When Ram Mohammad Thomas, an orphaned, uneducated street kid from Mumbai, wins a billion rupees on a live TV quiz show, he finds himself beaten up and thrown in jail by the programme's producers. During his interrogation he explains, through a series of flashbacks, how he knew the answers to all the show's questions. What he describes about his lif...

Clara Casey, senior cardiologist and mother of two, already has a new job to cope with - and now her ex-husband wants something from her too. For Ania, meeting Clara is a miracle. She never intended to leave Poland, but hopes a new job in a new country will mend her broken heart. Declan is looking forward to joining the clinic - but what should hav...

Even now, at the age of 82, Iris lives in the shadow cast by her younger sister Laura. Now poor and trying to cope with a failing body, Iris reflects on her far from exemplary life, in particular the events surrounding her sister's tragic death.

In 1956, toward the end of Reverend John Ames's life, he begins a letter to his young son, a kind of last testament to his remarkable forebears. Reverend Ames writes to his son about the tension between his father - an ardent pacifist - and his grandfather who came west to Kansas to fight for abolition and 'preached men into the Civil War'. And he...

Set in the deep American South between the wars, this is the tale of Celie, a young black girl born into poverty and segregation. Raped repeatedly by the man she calls 'father', she has two children taken away from her, is separated from her beloved sister Nettie, and is trapped into an ugly marriage. But then she meets the glamorous Shug Avery, si...

In 1949 four Chinese women-drawn together by the shadow of their past begin meeting in San Francisco to play Mah Jong, invest in stocks, eat dim sum, and 'say' stories. Nearly forty years later of the members has died, and her daughter has come to take her place, only to learn of her mother's lifelong wish and the tragic way in which it has come tr...

'You're beautiful', Johnny told her, and so, full of hope, seventeen-year-old Felicia crosses the Irish Sea to England to find her lover and tell him she is pregnant. Desperately searching for Johnny in the bleak post-industrial Midlands, she is, instead, found by Mr Hilditch, a strange and lonely man, a collector and befriender of homeless young g...

This is the compelling true story of how the skull of an Aboriginal man, found on the banks of the Murray River over 40 years ago, came to be returned to his Wamba Wamba descendants. It is a story of awakening, atonement, forgiveness and friendship. 'It is as if a whole window into indigenous culture has blown open, not just the window, but every d...

A Thousand Splendid Suns is a breathtaking story set against the volatile events of Afghanistan's last thirty years -- from the Soviet invasion to the reign of the Taliban to post-Taliban rebuilding -- that puts the violence, fear, hope and faith of this country in intimate, human terms. It is a tale of two generations of characters brought jarring...

The famous writer's trials are detailed with interest and compassion. A fascinating blend of fact and fiction, This Oscar Wilde double bill offers significant insight into one of the world's most significant literary figures. Oscar Wilde was ruined by a notorious libel case and two years in reading prison. The 'trials' part of the pack is recorded...

Inside the Whale is a story about the big things that hold us together and the small things that prove our undoing. It is a dazzling celebration of the bright joys, hard losses and deep contentments borne by two eccentric families as the twentieth century unfolds.

Evelyn Waugh's acidly funny and daring satire, Vile Bodies reveals the darkness and vulnerability that lurks beneath the glittering surface of the high life. In the years following the First World War a new generation emerges, wistful and vulnerable beneath the glitter. The Bright Young Things of twenties' Mayfair, with their paradoxical mix of inn...

Joe Lampton is 25. He lost his parents during WW2 when their house was bombed and moves to Warley, where he meets the high-society set through the local ameteur dramatics society. He sets off on his quest to join them with a vengeance, hoping to achieve it through his choice of women and affected new persona.

Michael Frayn is the bestselling author of Headlong and Spies. His 1990 novel The Trick Of It is a comical look at an odd couple. Original and witty, Frayn tells a complete story through one-sided letters. Compact, light and entertaining, The Trick Of It is a clever tale. A nameless college professor writes letters to an esteemed friend living in A...

Nineteen Eighty-Four is a classic dystopian novel by English author George Orwell. Published in 1949, it is set in the eponymous year and focuses on a repressive, totalitarian regime. The story follows the life of one seemingly insignificant man, Winston Smith, a civil servant assigned the task of falsifying records and political literature, thus e...

The animals in the farmyard decide that working for humans is doing them no favours, so under the leadership of Napoleon, the only Berkshire Boar on the farm, and the other pigs, they drive out the farmer and his cohorts and set about structuring their own society. Based on a list of supposedly animal-friendly rules such as "four legs good, two leg...

A biting satire on American life which turned convention on its head. This story explores the obsessive affections of the radical Olive Chancellor for Verena Tarrant, a gifted young speaker in the feminist movement. When Olive's cousin Basil becomes equally besotted, the scene is set for a bitter tug of war.

Scout is a young girl whose father, Atticus, is a small-town lawyer defending a black man accused of raping a white girl. The book is set in Alabama in the 1930s and although one of the major themes of the book is racism, it also tackles the issue of how children view the world and how their understanding of the society they live in changes and dev...

After the death of her mother, Mary Yellan travels to Jamaica Inn on bleak Bodmin Moor to live with her Aunt Patience. The coachman warns her of the strange happenings there, and Mary suddenly finds her life to be in the hands of strangers: her uncle, Joss Merlyn, whose crude ways repel her; Aunt Patience, who seems mentally unstable and perpetuall...

Paul Baumer enlisted with his classmates in the German army of the First World War. Youthful and enthusiastic, they become soldiers. But despite what they have learned, they break into pieces under the first bombardment in the trenches. And as the war continues, Paul holds fast to a single vow: to fight against the principles of hate that pit young...

Adrian Mole is having a hard time, trying to deal with his parents' crumbling marriage, his spots, his school, his unrequited love for Pandora and the erratic behaviour of his dog.