This list is arranged in the following genres:

Crime and Thriller, Real Life, Horror, Films, Humour, Future Worlds, Sci-fi/Fantasy, War, Other Times & Other Places, Short Stories.

Click the link to jump to a genre.




<a name="crime"><h2>CRIME AND THRILLER</h2></a>ALLINGHAM, Marjorie - The Tiger in the Smoke
Word goes round that Jack Havoc, jail breaker and knife artist, is at large again, carving his way into more innocent ? or less innocent ? lives. Together Albert Campion and Chief Inspector Luke draw a tight net around the man-eater loose in London?s November smog.

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. You could also try Quite Ugly One Morning.

BUCHAN, John - The Thirty Nine Steps
Richard Hannay, falsely accused of murder, has only a few days to discover the secret of the thirty nine steps and thwart a German spy ring.

CLANCY, Tom - The Hunt for Red October
A deadly game of hide and seek played out in 18 days over 4000 miles of ocean. Red October is the Soviet Navy?s newest ballistic missile submarine. When the whole crew decides to defect, the Soviet fleet sets out to destroy it, while the US and British fleets attempt to prevent them.

CORMIER, Robert - In the Middle of the Night
One Halloween, Denny Colbert?s father was involved in a terrible accident that killed 22 children. Twenty five years later, Denny is drawn into a highly charged relationship with a mystery phone caller who threatens deadly revenge.

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. Other Cornwell novels featuring Kay Scarpetta include Body of Evidence and Point of Origin.

DEXTER, Colin - Death is now my Neighbour
An Inspector Morse novel set as usual in Oxford with the bitter rivalry of two dons for the coveted position of Master of Lonsdale College providing the background. Other Morse novels to try include Last Bus to Woodstock and The Wench is Dead.

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".

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.

GREENE, Graham - The Tenth Man
Set in a prison in occupied France during World War II, the novel concerns Lewis Chavel, a captured rich lawyer who is probably going to be shot in a German act of reprisal.

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. Also try The Chamber or The Firm.

JAMES, P.D. - Unnatural Causes
When a handless corpse dressed in a neat city suit is found in a drifting dinghy off the East Coast, Adam Dalgliesh?s holiday is interrupted to start a murder investigation. Other Dalgliesh mysteries include Devices and Desires and Original Sin.

MASTERS, Anthony - The Day of the Dead
Alex goes to California to stay with his estranged father. Unwilling to be abandoned yet again, he stows away in the back of his father?s truck ? a decision with terrifying consequences.

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

PULLMAN, Philip - The Ruby in the Smoke
Sixteen year old Sally is left an orphan in Victorian London after her father drowns in mysterious circumstances in the South China sea. Unbeknown to Sally she is in dreadful danger. An excellent historical thriller from a master writer. This book is part of a series continued in The Tin Princess.

RANKIN, Ian - Black and Blue
In the 60s, "Bible John" terrorized Glasgow, raping and murdering three woman. 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. There is a wide selection of Rebus novels to choose from including Mortal Causes and Dead Souls.

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. You might also like to try some of Rendell?s psychological thrillers such as Gallowglass and The Chimney Sweeper?s Boy written under the name of Barbara Vine.






<a name="reallife"><h2>REAL LIFE</h2></a>BURGESS, Melvin - Junk
A true to life story of 2 teenagers drawn into the dangerous and destructive world of heroin addiction.

CORMIER, Robert - Heroes
The story of teenage war hero and victim Frances Joseph Cassavant who returns home to confront his past, the youth leader he idolised and who betrayed him, and a girl he still loves. You could try I am the Cheese.

DEWAR, Isla - Giving up on Ordinary
Megs may be a cleaner, but she leads a full life. She's the mother of three children and is still mourning the death of her son; she enjoys constant sparring with her mother and sings at night in a local club. But that's not enough; it's time Megs gave up on being ordinary. You could also try Women Talking Dirty.

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

DOYLE, Roddy - The Van
Hilarious and poignant, this novel deals with the friendship between two men in North Dublin and their attempts to set up a mobile chip shop. You could also try Paddy Clarke, Ha, Ha, Ha, The Woman Who walked into Doors and The Snapper.

GALLOWAY, Janice - Where you Find It
A collection of stories with an emphasis on relationships: the struggle to love against the odds; a yearning to communicate; and the extraordinary moments where the world falls away leaving only the lovers.

FINE, Anne - Telling Liddy
The Palmer sisters are close. They see each other often, they care for one another's children and houses and pets. Their phones ring in a ceaseless chat about in-laws and job plans and anxieties and triumphs. They have never kept any secrets from each other - until now. Stella tells Bridie a rumour she's heard about Liddy's new boyfriend. Bridie is shocked, and discusses it with Heather. But should they tell Liddy?

HORNBY, Nick - About a Boy
Will is 36 and doesn't really want children but then he comes across 12-year-old Marcus who starts to look to him for support and guidance. You could also try Fever Pitch.

KING, John - The Football Factory
A first novel about a seasoned Chelsea Football Club hooligan who represents a disaffected society operating by brutal rules. The story encompasses social degradation, unemployment, racism, casual violence, excessive drink and sex - and how they fall into a political context.

MAHY, Margaret - Memory
A young man searching for the truth of his own past becomes involved with an old lady who needs protection.

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.

PARSONS, TONY - Man and Boy
Harry Silver has it all. A successful job in TV, a gorgeous wife, a lovely child. And in one moment of madness, he chucks it all away. This is the story of how he comes to terms with his life and achieves a degree of self-respect, bringing up his son alone.

WARNER, Alan - Morvern Caller
A young Scottish girl finds herself in the rave scene in Spain.

WESTALL, Robert - Falling into Glory
Brilliant student, Robbie, develops a close and dangerous relationship with Emma Harris, a teacher nearly twice his age. As the situation reaches crisis, they must decide what they really want ? which for Emma means the future of her career.






<a name="horror"><h2>HORROR</h2></a>

HERBERT, James - The Rats
For millions of years man and rats have been natural enemies. But now, for the first time ? suddenly, shockingly, horribly ? the balance of power has shifted and the rats begin to prey on the human population. You could also try 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.

KING, Stephen - Salem's Lot
A group of vampire?s infest a small American town.

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 Midnight 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 horribly wrong.




<a name="films"><h2>FILMS</h2></a>

CRICHTON,Michael

Jurassic Park

An island off Costa Rica is to become the world?s most famous theme park ? a dinosaur preserve, for a biotechnology company that has succeeded in cloning 15 species of dinosaur. But the scientists? dreams turns into a nightmare.

FIELDING,Helen
Bridget Jones?s Diary

In the course of the year recorded in Bridget Jones's Diary, Bridget confides her hopes, her dreams, and her monstrously fluctuating poundage, not to mention her consumption of 5277 cigarettes! There is also the unspoken New Year's resolution--the quest for the right man. Alas, here Bridget goes severely wrong!

FREUD,Esther
Hideous Kinky

Life on the road to Morocco with a hippy mother as witnessed by one of her young daughters.

GARLAND,Alex
The Beach

When Richard flies to Thailand he learns of the mysterious beach from a man who subsequently commits suicide. Teaming up with a young French couple, they set off to find it.

Try also The Tesseract

HARRIS,Thomas
Red Dragon; Silence of the Lambs; Hannibal

The series of books portraying the grisly exploits of Dr Hannibal Lector.




<a name="humour"><h2>HUMOUR</h2></a>

ADAMS,Douglas
The Hitch Hiker?s Guide to the Galaxy

One Thursday lunchtime the Earth is unexpectedly demolished to make way for a new super hyperspace bypass. For Arthur Dent this seems more than he can cope with but his weekend has only just begun.

MacKENZIE,Compton
Whisky Galore

Wartime food rationing is bad enough, but when the whisky supplies run out on the Hebridean Islands of Great and Little Todday, nothing seems to go right. Then the cargo of the shipwrecked S.S. "Cabinet Minister" brings salvation - in its most giddily intoxicating form.

PRATCHETT,Terry
Wyrd Sisters

Three witches decide to right the wrongs of a Discworld kingdom.

Other Discworld novels worth a try include Mort and Equal Rites

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 the embalming rooms and crematoria ?Whispering Glades? and ?Memorial Park?, the story becomes ludicrous, hilarious and shocking.

WODEHOUSE,PG
A Few Quick Ones

A collection of short stories by featuring Bertie Wooster and Jeeves and other Wodehouse characters.









<a name="future worlds"><h2>FUTURE WORLDS</h2></a>

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.

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.

URE,Jean
Plague

After the Plague

Watchers on the Shrine

How would you cope if you arrived home to find the streets deserted, your neighbourhood quarantined and your family dead after a plague? The story is continued after a gap of several generations in the follow up books.

WELLS,HG
The War of the Worlds

The classic account of earth being invaded by the Martians, a broadcast version of which created panic in America.

<a name="scifiandfantasy"><h2>SCI FI/FANTASY</h2></a>

ASIMOV,Issac
I,Robot

In these stories, Asimov creates the three Laws of Robotics and ushers in the Robot Age.

BRADBURY,Ray
Fahrenheit 451

Set in a not-too-distant future where reading is forbidden, the story concerns a fireman, whose job is to burn books, but who finds himself increasingly reluctant to do so.

Lots of short story collections by this writer to choose from also. Try Quicker than the Eye or ?The Toynbee Convector

DICKINSON,Peter
Eva

Eva wakes up in hospital after a horrifying car accident, an eight-month coma, and an astounding medical experiment. She has been given a totally new kind of life. For although her mind and personality are unchanged, her brain is being kept alive in the body of a chimpanzee.

GIBBON,Alan
The Shadow of the Minotaur

This is a novel about a boy, Phoenix, the son of a computer geek who creates a virtual reality game that gets a bit too real. Phoenix becomes Theseus pursued by the Minotaur, and Perseus and confronting the Gorgon.


LAWRENCE,Louise
Ben Harran?s Castle

Ben Harran is the ?Controller? in charge of our galaxy. He takes inhabitants from three planets to his castle to help decide on central question. Should he allow planets free-will even if they destroy themselves?

PULLMAN,Philip
Northern Lights

The first book in ?His Dark Materials? trilogy. A beautifully written fantasy of parallel worlds in which the mysterious ?dust? swirls invisibly through the air and only one child knows the secrets that some of the adults would kill for.

The story continues in The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass.

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.

VOIGT,Cynthia
On Fortune?s Wheel

Faced with the prospect of an unhappy life in the Kingdom, fourteen-year-old Birle accompanies a young runaway nobleman on a journey south and falls into slavery in the citadel of a cruel prince.

WYNDHAM,John
Day of the Triffids

The triffids are a monstrous species of stinging plant; they walk, they talk, they dominate the world. The narrator of this novel wakes up in hospital to find that, by missing the end of the world, he has survived to witness a fantastic and horrific new world.



<a name="war"><h2>WAR</h2></a>

ANDERSON, Rachel

The War Orphan

When Vietmamese Ha arrives as part of Simon?s family, the nightmares arrive too. As Simon tries to find out about Ha and his past he uncovers a war story which is not the one he wanted to hear. Is the story Simon hears his own, or does it belong to this child who his parents now say is his brother?

CRANE,Stephen
The Red Badge of Courage

Young Henry Fleming has very idealised views of war and dreams of performing heroic deeds in battle. But as a new recruit in the American Civil War the reality of war is quickly brought home to him.

CRONIN,Michael
Against the Day

It?s 1941 and the Nazis have invaded Britain. Two boys find themselves caught up in the Resistance movement; a thrilling account of history as it might have happened.

WATSON,James
Justice of the Dagger

When "Greenboots" Han Mueller, a crusading journalist from the West, befriends the indigenous people of East Timor and tells the world about the systematic destruction of their forests and the obliteration of their local culture, his pleas for justice unleash murder and destruction.




<a name="other times & other places"><h2>OTHER TIMES & OTHER PLACES</h2></a>

BANKS,LynneReid
One More River

A Canadian girl comes to terms with life on a Kibbutz in Israel. The sequel Broken Bridge is set twenty years later at the height of the Arab uprising against Israeli occupation of the West Bank.

DARKE,Marjorie
A Question of Courage
A Rose from Blighty

Two books concerned with the suffragette movement; the second describes the experiences of two suffragettes during the First World War, and shows how the War began to change the role of women.

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.

HENDRY,Frances
Chandra

A sensitive and gripping story about a schoolgirl in New Delhi who is married at the age of 11 and widowed almost immediately. As a widow, her fate is to be isolated from society for the rest of her life. Should she bow to tradition or try to escape?

JACQ,Christian
The Black Pharaoh

Set in ancient Egypt at a time of great turmoil, Piankhy, the black pharaoh governs his kingdom with wisdom and kindness. His one desire is to return the gods to a united Egypt.

McCAFFREY,Anne
Black Horses for the King

A young boy helps bring a troop of black Libyan stallions to England to the court of King Arthur to help to drive the Saxons back.

NAIDOO,Beverly
The Other Side of Truth

The moving, topical story of a Nigerian brother and sister fleeing oppression and seeking asylum in the UK.

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,Ruskshana

Rainbows in the Gutter

Growing up in London, Philip and Collette struggled against the daily humilations, 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.

TREASE,Geoffrey
Song for a Tattered Flag

It?s December 1989 and eighteen year old Grey Byrne is on a concert tour of Eastern Europe with a youth orchestra. The final stop is Bucharest in Romania, his mother?s homeland, then under the iron grip of the dictator Nicola Ceausescu.







<a name="short stories"><h2>SHORT STORIES</h2></a>ASIMOV,Isaac - I Robot
In these stories, Asimov creates three Laws of Robotics and Ushers in the Robot Age.

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. You could also try Quicker than the Eye.

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 J G Ballard.

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

KEMP, Gene (Ed) - Rebel, Rebel
An anthology of prose and poetry celebrating rebellious girls. The collection includes work by writers from George Elliot to Steve Smith, as well as representing heroines of myth and legend from Eve to Pandora.