed.
Les Miserables - Victor Hugo Introducing one of the most famous characters in literature, Jean Valjean - the noble peasant imprisoned for stealing a loaf of bread. In Les Misérables Victor Hugo takes readers deep into the Parisian underworld, immerses them in a battle between good and evil, and carries them onto the barricades during the uprising of 1832.
Malala: The Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Changed the World - Malala Yousafzai
Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
The White Tiger - Aravind Adiga
Malala Yousafzai’s story is timely and important. As a little girl she was desperate to get to the school her father ran. When the Taliban took control of her home town they enforced rules to stop girls attending school. Malala refused.
A classic story of doomed love. Be enthralled by Tolstoy’s magnificent heroine, the unhappily married Anna Karenina, and her tragic affair with dashing Count Vronsky.
A tale of two Indias. Balram’s journey from the darkness of village life to the light of entrepreneurial success is utterly amoral, irreverent, and deeply endearing. 8
LITERARY NON-FICTION If This Is A Man - Primo Levi
Friday Night Lights - HG Bissinger
Levi, an unassuming chemist, set out systematically to remember the German hell on earth, steadfastly to think it through, and then to render it comprehensible in lucid, unpretentious prose. One of the few survivors of the Holocaust to speak of his experiences with a gentle voice.
In the state of Texas American football is a religion. And nowhere is more fanatical about its football than the small town of Odessa. There, every Friday night from September to November, a bunch of seventeenyear-old kids play their hearts out for the honour of their high school. In front of 20,000 people. In 1988 H.G. Bissinger spent a season in Odessa discovering just what makes a town pin its hopes on eleven boys on a football field.
The Glory Game - Hunter Davies When the first edition of The Glory Game was published in 1972, it was instantly hailed as the most insightful book about the life of a football club ever published. Davies was, and still is, the only author ever to be allowed into the inner sanctum of a top-level football team (Tottenham Hotspur) and his pen spared nothing and no one.
The Boy with the Top Knot - Sathnam Sanghera For Sathnam Sanghera, growing up in Wolverhampton in the eighties was a confusing business. These were the heady days of George Michael mix-tapes, Dallas on TV and the occasional Bounty Bar. And then there was his family, whose strange and often difficult behaviour he took for granted until, at the age of twenty-four, Sathnam made a discovery about their mental health that changed everything he ever thought he knew about them.
A Walk in the Woods - Bill Bryson At the age of forty-four, Bryson set off to hike through the vast tangled woods which have been frightening sensible people for three hundred years. Ahead lay almost 2,200 miles of remote mountain wilderness filled with bears, moose, rattlesnakes, poisonous plants, disease-bearing tics, the occasional chuckling murderer and - perhaps most alarming of all - people whose favourite pastime is discussing the relative merits of the external-frame backpack.
Racing Through the Dark - David Millar By his eighteenth birthday David Millar was living and racing in France, sleeping in rented rooms, tipped to be the next Englishspeaking Tour winner. A year later he'd realised the dream and signed a professional contract. He perhaps lived the high life a little too enthusiastically - he broke his heel in a fall from a roof after too much drink, and before long the pressure to succeed had tipped over into doping. Here, in a full and frank autobiography, David Millar recounts the story from the inside.
Surely You’re Joking, Mr Feynman! - Richard Feynman and Ralph Leighton Winner of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1965, Richard Feynman was one of the world's greatest physicists, but also a man who fell into adventure. An artist, safecracker, and joker, Feynman’s extraordinary life was made possible by his unique mixture of high intelligence, unquenchable curiosity and eternal scepticism.
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HORROR AND THRILLER Frankenstein - Mary Shelley Begun when the author was only eighteen and conceived from a nightmare, Frankenstein is the disturbing story of a monstrous creation which has terrified readers since its publication in 1818, while establishing itself as one of the pioneering works of science fiction.
The Woman in Black - Susan Hill There may be a point in this chilling ghost story where you become afraid even to turn the page, so convinvingly does Hill evoke the haunted atmosphere of Eel Marsh House and the plight of Arthur Kipps, the young solicitor come to sort out the papers of the late Mrs Drablow.
The Turn of the Screw - Henry James One of literature's most gripping ghost stories depicts the sinister transformation of two innocent children into flagrant liars and hypocrites. An elegantly told tale of unspoken horror and psychological terror creates what few stories in literature have been able to do — a complete feeling of dread and uncertainty.
Brighton Rock - Graham Greene It is the tension between the two faces of Brighton – the illuminated tourist bling and the gritty, mobster-laced industry behind the façade – that sets up the intrigue in Greene's classic 1938 novel of good and evil; and it's the menacing, sinisterly youthful antihero Pinkie who continues to fascinate today.
The Talented Mr Ripley - Patricia Highsmith Tom Ripley is struggling to stay one step ahead of his creditors and the law, when an unexpected acquaintance offers him a free trip to Europe and a chance to start over. Ripley wants money, success and the good life and he's willing to kill for it. When his new-found happiness is threatened, his response is as swift as it is shocking.
The Spy Who Came in From the Cold - John Le Carre A book about the dirty, grey underbelly of spy-craft. It caused a sensation when it was published, with accusations of treason being thrown at its author, real-life spook Le Carre.
The Day of the Jackal - Frederick Forsythe In 1963, a young English assassin is hired by a secretive group to kill the French president at a public parade. The assassin’s code name is The Jackal, and this is the account of his bid to stay ahead of the detective on his trail.
The Metamorphosis - Franz Kafka The story of a young man who, transformed overnight into a giant beetle-like insect, becomes an object of disgrace to his family, an outsider in his own home, a quintessentially alienated man. A harrowing meditation on human feelings of inadequacy, guilt, and isolation, The Metamorphosis has taken its place as one of the most widely read and influential works of twentieth-century fiction.
The Rats - James Herbert For millions of years man and rats had been natural enemies. But now for the first time - suddenly, horribly - the balance of power had shifted and the rats began to prey on the human population. 10
AMERICAN LITERATURE
DE MA
SA IN U
Portrait of a Lady - Henry James
To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
Transplanted to Europe from her native America, Isabel Archer has candour, beauty, intelligence, an independent spirit and a marked enthusiasm for life. An unexpected inheritance apparently gives her freedom, but despite all her natural advantages she makes one disastrous error of judgement and the result is genuinely tragic.
'Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit 'em, but remember it's a sin to kill a mockingbird.’ A lawyer's advice to his children as he defends the real mockingbird of Harper Lee's classic novel - a black man charged with the rape of a white girl. Through the young eyes of Scout Finch, Harper Lee explores with exuberant humour the irrationality of adult attitudes to race and class in the Deep South of the 1930s.
Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
The Scarlet Letter - Nathaniel Hawthorne
Streetwise George and his big, childlike friend Lennie are drifters, searching for work in the fields and valleys of California. They have nothing except the clothes on their back, and a hope that one day they'll find a place of their own and live the American dream. But dreams come at a price.
Hawthorne’s compelling story of the callous judgment meted out to an unmarried mother by the puritans of Boston, Massachusetts, is a moving and thoughtful study of society’s ambivalent and contradictory treatment of women.
The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s third book, stands as the supreme achievement of his career. This exemplary novel of the Jazz Age has been acclaimed by generations of readers. The story of the fabulously wealthy Jay Gatsby and his love for the beautiful Daisy Buchanan, of lavish parties on Long Island, it is an exquisitely crafted tale of America in the 1920s.
Beloved – Toni Morrison Beloved is the story of Sethe, an escaped slave-woman haunted by a terrible decision she took, back in her past.
For Whom the Bell Tolls – Ernest Hemingway
The Color Purple - Alice Walker
High in the pine forests of the Spanish Sierra, a guerrilla band prepares to blow up a vital bridge. Robert Jordan, a young American volunteer, has been sent to handle the dynamiting. There, in the mountains, he finds the dangers and the intense comradeship of war. And there he discovers Maria, a young woman who has escaped from Franco's rebels.
Set in the deep American South between the wars, Celie, a young black girl is born into poverty and segregation. Raped by the man she calls 'father', she has children taken away from her, is separated from her sister Nettie and is trapped in an ugly marriage. But then she meets the glamorous Shug Avery, singer and magic-maker. 11
DRAMA The Importance of Being Earnest - Oscar Wilde
The Cripple of Inishmaan - Martin McDonagh In 1934, the people of Inishmaan learn that the Hollywood director Robert Flaherty is coming to the neighbouring island to film his documentary Man of Aran. No one is more excited than Billy, an unloved and crippled boy whose chief occupation has been gazing at cows and yearning for a girl who wants no part of him.
This classic masterpiece looks at the how the institution of marriage was treated with triviality, as the characters all pretend to be someone they are not to escape social obligations. The play was an instant success but soon scandal and Wilde's arrest and imprisonment caused the show to close after just 86 performances.
The History Boys - Alan Bennett An unruly bunch of bright, funny grammar-school sixth-form boys in pursuit of sex, sport and a place at university. A maverick English teacher at odds with the young and shrewd supply teacher. A headmaster obsessed with results; a history teacher who thinks he's a fool. In Alan Bennett's classic play, staff room rivalry and the anarchy of adolescence provoke insistent questions about history and how you teach it; about education and its purpose.
The Complete Works of Shakespeare Shakespeare is acknowledged as the greatest dramatist of all time. He excels in plot, poetry and wit, and his talent encompasses the great tragedies of Hamlet, King Lear, Othello and Macbeth as well as the moving history plays and the comedies such as A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Taming of the Shrew and As You Like It with their magical combination of humour, ribaldry and tenderness. We don’t ask that you read them all, but why don't you?
Oedipus Rex - Sophocles Sophocles' Oedipus Rex has never been surpassed for the raw and terrible power with which its hero struggles to answer the eternal question, "Who am I?" The play, a story of a king who acting entirely in ignorance kills his father and marries his mother, unfolds with shattering power; we are helplessly carried along with Oedipus towards the final, horrific truth.
Arthur Miller - Death of a Salesman In the person of Willy Loman, the aging, failing salesman who makes his living riding on a smile and a shoeshine, Arthur Miller redefined the tragic hero as a man whose dreams are at once insupportably vast and dangerously insubstantial. He has given us a figure whose name has become a symbol for a kind of majestic grandiosity—and a play that compresses epic extremes of humor and anguish, promise and loss, between the four walls of an American living room.
A Streetcar Named Desire - Tennessee Williams Southern belle Blanche Dubois finds her romantic illusions brutally shattered by the violent Stanley Kowalski when she moves to New Orleans under a cloud of mystery and shame.
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DETECTIVE AND CRIME The Complete Stories of Sherlock Holmes Arthur Conan Doyle
Killing Floor - Lee Child Jack Reacher jumps off a bus and walks fourteen miles down a country road into Margrave, Georgia. An arbitrary decision he's about to regret. Reacher is the only stranger in town on the day they have had their first homicide in thirty years.The cops arrest Reacher and the police chief turns eyewitness to place him at the scene. As nasty secrets leak out, and the body count mounts, one thing is for sure. They picked the wrong guy to take the fall.
Tales of superb detection, featuring the incomparable sleuth patiently assisted by his doggedly loyal and lovably pedantic friend and companion, Dr Watson. Rebecca -Daphne du Maurier A childlike young woman with lank hair marries a mysterious and dominating older man and becomes dangerously obsessed with his charismatic – but deceased – first wife.
Strangers on a Train - Patricia Highsmith
The Name of the Rose - Umberto Eco
Two men get talking on a train. Both want somebody murdered. Each needs a perfect alibi. So they agree to swap murders. Or at least one of them - an alcoholic called Bruno who turns out to be a psychopath - thinks they’ve agreed. So he carried out the murder. Complications arise…
The year is 1327. Franciscans in a wealthy Italian abbey are suspected of heresy, and Brother William of Baskerville arrives to investigate. When his delicate mission is suddenly overshadowed by seven bizarre deaths, Brother William turns detective. His tools are the logic of Aristotle, the theology of Aquinas, the empirical insights of Roger Bacon - all sharpened to a glistening edge by wry humor and a ferocious curiosity.
The Hit - Melvin Burgess Melvin Burgess has gained a reputation for dealing with shocking and controversial issues in books like Junk, and The Hit is no exception. The streets are buzzing with talk of Death - a hijacked euthanasia drug, which offers those that take it the best week of their lives before they die seven days later. Adam's brother is gone, his parents are worn out and he has even lost girlfriend Lizzie, the one good thing in his life. Adam decides to take Death and end it all with the ultimate high. But all too quickly, he realises that he still has plenty to live for.
The Big Sleep - Raymond Chandler Los Angeles PI Philip Marlowe is working for the Sternwood family. Old man Sternwood, crippled and wheelchair-bound, is being given the squeeze by a blackmailer and he wants Marlowe to make the p r o b l e m g o a w a y. B u t w i t h Sternwood's two wild, devil-maycare daughters prowling LA's seedy backstreets, Marlowe's got his work cut out - and that's before he stumbles over the first corpse.
The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold This is a startling book. Within a few lines you realise that the narrator is Susie Salmon, a murdered 14-yearold girl. She is in a kind of heaven, from where she can watch the after effects of the crime. 13
RELATIONSHIPS All the Truth That’s In Me - Julie Berry
The Beach - Alex Garland
Four years ago, Judith and her best friend disappeared from their small town. Two years ago, only Judith returned, permanently mutilated, reviled and ignored by those who were once her friends and family. Unable to speak, Judith lives like a ghost in her own home, silently pouring out her thoughts to the boy who’s owned her heart as long as she can remember—even if he doesn’t know it—her childhood friend, Lucas.
The classic story of paradise found - and lost. In Thailand, Richard is given a map promising an unknown island, a secluded beach - and a new way of life. What Richard finds when he gets there is breathtaking, more extraordinary, more frightening than his wildest dreams. Blood Family - Anne Fine Locked away by his mother's abusive, alcoholic partner Harris, Eddie is seven years old before a watching neighbour makes up her mind to tell social services about the pale face she sees early in the morning. Rescue comes at last, and he embarks on a new life - But Edie's past continues to haunt him.
I Capture the Castle - Dodie Smith Cassandra Mortmain lives with her bohemian and impoverished family in a crumbling castle in the middle of nowhere. Her journal records her life with her beautiful, bored sister, Rose, her fadingly glamorous stepmother, Topaz, her little brother Thomas and her eccentric novelist father who suffers from a financially crippling writer's block. However, all their lives are turned upside down when the American heirs to the castle arrive and Cassandra finds herself falling in love for the first time.
Dear Nobody - Berlie Doherty They say that high school is supposed to be the best time of your life. But what if that's just not true? More than anything, Mary Rose wants to fit in. To be loved. And she'll do whatever it takes to make that happen. Even if it costs her her life.
Atonement - Ian McEwan On the hottest day of the summer of 1934, thirteen-year-old Briony Tallis sees her sister Cecilia strip off her clothes and plunge into the fountain in the garden of their country house. Watching her is Robbie Turner, her childhood friend who, like Cecilia, has recently come down from Cambridge. By the end of that day, the lives of all three will have been changed for ever. Robbie and Cecilia will have crossed a boundary they had not even imagined at its start, and will have become victims of the younger girl's imagination. Briony will have witnessed mysteries, and committed a crime for which she will spend the rest of her life trying to atone.
Forever - Judy Blume Seventeen-year-old Katherine meets Michael at a party. The two of them like each other immediately, and soon fall in love - but are they ready to take their relationship to the next level This frank and honest story of first love caused controversy in America when it was first published in 1976. Judy Blume wrote the book in response to the thousands of letters she received from teenagers complaining that adults told them nothing about sex and relationships. 14
ADVENTURE AND JOURNEY Buffalo Soldier - Tanya Landman "What kind of a girl steals the clothes from a dead man's back and runs off to join the army? A desperate one. That's who." At the end of the American Civil War, Charley – a young AfricanAmerican slave from the deep south – is ostensibly freed. But then her adopted mother is raped and lynched at the hands of a mob and Charley is left alone. In a terrifyingly lawless land, where the colour of a person's skin can bring violent death, Charley disguises herself as a man and joins the army.
The Dark Ground - Gillian Cross A flight back from holiday. An explosion on the plane. Robert wakes up, alone in the jungle, with neither food nor shelter. Unfamiliar creatures are roaming about - and he can't get rid of the feeling that someone, or something, is watching him. This is the story of Robert's struggle for survival from his realisation of what has happened to him and where he is, to his perilous journey homeward.
The Book Thief - Markus Zusak Finding Violet Park - Jenny Valentine
1939. Nazi Germany. The country is holding its breath. Death has never been busier. Liesel, a nineyear-old girl, is living with a foster family on Himmel Street. Her parents have been taken away to a concentration camp. Liesel steals books. This is her story and the story of the inhabitants of her street when the bombs begin to fall.
‘The mini cab office was up a cobbled mews with little flat houses either side. That's where I first met Violet Park, what was left of her.’ Sixteen-year-old Lucas Swain becomes intrigued by the urn of ashes left in a cab office. Convinced that its occupant – Violet Park – is communicating with him, he contrives to gain possession of the urn, little realising that his quest will take him on a voyage of self-discovery and identity, forcing him to finally confront what happened to his absent (and possibly dead) father.
The Dark Beneath - Alan Gibbons 'Today I shot the girl I love'. GCSE's are over and sixteen-yearold Imogen is looking forward to a perfect, lazy English summer. But her world is turned upside down by three refugees, all hiding from life. Anthony is fourteen, already an outcast, bullied and shunned by his peers. Farid is an asylum seeker from Afghanistan, who has travelled across continents seeking peace. And Gordon Craig is a bitter, lonely man. She knows all of them, but she doesn't know how dangerous they are. Being part of their lives could cost Imogen her own.
Bravo Two Zero - Andy McNab In January 1991, eight members of the SAS regiment embarked upon a top secret mission that was to infiltrate them deep behind enemy lines. Under the command of Sergeant Andy McNab, they were to sever the underground communication link between Baghdad and north-west Iraq, to seek and destroy mobile Scud launchers. Their call sign: BRAVO TWO ZERO. 15
HUMOUR
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Thank You, Jeeves - P.G. Wodehouse In the very best tradition of English comedy writing, Thank You, Jeeves is the first novel to feature the incomparable valet Jeeves and his hapless charge Bertie Wooster. A real rib-tickler.
The Amazing Maurice - Terry Pratchett One rat, popping up here and there, squeaking loudly, and taking a bath in the cream, could be a plague all by himself. After a few days of this, it was amazing how glad people were to see the kid with his magical rat pipe. And they were amazed when the rats followed him out of town. They'd have been really amazed if they'd ever found out that the rats and the piper met up with a cat somewhere outside of town and solemnly counted out the money…
Scoop - Evelyn Waugh Evelyn Waugh’s Fleet Street satire remains sharp, pertinent and m e m o r a b l e . L o r d C o p p e r, newspaper magnate and proprietor of the Daily Beast, has always prided himself on his intuitive flair for spotting ace reporters. That is not to say he has not made the odd blunder, however, and may in a moment of weakness make another. Acting on a dinner party tip from Mrs. Algernon Stitch, Lord Copper feels convinced that he has hit on just the chap to cover a promising war in the African Republic of Ishmaelia…
Audrey, Wait! - Robin Benway Audrey Cutler is a normal Southern California girl and she struggles with dumping her musician boyfriend, Evan. She loves his band, but he's just too self-involved. Audrey needs to move on. Then at one of Evan's gigs, Audrey gets to hear their brand new single and moving on doesn't seem so easy now: the song is called Audrey, Wait and it's all about her, and not in a good way ... The song storms quickly up the charts and reaches the top. Suddenly everyone wants to know: who is Audrey?
When Mr. Dog Bites - Brian Conaghan 16-year-old Dylan Mint does not have an easy life. For starters his Tourette's causes him to shout, tic and growl like a dog when he is under pressure or stressed - which is most of the time, and this is just one of his many problems… Conaghan's novel is both heart-wrenching and laugh out loud funny.
Frost On My Moustache: The Arctic Exploits of a Lord and a Loafer - Tim Moore
The Graveyard Book - Neil Gaiman
Guided by the fastidious journals of an eminent Victorian adventurer by the name of Lord Dufferin, Tim Moore sets off to prove his mettle in the most stunningly inhospitable place on Earth - the Arctic. Armed only with his searing wit, wicked humour, and seasickness pills, our pale suburbanite wracked by second thoughts of tactical retreat confronts mind-numbing cold, blood-thirsty polar bears, a convoy of bornagain Vikings, and, perhaps most chilling of all, herring porridge.
After his family are killed, Bod is brought up in a graveyard by ghosts – an array of century-spanning characters who care for him, impart wisdom and even teach body-fading skills. But Bod sometimes goes beyond the graveyard into the world of the living – and here his life is under threat. This fabulously original story is full of humour and surprise.
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HAVE YOU READ THEM ALL…? Pre-1900
Horror and Thriller
Great Expectations - Charles Dickens Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen The Picture of Dorian Grey - Oscar Wilde Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad The Complete Tales and Poems - Edgar Allan Poe Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy The Count of Monte Cristo - Alexander Dumas A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
Frankenstein - Mary Shelley The Turn of the Screw - Henry James The Talented Mr Ripley - Patricia Highsmith The Day of the Jackal - Frederick Forsythe The Rats - James Herbert The Woman in Black - Susan Hill Brighton Rock - Graham Greene The Spy Who Came in From the Cold - John Le Carre The Metamorphosis - Franz Kafka
Bildungsroman
American Literature
The Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger Cider with Rosie - Laurie Lee The Help - Kathryn Stockett The Rotters’ Club - Jonathon Coe Never Let Me Go - Kazuo Ishiguro The Perks of Being a Wallflower - Stephen Chbosky Doing It - Melvin Burgess About a Boy - Nick Hornby Just In Case - Meg Rosoff
Portrait of a Lady - Henry James Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald The Color Purple - Alice Walker To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee The Scarlet Letter - Nathaniel Hawthorne Beloved – Toni Morrison For Whom the Bell Tolls – Ernest Hemingway
Science Fiction and Dystopia
Drama
The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell Fahrenheit 451 - Ray Bradbury How I Live Now - Meg Rosoff The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood Patrick Ness - More Than This Aldous Huxley - Brave New World The Girl With All the Gifts - M.R. Carey
The Importance of Being Earnest - Oscar Wilde The Complete Works of Shakespeare Arthur Miller - Death of a Salesman The Cripple of Inishmaan - Martin McDonagh The History Boys - Alan Bennett Oedipus Rex - Sophocles A Streetcar Named Desire - Tennessee Williams Detective and Crime
Poetry
The Stories of Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle Rebecca -Daphne du Maurier Name of the Rose - Umberto Eco The Big Sleep - Raymond Chandler Killing Floor - Lee Child Strangers on a Train - Patricia Highsmith The Hit - Melvin Burgess The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
Selected Poems: 1923-58 - E.E. Cummings Essential Poems to Fall In Love With Sonnets: William Shakespeare Ariel - Sylvia Plath Anthem for Doomed Youth - John Stallworthy Falling Hard - ed. Betsy Franco Kiss Kiss - Roald Dahl Collected Stories - Katherine Mansfield
Relationships
World Literature
All the Truth That’s In Me - Julie Berry I Capture the Castle - Dodie Smith Atonement - Ian McEwan The Beach - Alex Garland Blood Family - Anne Fine Dear Nobody - Berlie Doherty Forever - Judy Blume
Slaughterhouse Five - Kurt Vonnegut Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie Things Fall Apart - Chinua Achebe Les Miserables - Victor Hugo Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy You’re Not Proper - Tariq Mehmood One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez The Kite-Runner - Khaled Hosseini Malala: The Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Changed the World - Malala Yousafzai The White Tiger - Aravind Adiga
Adventure and Journey Buffalo Soldier - Tanya Landman The Book Thief - Markus Zusak The Dark Beneath - Alan Gibbons The Dark Ground - Gillian Cross Finding Violet Park - Jenny Valentine Bravo Two Zero - Andy McNab
Literary Non-Fiction If This Is A Man - Primo Levi The Glory Game - Hunter Davies A Walk in the Woods - Bill Bryson Surely You’re Joking, Mr Feynman! - Richard Feynman and Ralph Leighton Friday Night Lights - HG Bissinger The Boy with the Top Knot - Sathnam Sanghera Racing Through the Dark - David Millar
Humour Thank You, Jeeves - P.G. Wodehouse Scoop - Evelyn Waugh When Mr. Dog Bites - Brian Conaghan The Graveyard Book - Neil Gaiman The Amazing Maurice - Terry Pratchett Audrey, Wait! - Robin Benway Frost On My Moustache: The Arctic Exploits of a Lord and a Loafer - Tim Moore 17
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