Wild child Huck has to get away. His violent drunk of a father is back in town again, raising Cain. He won't rest until he has Huck's money. So the enterprising boy fakes his own death and sets out in search of adventure and freedom. Teaming up with Jim, an escaped slave with a price on his head, the two fugitives go on the run, travelling down the wide Mississippi River. But Huck finds himself wrestling with his conscience. Should he save Jim, or turn his friend over to a terrible fate?

Out of his smoke-filled rooms in Baker Street stalks a figure to cause the criminal classes to quake in their boots and rush from their dens of iniquity . . .

The twelve mysteries gathered in this first collection of Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson's adventures reveal the brilliant consulting detective at the height of his powers. Problems involving a man with a twisted lip, a fabulous blue carbuncle and five orange pips tax Sherlock Holmes's intellect alongside some of his most famous cases.

Set in the volatile Paris summer of 1938, The Age of Reason follows two days in the life of Mathieu Delarue, a philosophy teacher, and his circle in the cafes and bars of Montparnasse. Mathieu has so far managed to contain sex and personal freedom in conveniently separate compartments. But now he is in trouble, urgently trying to raise 4,000 francs to procure a safe abortion for his mistress, Marcelle. Beyond all this, filtering an uneasy light on his predicament, rises the distant threat of the coming of the Second World War.

Outcast and mute, Euchrid Eucrow of Ukulore inhabits a nightmarish Southern valley of preachers, incest and ignorance. When the God-fearing folk of the town declare a foundling child to be chosen by the Almighty, Euchrid is disturbed. He sees her very differently, and his conviction, and increasing isolation and insanity, may have terrible consequences for them both . . .

Compelling and astonishing, Nick Cave's acclaimed first novel is a fantastic journey into a world of Gothic tragedy.

Offering ancient wisdom on how to use skill, cunning, tactics and discipline to outwit your opponent, this bestselling 2000-year-old military manual is still worshipped by soldiers on the battlefield and managers in the boardroom as the ultimate guide to winning.

Set among the surf and sandhills of the Australian beach – and the tidal changes of three generations of the Lang family – The Bodysurfers is an Australian classic. A short-story collection which has become a bestseller and been adapted for film, television, radio and the theatre, The Bodysurfers on its first publication marked a major change in Australian literature.

Charles Ryder, a lonely student at Oxford, is captivated by the outrageous and decadent Sebastian Flyte. Invited to Brideshead, Sebastian's magnificent family home, Charles welcomes the attentions of its eccentric, aristocratic inhabitants, gradually becoming infatuated with them and the life of privilege they inhabit – in particular, with Sebastian's remote sister, Julia. But he gradually comes to recognize his spiritual and social distance from them, eventually discovering a world where duty and desire, faith and happiness are in conflict.

In the din and stink that is Cannery Row a colourful blend of misfits – gamblers, whores, drunks, bums, and artists – survive side by side in a jumble of adventure and mischief. Doc, who owns the laboratory, is the fount of all generosity and wisdom. Everybody wants to do something nice for Doc: the trouble is, he always ends up paying. Packed with invention and joie de vivre, Cannery Row is Steinbeck's high-spirited tribute to his native California.

Bond is sent to a casino in Royal-les-Eaux to disgrace the lethal Russian agent 'Le Chiffre' by ruining him at baccarat and forcing his Soviet spymasters to 'retire' him, but he soon finds that his quarry is not content to go without a fight. Preferring to work alone, 007 is annoyed to be assigned a female assistant, but his compelling attraction to the enigmatic Vesper Lynd only leads him into further danger . . .

Dr Felix Hoenikker, has left a deadly legacy to humanity. He is the inventor of ice-nine, a lethal chemical capable of freezing the entire planet. Writer Jonah's search for its whereabouts leads him to Hoenikker's three eccentric children, to an island republic in the Caribbean where the religion of Bokononism is practised, to love and to insanity. Told with deadpan humour and bitter irony, Kurt Vonnegut's cult tale of global destruction is a funny and frightening satire on the end of the world and the madness of mankind.

Barbara Vine's The Chimney Sweeper's Boy is one of the finest, most accomplished and chilling tales of psychological suspense ever written. When a sudden heart attack kills author Gerald Candless, his adoring daughter Sarah embarks on a memoir of her beloved father. But Sarah's investigations turn up someone very different from the man she had known - proof that he wasn't Gerald Candless at all. The Chimney Sweeper's Boy is a troubling tale of taboo, family guilt and personal identity.

As David and Rosalind grow older it becomes more difficult to conceal the differences which would label them as mutants from the village elders. Soon they face a choice: wait for eventual discovery, or flee to the terrifying and mutable Badlands . . .

The Chrysalids is a post-nuclear apocalypse story of genetic mutation in a devastated world and explores the lengths the intolerant will go to to keep themselves pure.

When sensible, sophisticated Flora Poste is orphaned at nineteen, she decides her only choice is to descend upon relatives in deepest Sussex. At the aptly named Cold Comfort Farm, she meets the doomed Starkadders, an eccentric group of relatives suffering from a wide variety of ailments. But Flora loves nothing better than to organize other people. Armed with common sense and a strong will, she resolves to take each of the family in hand. A hilarious and merciless parody of rural melodramas, Cold Comfort Farm is one of the best-loved comic novels of all time.

Meet Ignatius J. Reilly: flatulent, eloquent and pretty much unemployable . . .

The ordinary folk of New Orleans seem to think he is unhinged as well. Ignatius ignores them as he heaves his vast bulk through the city's fleshpots in a noble crusade against vice, modernity and ignorance. But his momma has a nasty surprise in store for him. Ignatius must get a job. Undaunted, he uses his new-found employment to further his mission – and now he has a pirate costume and a hot-dog cart to do it with . . .

Paul Theroux's Dark Star Safari is a journey overland from Cairo to Cape Town. He travels
across bush and desert, down rivers and across lakes, through Egypt, the Sudan, Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Malawi, Mozambique, Zimbabwe and South Africa. Encompassing some of the most beautiful landscapes on Earth - and some of the most dangerous - Dark Star Safari is a powerful love letter to the continent of Africa.

Count Dracula's castle is a hellish world where night is day, pleasure is pain and the blood of the innocent prized above all. Young Jonathan Harker approaches the gloomy gates with no idea what he is about to face . . .

And back in England eerie incidents are unfolding as strange puncture marks appear on a young woman's neck . . . But can Harker's fiancé be saved? And where is the evil Dracula?

In her opulent novel, Eva Luna, Isabel Allende uses exquisite prose to describe the survival of a young Latin American woman whose powers as a storyteller bring her friendship and love, during a time of political unrest in South America.

Born in the back room of the mansion where her mother is a servant, the enchanting Eva Luna defies oppression by telling stories to a series of vibrant characters.

Eight years ago Moose Malloy and cute little redhead Velma were getting married – until someone framed Malloy for armed robbery. Now his stretch is up and he wants Velma back. PI Philip Marlowe meets Malloy one hot day in Hollywood and, out of the generosity of his jaded heart, agrees to help him. Dragged from one smoky bar to another, Marlowe's search for Velma turns up plenty of dangerous gangsters with a nasty habit of shooting first and talking later. And soon what started as a search for a missing person becomes a matter of life and death . . .

For many people watching football is mere entertainment; to some it's more like a ritual; but to others, its highs and lows provide a narrative to life itself. For Nick Hornby's devotion to the game has provided one of the few constants in a life where the meaningful things – like growing up, leaving home and forming relationships– have rarely been as simple or as uncomplicated as his love for Arsenal.

Scarcely out of print since the early 1870s, For the Term of His Natural Life has provided successive generations with a vivid account of a brutal phase of colonial life. The main focus of this great convict novel is the complex interaction between those in power and those who suffer, made meaningful because of its hero's struggle against his wrongful imprisonment. Elements of romance, incidents of family life and passages of scenic description both relieve and give emphasis to the tragedy that forms its heart.

Victor Frankenstein is obsessed with the secret of resurrecting the dead. But when he makes a new 'man' out of plundered corpses, his hideous creation fills him disgust.

Rejected by all humanity, the creature sets out to destroy Frankenstein and everyone he loves. And as the monster gets ever closer to his maker, hunter becomes prey in a lethal chase that carries them to the very end of the earth.

Henry Handel Richardson's The Getting of Wisdom is the coming-of-age story of a spontaneous heroine who finds herself ensconced in the rigidity of a turn-of-the-century boarding school. The clever and highly imaginative Laura has difficulty fitting in with her wealthy classmates and begins to compromise her ideals in her search for popularity and acceptance.

In 1929 Robert Graves went to live abroad permanently, vowing 'never to make England my home again'. This is his superb account of his life from his childhood and desperately unhappy school days, to his time serving as a young officer in the First World War.

Containing memorable encounters with fellow writers and poets, Goodbye to All That, is a classic war document, and also has immense value as one of the most candid self-portraits of an artist ever written.

Ruth Park's classic novel The Harp in the South  is one of Australia's greatest novels. Hugh and Margaret Darcy are raising their family in Sydney amid the brothels, grog shops and run-down boarding houses of Surry Hills, where money is scarce and life is not easy.

Filled with beautifully drawn characters that will make you laugh as much as cry, this Australian classic will take you straight back to the colourful slums of Sydney with convincing depth, careful detail and great heart.

A sinister Countess is driven mad by a dark secret. An innocent woman is made the instrument of retribution. A murdered man's fury reaches beyond the grave.

When Countess Narona marries Agnes Lockwood's fiancé and takes him to live in a rundown Venetian palace, a servant mysteriously vanishes and the husband dies a recluse. But the dead won't rest. When the palace is transformed into a hotel the two women are drawn to its chambers, where a force stronger than death is waiting to wreak its vengeance. . .

The Hell's Angels erupted into 1960s America, paralysing whole towns with fear. Determined to discover the truth behind the terrifying reputation of these marauding biker gangs, Hunter S. Thompson spent a year on the road with the Angels, documenting his hair-raising experiences with Charger Charley, Big Frank, Little Jesus and The Gimp. Hell's Angels was the result: a masterpiece of underground reportage whose free-wheeling, impressionistic style created the legend of Gonzo journalism, and made Thompson's name as the wild man of American writing.

The mid-seventies: at an all-boys Catholic school in Melbourne, Timothy Conigrave falls wildly and sweetly in love with the captain of the football team. So begins a relationship that weathers disapproval, separation and, ultimately death. With honesty and insight Holding the Man explores the highs and lows of any partnership, and the strength of heart both men have to find when they test positive to HIV. This is a book as refreshing and uplifting as it is moving; a funny and sad and celebratory account of growing up gay.

Fifteen-year-old New Yorker Daisy thinks she knows all about love.  Her mother died giving birth to her, and now her dad has sent her away for the summer, to live in the English countryside with cousins she's never even met.

There she'll discover what real love is: something violent, mysterious and wonderful.  There her world will be turned upside down and a perfect summer will explode into a million bewildering pieces.

How will Daisy live then?

The Serene City beckons, promising Paradise regained for Ruth Cracknell and her husband, Eric, as they set forth on a carefully planned holiday.

What they are seeking is time. Time to think, time to gaze, time for each other. But from the moment the holiday becomes an uncharted journey, their time is measured.

Journey From Venice is confronting yet deeply comforting – an acknowledgement of the miracle that is unconditional love.

'Junk is not, like alcohol or weed, a means to increased enjoyment in life. Junk is not a kick. It is a way of life.'

Burrough's cult classic is a raw, semi-autobiographical account of drug addiction, which outraged America and influenced generations of writers to come. He relates with unflinching realism the highs and lows of dependency: euphoria, hallucinations, ghostly nocturnal wanderings and strange sexual encounters. Junky is a dark, powerful and mesmerizing account of one man's challenge to turn self-destruction into art.

'Australia is a lucky country, run mainly by second-rate people who share its luck.'

First published in 1964 The Lucky Country caused a sensation. The book was a wake-up call to an unimaginative nation, an indictment of a country mired in mediocrity and manacled to its past.

Emma Bovary is beautiful and bored, trapped in her marriage to a mediocre doctor and stifled by the banality of provincial life. An ardent reader of sentimental novels, she longs for passion and seeks escape in fantasies of high romance, in voracious spending and, eventually, in adultery. But even her affairs bring her disappointment and the consequences are devastating.

Flaubert's erotically charged novel caused a moral outcry on its publication in 1857.

Can you run away from who you are?

Years ago Michael Henchard committed a terrible act in a fit of drunken rage. Now he has put his past behind him and become a respected member of the town of Casterbridge, but behind his success lies his shameful secret and his self-destructive temper.

As Henchard's deeds gradually catch up with him, he is forced to face up to his true nature – and risks losing everything he has ever had.

In 1941, Rob Coram is six. The war feels far removed from Geraldton in Western Australia. But when his favourite older cousin Rick leaves to join the army, the war takes a step closer.

When Rick returns several years later, he has changed and the old merry-go-round that represents Rob's dream of utopia begins to disintegrate before his eyes.

The Merry-Go-Round in the Sea allows us a precious glimpse into a simpler kind of childhood in a country that no longer exists.

In this acclaimed first novel, Helen Garner captures the fluid relationships of a community of friends who are living and loving in new ways.

Nora falls in love with Javo the junkie, and together they try to make sense of their lives and the choices they have made. But caught in an increasingly ambiguous relationship, they are unable to let go - and the harder they pull away from each other, the tighter the monkey grip.

The year is 1977, and Adrian is nine. He lives with his gran and his uncle Rory; his best friend is Clinton Tull. He loves to draw and he wants a dog; he's afraid of quicksand and self-combustion. Adrian watches his suburban world, but there is much he cannot understand. He does not, for instance, know why three neighbourhood children might set out to buy ice-cream and never come back home . . .

This brutal glimpse of Russia under Stalin shocked the world when it first appeared.

Discover the importance of a piece of bread or an extra bowl of soup, the incredible luxury of a book, the ingenious possibilities of a nail, a piece of string or a single match in a time where survival is all. Enter a world of incarceration– and participate in the struggle of men to survive both the terrible rigours of nature and the inhumanity of the system that defines their conditions of life.

Pipes and kettledrums herald the arrival of gypsies on their annual visit to Macondo, the newly founded village where José Arcadio Buendía and his strong-willed wife, Úrsula, have started their new life. As the mysterious Melquíades excites Aureliano Buendía's father with new inventions and tales of adventure, neither can know the significance of the indecipherable manuscript that the old gypsy passes into their hands.

Eight years ago, Anne rejected the man she loved because her friends and family persuaded her that he wasn't rich or important enough. In all that time, she's never found anyone to match Captain Wentworth.

With her snobbish father and spoiled sister always ready to embarrass her in polite society, Anne wonders if she'll ever find the courage to follow her heart again.

And if she does, what can she do to regain the affections of her Captain?

While Joan Lindsay's haunting Australian classic Picnic at Hanging Rock is a work of fiction, the story is often considered one of Australia's greatest mysteries.

In 1900, a class of young women from an exclusive private school go on an excursion to the isolated Hanging Rock, deep in the Australian bush. The excursion ends in tragedy when three girls and a teacher mysteriously vanish after climbing the rock. Only one girl returns, with no memory of what has become of the others . . .

Jonathan Noel, bank security guard, has spent 30 years protecting himself from people and events. But an encounter with a glaring pigeon upsets his ordered life and flings him into a state of fear and insecurity. From the author of the international bestselling Perfume.

The townspeople of Oran are in the grip of a deadly plague, which condemns its victims to a horrifying death. Fear, isolation and claustrophobia follow as they are forced into quarantine, each responding in their own way to the lethal bacillus: some resign themselves to fate, some seek blame and a few, like Dr Rieux, resist the terror.

An immediate triumph when it was published in 1947, Camus's novel is a story of bravery and determination against the precariousness of human existence.

'Pat Barker's novel is not only a vivid evocation of the agony of the First World War. It is a multi-layered exploration of all wars, challenging assumptions about the relationship between doctors and patients, between the classes, between men and women, and between men and men. A fine anthem for doomed youth.'  — Time Out

A Room of One's Own grew out of a lecture that Virginia Woolf had been invited to give at Girton College, Cambridge in 1928. Ranging over Jane Austen and Charlotte Bronte and why neither of them could have written War and Peace, over the silent fate of Shakespeare's gifted (and imaginary) sister, over the effects of poverty and chastity on female creativity, she gives us one of the greatest feminist polemics of the century.

William Shakespeare's sonnets are a beautiful expression of a range of human emotions – from love to grief, anger, jealousy and lust. Including the instantly recognisable 'Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?' as well as a range of other equally moving works, this compilation brings together the complete collection of all 154 of Shakespeare's sonnets.

This Faust-like and magical story of the humanization of a middle-aged misanthrope was described in The New York Times as a 'savage indictment of bourgeois society'. But, as the author notes in this edition, Steppenwolf is a book that has been consistently misinterpreted. This self-portrait of a man who felt himself to be half-human and half-wolf can also be seen as a plea for rigorous self-examination and an indictment of intellectual hypocrisy.

Flame-haired Grady McNeil is beautiful, rich and defiant. Her privileged society life leaves her wanting, and excitement comes in the form of the highly unsuitable Clyde, a Brooklyn-born, Jewish parking attendant. When Grady's mother and father leave her alone one summer in their New York penthouse, her secret affair intensifies and she is forced to make decisions that will alter her future indelibly. Truman Capote's recently discovered debut novel is a captivating portrayal of first love.

Dick and Nicole Diver have turned the French Riviera into the playground of the rich and glamorous. Among their circle is Rosemary Hoyt, the beautiful starlet, who is unaware of the corruption and dark secrets that haunt their marriage. When Dick becomes entangled with Rosemary, he fractures the delicate structure of his relationship with Nicole and the lustre of their life together begins to tarnish.

Tender is the Night reflects not only Fitzgerald's own personal tragedy, but also the shattered idealism of the society in which he lived.

The night after a shooting star is seen streaking across the sky, a cylinder is discovered near London. Armed with just a white flag, the locals approach the mysterious object – only to be burned alive by heat-rays as horrific, tentacled invaders emerge.

Soon, the whole of human civilization is under threat, as powerful Martians move across the land in massive killing machines, armed with black gas and burning rays. The aliens are determined to win the Earth for themselves.

Driving one night along the deserted track that leads to the farm, Miss Hester Harper and Katherine run into a mysterious creature. They dump the body into the farm's deep well but the voice of the injured intruder will not be stilled and the closer Katherine is drawn to the edge of the well, the farther away she gets from Hester.

A twentieth-century Australian classic, The Well is a haunting and wryly humorous tale of memory, desire and loneliness.

The air of Eastwick breeds witches – women whose powerful longings can stir up thunderstorms and fracture domestic peace. Jane, Alexandra and Sukie, divorced and dangerous, have formed a coven. Into the void of Eastwick breezes Darryl Van Horne, a charismatic magus of a man who entrances the trio. This is Updike at his most mischievous.

In a house haunted by memories, the past is everywhere . . .

As darkness falls, a man caught in a snowstorm is forced to shelter at the strange, grim house Wuthering Heights. It is a place he will never forget. There he will come to learn the story of Cathy: how she was forced to choose between her well-meaning husband and the dangerous man she had loved since she was young. How her choice led to betrayal and terrible revenge – and continues to torment those in the present.