The Curious Incident Of
The Dog In The Night-Time
by Mark Haddon

Christopher Boone is fifteen and has Asperger's, a form of autism. He loves lists, patterns and the truth. He hates the colours yellow and brown and being touched. He has never gone further than the end of the road on his own, but when he finds a neighbour's dog murdered he sets out on a terrifying journey which will turn his whole world upside down.

... A murder mystery novel like no other ... ... Both funny and deeply moving ...

The Reluctant Fundamentalist
by Mohsin Hamid

At a cafe table in Lahore, a Pakistani man converses with a stranger. Among the brightest and best of his class at Princeton, Changez is snapped up by an elite firm and thrives on New York. His infatuation with Erica promises entree into Manhattan society on the exalted footing his own family once held back in Lahore. For a time, it seems as though nothing will stand in the way of his meteoric rise. But in the wake of September 11, he finds his position in the city he loves suddenly overturned.

... Beautifully written and superbly constructed...a tale of enormous tension (and) a subtle and elegant analysis of our world today ...

Small Island by Andrea Levy

It is 1948, and England is recovering from a war. Queenie Bligh's neighbours do not approve when she takes in Jamaican lodgers. Gilbert Joseph was one of the several thousand Jamaican men who joined the RAF to fight against Hitler. Returning to England as a civilian he finds himself treated very differently.

... It’s an engrossing read - slyly funny, passionately angry and wholly involving ...

The Time Traveler's Wife
by Audrey Niffenegger

The extraordinary story of Clare and Henry, who have known each other since Clare was six and Henry thirty-six, and married when Clare was twenty-two and Henry thirty. Impossible but true, because Henry is one of the first people to be diagnosed with Chrono-Displacement Disorder.

Periodically his genetic clock resets and he finds himself suddenly pulled into his past or future. His disappearances are spontaneous and his experiences are both harrowing and amusing.

Any Human Heart
by William Boyd

Through the intimate journals of Logan Mountstuart we travel from Uruguay to Oxford, Paris, the Bahamas, New York and West Africa, and meet his three wives, his family, his friends and colleagues, his rivals, enemies and lovers, including the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, Ernest Hemingway and Virginia Woolf.

Atonement by Ian McEwan

Paperback edition of McEwan's finest work to date - a beautifully evoked tale of love, betrayal, and ultimately, the atonement suggested by the title.

... a fascinatingly strange, unique and gripping novel ...

Day by A.L.Kennedy

Alfred Day wanted his war. In its turmoil, as the tail-gunner in a Lancaster bomber, he found the wild, dark fellowship of his crew, and - most extraordinary of all - he found Joyce, a woman to love. But that's all gone now - the war took it away. In 1949, employed as an extra in a war film, Day begins to recall what he would rather forget...

... a magnificent novel about war by one of the finest living British writers ...

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

1939 - Nazi Germany - Death has never been busier. Liesel, a nine-year-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 the story of her and the inhabitants of her street when the bombs begin to fall.

... Unsettling, thought-provoking, life affirming... this is a novel of breathtaking scope, masterfully told ...

The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

A wonderful, beautiful epic of a novel. Set in Afghanistan and the United States between the 1970s to the present day. It is a heartbreaking tale of a young boy, Amir, and his best friend who are torn apart. It describes how political events affect the life and perceptions of a twelve year-old boy.

... Rich in warmth and humour … full of haunting images … vivid and engaging ...

We Need To Talk About Kevin
by Lionel Shriver

New paperback edition of Orange Prize winning novel. Lionel Shriver tells a compelling, absorbing and resonant story while framing these horrifying tableaux of teenage carnages as metaphors for the larger tragedy - the tragedy of a country where everything works, nobody starves, and anything can be bought but a sense of purpose.

... harrowing, tense and thought-provoking, this is a vocal challenge to every accepted parenting manual you’ve ever read ...