This is the second of two booklists aimed at S3/4, with some more challenging titles. For some easier titles try Booklist 1

The list is arranged by different genre or type of story as follows:

Crime & Thriller
Growing up / Relationships / Romance
Real Life
Fantasy & Science Fiction
Future Worlds
Ghost & Horror
The Comedy Zone
Other Times / Other Places
Short Stories
Story Collections
Biography and Travel


This selection includes old and new titles, but with an emphasis on recent fiction. Each title appears only once, although quite a few of the novels could have fitted into more than one genre. Some sequels have been included, but you should be able to find other books by many of these authors on the library shelves.

Unless otherwise indicated in the lists, you should look for these books in the Fiction Section of the School Library under the Author?s surname. The code numbers for the Biography and Travel Section books are given in brackets after the title.

If the book you want is not on the shelf, ask at the Issue Desk to reserve it.

CRIME & THRILLER

BANKS, Iain
Canal Dreams
Set in Japan, and on the Panama Canal, this book concerns a world famous Japanese cellist who refuses to fly and as a result finds herself involved in the ominous world of global ?realpolit?.

BROOKMYRE, Christopher
Country of the Blind
Following the escape of some prisoners, a young solicitor reveals that one of them had placed in her possession a letter which proves his innocence. Journalist Jack Parlabane is intrigued, but someone else is trying to get near ? someone with political connections and evil intent.

BROWN, Dan
The Da Vinci Code
Robert Langdon, Harvard Professor of Symbology, receives an urgent late night call while in Paris: the curator of the Louvre has been murdered. Alongside the body is a series of baffling ciphers. Langdon and a gifted French cryptologist, Sophie Neveu, are stunned to find a trail that leads to the works of Da Vinci and further. The curator, part of a secret society named the Priory of Sion, may have sacrificed his life to keep secret the location of a vastly important religious relic hidden for centuries. Unless Langdon and Neveu can decipher the labyrinthine code and quickly assemble the pieces of the puzzle, the Priory?s secret ? and a stunning historical truth ? will be lost forever.

CORNWELL, Patricia
Cruel and Unusual
A novel featuring Dr Kay Scarpetta, female Chief Medical Examiner. The electrocution of a murderer and the killing of a 13 year old boy the same night seem unrelated, until Scarpetta recalls that the boy?s body had been arranged in a strikingly similar position to that of the executed man?s victim.
Try also Body of Evidence and Black Witness

FRANCIS, Dick
High Stakes
Steven Scott owns horses but does not know much about them. He sacks his trainer because he suspects underhand dealings going on. He is soon to find out that moneymaking drives some people to manoeuvring and they will go a long way to protect themselves.

GRISHAM, John
The Pelican Brief
Late one night Abe Rosenberg, the Supreme Court?s liberal legend, is gunned down in his own home. The same night, Myron Jensen, the court?s youngest and most conservative justice, is strangled. What linked the two men and what caused their deaths? Darby Shaw thinks she knows the answer.
Try also The Chamber and The Firm

HIGHSMITH, Patricia
Strangers on a Train
When Guy Haines meets Charley Bruno on a train, he is pulled into a world of madness, lies and death, from which there is no escape.

JAMES, P D
Unnatural Causes
Superintendent Adam Dalgliesh had been looking forward to a quiet holiday at his aunt?s cottage on Monksmere Head. But Dalgliesh had reckoned without the macabre discovery of the handless corpse of crime-writer Maurice Seton.
Lots of other titles including The Black Tower and Devices and Desires.

JOHNSTON, Paul
The Blood Tree
The year is 2026. The United Kingdom has broken down, and Edinburgh is now an independent city state run by the Council of City Guardians. Quintilian Dalrymple is called on to investigate a series of gruesome murders.
Another title in this series is Body Politic

McDERMID, Val
Booked for Murder
Best selling author, Penny Varnavides is murdered in an exact replica of the murder method in her forthcoming book. Her former friend, Lindsay Gordon investigates.

McILLVANNEY, William
Laidlaw
Glasgow detective Jack Laidlaw is given the job of hunting down the killer of a young girl.

RANKIN, Iain
Black and Blue
In the 60s, ?Bible John? terrorized Glasgow, raping and murdering three women. Now, a copy-cat killer has been nicknamed ?Bible Johnny? by the media and is targeting not only Glasgow, but also Edinburgh and Aberdeen. Investigating another murder, Rebus runs head on into the media circus.
Other titles include Mortal Causes and The Falls

RENDELL, Ruth
A New Lease of Death
Chief Inspector Wexford has to reinvestigate a 15 year old murder case.
Some of the Wexford novels touch on topical issues, such as the public reaction to the release of a paedophile into the community in Harm Done and protests against new roads in Road Rage.

ROSE, Malcolm
Transplant
When Cassie?s face is mutilated in an acid attack she doesn?t think she?ll ever be able to look in the mirror again. But a pioneering doctor offers to perform a revolutionary new procedure that will give Cassie a whole new face. It?s at the swanky private clinic that Cassie first meets Wayne ? another guinea pig for groundbreaking new treatment??Wayne helps Cassie through a gruesome transplant and they both hope to carry on with a ?normal? life. But there?s something suspicious about the clinic and its wealthy patients and, even more sinister, Cassie?s new identity can?t stop her past catching up with her.



GROWING UP/RELATIONSHIPS/ROMANCE

AUSTEN, Jane
Pride and Prejudice
Set in the early 19th century, the classic story of the five Bennett sisters, especially Elizabeth, and her relations with the rich but proud Mr Darcy.

BERTAGNA, Julie
The Opposite of Chocolate
It?s a long, hot summer ? and a climactic one. For 14 year old Sapphire it brings the awesome, terrifying realization that she is pregnant ? a discovery that catapults her into the eye of a storm as her body, her future, her life, becomes a battleground for everyone?s needs but her own.

DOHERTY, Berlie
Dear Nobody
When Helen discovers that she is pregnant, she and Chris struggle to cope with the frightening uncertainty of the future.

DU MAURIER, Daphne
Rebecca
A story of love and suspense set in Cornwall and opening with the famous line ?Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again?.

EVANS, Nicholas
The Horse Whisperer
In upstate New York, a 13 year old girl and her horse are hit by a 40 ton truck. They both survive, but suffer horrible injuries. When the girl?s mother hears about a man said to have the gift of healing troubled horses, they set off for distant Montana, where their lives are changed for ever.

HICYILMAZ, Gaye
The Girl in Red
Teenager Frankie lives in a run down council block near the sea at Dover. He is captivated by the Roma girl, Emilia. Meanwhile, Frankie?s mother starts a campaign against the gypsies that becomes a focus for the expression of racial hatred.

HILL, SUSAN
The Service of Clouds
At the far end of the long white gallery is a painting of a woman, in pale flowing clothes and lying on a sofa beside an open window. It is a painting which leads Flora on, beckoning her away from her childhood, her complaining mother, pert younger sister, and the confines of a small community.

MAGORIAN, Michelle
A Little Love Song
A magical summer of love and war is the catalyst that changes Rose from an uncertain, gawky schoolgirl into a confident assured woman.
This love story is written by the author of Goodnight Mister Tom.

NEWBERRY, Linda
Sisterland
Hilly?s German grandmother, HeidiGran, comes to live with her family after she gets Alzheimer?s disease; but as her mind becomes more muddled, secrets buried in her past starts to emerge. Why does HeidiGran keep talking about a girl called Rachel? And why does she make racist remarks about Hilly?s friend, Reuben? As Hilly struggles to cope with revelations about her family?s past, she encounters racism and prejudice for herself when a friend becomes the victim of a mindless attack; she also falls in love for the first time.

OLDHAM, June
Undercurrents
Fergal accompanies his mother when she takes a job for the summer looking after an arthritic old lady on a remote Yorkshire farm. He is 15, tall and serious beyond his years, suffering guilt and anxiety about an incident that occurred in his past. As the unnatural summer begins to cause serious damage to the local dam, mysterious things start to happen.

PLATH, Sylvia
The Bell Jar
Sylvia Plath?s only novel is an account of a young woman?s breakdown ? her attempted suicide, hospitalization and recovery.

WEATHERLY, Lee
Child X
Juliette is passionate about acting and has been given the chance to star as the lead role in the play, Northern Lights. But at home, her life is not so happy. Her family starts to disintegrate after her father suddenly and unexpectedly leaves home. What terrible secret is her mother hiding? This is a moving and powerful story of one girl?s search for her own identity, deftly contrasted with the glamour and excitement of the theatre.



REAL LIFE

BURGESS, Melvin
Junk
A true to life story of 2 teenagers drawn into the dangerous and destructive world of heroin addiction.

GIBBONS, Alan
The Dark Beneath
GCSEs finished, Imogen is looking forward to a summer of freedom and her job at the village pub. Instead, a plan to set up a new asylum centre in the village uncovers undercurrents of hatred and violence and Imogen?s world is turned upside down by three refugees: Anthony, the introverted, obsessive landlady?s son; Farid, an Afghan asylum seeker; and Gordon, an embittered loner.

HADDON, Mark
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time
Christopher is 15 and lives in Swindon with his father. He has Asperger?s Syndrome, a form of autism. He is obsessed with maths, science and Sherlock Holmes but finds it hard to understand other people. When he discovers a dead dog on a neighbour?s lawn he decides to solve the mystery and write a detective thriller about it. As in all good detective stories, however, the more he unearths, the deeper the mystery.

KLASS, David
The Braves
Joe Brickman is looking forward to his year as captain of the Lawndale High soccer team ?and to a blooming relationship with his neighbour Kristine. But when the social structure of the school begins to crumble, Joe finds himself on the wrong side of the new order. Violence has always been part of school life ? especially at Lawndale. It goes back generations. But as the brutal, tribal rules that govern the school are exposed, Joe has to find the courage to break free??

RUSHTON, Rosie
Waving not Drowning
Three teenagers, all alike in misery, but in nothing else. One is boiling over with anger, grief and confusion as he relives the abandonment of his mother and the death of his little sister. The next has a grandmother suffering from Alzheimer?s. The third is the daughter of a successful business woman and a heart throb soap actor, who are constantly at war with each other. Their worlds collide when disaster strikes at the annual fair.



FANTASY & SCIENCE FICTION

ALDISS, Brian
Hothouse
In the far distant future when the sun is dying, man, lowly and easily killed, is the last animal species surviving in the all-conquering vegetable world.

BANKS, Iain M
Excession
Two and a half millennia ago, the artefact appeared in a remote corner of space, beside a trillion year old dying sun from a different universe. It was a perfect black body sphere, and it did nothing. Then it disappeared. Now it is back.
Try also Inversions

BRADBURY, Ray
Fahrenheit 451
In this disturbing vision of the future, scholars and eccentrics are outcasts of society and books ? the source of discord and unhappiness are burnt.
You could also try The Illustrated Man

CLARKE, Arthur C
2001
On the moon an enigma is uncovered. So great are the implications of the discovery that, for the first time, men are sent out deep into the solar system. But before they can reach their destination, things begin to go wrong. Horribly wrong.
First in a series.

CRICHTON, Michael
Jurassic Park
The novel which became a Spielberg film of the same name. An island off Costa Rica is to become the world?s most famous theme park ? a dinosaur preserve, for a biotechnology company has succeeded in cloning 15 species of dinosaur. But the scientists? dream turns into a nightmare.

GREEN, Simon
Blue Moon Rising
Prince Rupert, the unlikely hero of this novel, is surplus to requirements as the second son of the king of a small country, and he is sent on a quest to kill a dragon and rescue a princess. When he returns not only with the princess but also the dragon, people start to realise he is something special.

HEARN, Liam
Across the Nightingale Floor
This epic story is set in a mythical, feudal Japanese land, a world both beautiful and cruel. In his palace at Inuyama, Lord Lida Sadamu, warlord of the Tohan clan, surveys his famous nightingale floor. Its surfaces sings at the tread of every human foot, and no assassin can cross it. But 16 year old Otori Takeo, his family murdered by Lida?s warriors, has the magical skills of the Tribe ? preternatural hearing, invisibility, a second self ? that enable him to enter the lair of the Tohan. He has love in his heart and death at his fingertips.
First in a Trilogy

HOBB, Robin
Assassin?s Apprentice
Fitz starts life as a royal bastard cast onto the streets, with only animals and street children for company but when he is adopted into the royal household his life changes dramatically. Son he will hold the power over life and death in his hands as the Assassin?s Apprentice.
First book in a classic fantasy trilogy.

KEYES, Daniel
Flowers for Algernon
Charlie Gordon, who desperately wants to be able to read and write undergoes a brain operation which dramatically improves his intellect. But can his emotional development keep place with the intellectual?

McCAFFREY, Anne
The Ship who Sang
The brain was perfect, the tiny, crippled body useless. So technology rescued the brain and put it an environment that conditioned it to live in a different kind of body ? a spaceship.

PRICE, Susan
The Sterkarm Handshake
The Sterkarms have plundered the borders of England and Scotland for generations. Now, in the 16th century, their way of life is threatened by Elves, intruders from a polluted 21st century. The needs and values of the two centuries cannot be reconciled and a bloody battle follows.
There is a sequel to this book: A Sterkarm Kiss

SIMAK, Clifford
The Werewolf Principle
In the middle distant future, Andrew Blake, discovered huddled inside a capsule on a remote star, is brought back to earth suffering from total amnesia. Over 200 years old, he thinks and acts like a man but becomes frighteningly aware of two alien beings that lurk in his body.
Try also The Waystation



FUTURE WORLDS

BLACKMAN, Malorie
Noughts and Crosses
Callum and Sephy have been best friends since childhood but Callum is a nought--a second-class citizen in a world dominated by the Crosses--and Sephy is a Cross, and the daughter of one of the most powerful men in the country. The barriers they would have to cross to be together at first seem little more than minor obstacles to the two idealistic teenagers, but soon those barriers threaten not only their friendship but their lives. Malorie Blackman tackles the issues of racism and prejudice in a world set in an alternate historical reality.
The story continues in Knife Edge

BURGESS, Melvin
Bloodtide
Set in a frighteningly realistic ravaged London in the near future where two warring families of ganglords appear united by the marriage of Signy Volson to Conor--head of the opposing family. However, Conor's treachery results not in the long-expected truce but the decimation of the Volson family. Only Signy and her hideously disfigured brother Siggy survive the culling, kept apart by circumstance but united in their hate for Conor. They are intent on revenge--no matter how long it takes--or at what cost.

MARSDEN, John
Tomorrow When the War Began
A group of Australian teenagers spend a week in the bust. They return to find the world they knew changed forever.
The first in a series of 6 novels.

WELLS, HG
The War of the Worlds
The classic account of earth being invaded by the Martians



GHOST & HORROR

HERBERT, James
The Rats
For millions of years man and rats had been natural enemies. But now, for the first time in history suddenly, shockingly, horribly ? the balance of power has shifted and the rats begin to prey on the human population.
Try also The Magic Cottage

HILL, Susan
The Woman in Black
Creeping unease begins with mysterious appearance of a young woman dressed in black at the funeral of the sole inhabitant of Eel Marsh House and builds inexorably to a chilling climax.
Try also The Mist in the Mirror

KING, Stephen
Salem?s Lot
When a writer returns to his small Maine hometown, he discovers that the peaceful hamlet is being overrun by vampires and sets out to curb this ancient evil before it can spread
You could also try The Shining and Christine

KOONTZ, Dean
Whispers
Bruno Frye succumbs nightly to the whispers? malicious lullaby. Losing himself in their cries, he is deafened by whispers more piercing than any scream. In the dark recesses of his mind no act is too violent, no deed too shocking. He is driven to kill ?even if it means returning from the grave.
Other titles to try are Chase and The Mask.

STEVENSON, Robert Louis
Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
A nightmare fantasy about the nature of good and evil. This is the tragic story of how one man?s experiments to find out about his own nature went horrifically wrong.



COMEDY ZONE

GIBBONS, Stella
Cold Comfort Farm
As the sukebind swells into bud, recently orphaned Flora Poste decides to descend on her eccentric relatives, the Starkadders at Cold Comfort Farm, and sets their tangled lives to rights with startling efficiency.

RANKIN, Robert
A Dog called Demolition
Danny is not sad and lonely any more, because Danny has ?the voice?, the voice of an imaginary dog called Demolition. The dog tells him what to do, like how to adjust the bar code reader in the shop, so he can read what people are thinking. Soon, Danny can bend others to his will and fears no man.

TOWNSEND, Sue
The Queen and I
A republican government has just won the General Election, and the Royal Family, stripped of its regal privileges start a new life on a council estate.

WAUGH, Evelyn
The Loved One
A riotous caper in the graveyards of California. Set against a background of embalming rooms and crematoria Whispering Glades and Memorial Park, the story becomes ludicrous, hilarious and shocking.



OTHER TIMES / OTHER PLACES

DESAI, Anita
The Village by the Sea
Life in a poor Indian village is shown movingly in this book.

DICKINSON, Peter
The Kin
The adventures of four children from the Moonhawk Kin are told in the four linked books that make up this novel. Suth, Noli, Ko and Mana survive volcanic eruption, earthquake, floods, man-eating lions, and other events, in this book about the nature of our world and the birth of human race.
Try also Eva and The Ropemaker

DONNELLY, Jennifer
A Gathering Light
When Mattie is given the letters by a guest at the hotel in which she has a summer job she thinks that the giver is simply upset. But the next day when the woman is found drowned in Big Moose Lake Mattie has to decide if she will read the letters, or burn them as the woman requested. But Mattie has problems enough of her own as she is growing up and trying to decide on her future. Her desire to be a writer and her dreams of life outside the small rural community in which she has always lived are beginning to overwhelm her. Slowly the two stories merge to one amazing conclusion as Mattie finds the courage to make very important decisions. Set in 1906 and built around the real life murder of a young woman in a popular holiday resort this novel is touching, surprising, moving and compelling.

FREUD, Esther
Hideous Kinky
Life on the road to Morocco with a hippy mother as witnessed by one of her young daughters.

GAVIN, Jamilla
Coram Boy
Set in Eighteenth Century England, this book tells the story of the evil ?Coram man? who deals in orphaned or abandoned children, selling them to either a slave ship or the Coram hospital for money. One of these children is Aaron, the illegitimate son of an heir to a great estate and Toby taken at birth from a African slave ship.

GERAS, Adele
Troy
A magnificent re-working of the ancient legend of Troy, this book describes the fall of Troy through the eyes of two young Trojan sisters.

HEMINGWAY, Ernest
The Old Man and the Sea
Set in the Gulf Stream off the Coast of Havana, this is the story of an old man, a young boy and a giant fish.

MCCAUGHREAN, Geraldine
Stop the Train
It?s 1893 and for Cissy and her family, a new life beckons on the prairies of Oklahoma. Along with other settlers, they travel to Florence ? a town yet to be built ? and prepare for business alongside the Red Rock Railroad track. But the railroad company has other ideas. It wants to buy the land itself and when the settlers refuse to sell, the railroad boss swears his trains will never stop in Florence again. Without the train there is no way the town can survive. So Cissy, her friends, family and neighbours resolve to stop that train come what may ? by fair means or foul???

REES, Celia
Pirates!
When two young women meet under extraordinary circumstances in eighteenth century West Indies they are unified in their desire to escape their oppressive lives. The first is a slave, forced to work in a plantation mansion and subjected to terrible cruelty at the hands of the plantation manager. The second is a spirited and rebellious English girl, sent to the West Indies to marry well and combine the wealth of two respectable families. But Fate ensures that one night the two young women have to save each other and run away to a life no less dangerous but certainly a lot more free. As pirates they roam the seas, fight pitched battles against their foes and become embroiled in many adventures.

ROWE, Alick
Voices of Danger
It is 1916, Alex and Seb are cathedral choristers until Alex is threatened with expulsion. The two boys enlist under age, and are sent to the Somme.

SMITH, Rukshana
Rainbows in the Gutter
Growing up in London. Philip and Collette struggle against the daily humiliations, hostilities and injustices which go with being black in a mainly white country. Easygoing, artistic Philip tries to spread his ideal of racial harmony, but when the petty hostility turns to violent hatred, even Philip?s faith is shaken.



SHORT STORIES

ASIMOV, Isaac
Gold
A collection of stories and writings about science fiction.

BRADBURY, Ray
The Toynbee Convector
In this selection of tales the world?s only time-traveller reveals his secret ? a hundred years after the event and a ghost is given new life by a particularly perceptive nurse.
Try also Quicker than the Eye

DAHL, Roald
The Great Automatic Grammatizator
A collection of stories of the unexpected ? and often bizarre and macabre.
There are a number of other short story collections by Roald Dahl including Kiss Kiss

POE, Edgar Allan
Tales of Horror and Imagination
Haunting tales by the originator of the horror genre.

RENDELL, Ruth
Means of Evil and other stories
Five Inspector Wexford mysteries



STORY COLLECTIONS
These anthologies are kept in the end of the Short Story Section at the end of the Fiction

BRADMAN, Tony (Ed)
Skin Deep
A collection of stories dealing with aspects of racism, written by different authors. The stories explore the roots of racism and the tensions between different ethnic groups.

ECCLESHARE, Julia (Ed)
Masque of the Red Death
A collection of classic short stories by Lawrence, Poe, Mansfield, De Maupassant,Waugh, Saki, M.R James, Pushkin and Chekov

FORSYTH, Frederick (Ed.)
Great Flying Stories
Amongst authors included in this collection are HG Wells, Roald Dahl, Len Deighton and JG Ballard

HERBERT, Rosemary (Ed)
Twelve American Crime Stories
A selection of short stories from Poe to Chandler.

HAMLIN, Mike (Ed.)
Short Stories by Women
A selection of stories from the nineteenth century to the present day.

POW, Tom (Ed.)
Shouting it Out
Stories from contemporary Scotland