Salisbury, the landscape - as old as time itself - shapes the destinies of five families: the Wilsons and the Shockleys, locked in a cycle of revenge and rivalry for more than 400 years; the Masons, who pour their inspired love of stone into the creation of Stonehenge and Salisbury Cathedral; the Porters; and, the aristocratic Norman Godefrois.

When a headless corpse is found by a prison work gang on a windy Tibetan mountainside, veteran police inspector, Shan Tao Yun might seem the perfect man to solve the crime - except that he himself is serving an indefinite sentence. Desperate to close the case, the district commander has no choice but to grant him a temporary release.

A brilliant novel by an acclaimed author who was shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2000.

This powerful and gripping thriller has a rare mix of characters pupils can identify with, a plot full of tension and suspense and a fast pace.

Leaving behind his father's failures, Gabriel Swift arrives to study with Edwin Poll, the greatest of the city's anatomists. It is his chance to find advancement by making a name for himself. But instead he finds himself drawn to his master's nemesis, Lucan, the most powerful of the city's resurrectionists and ruler of its trade in stolen bodies.

Quirke's pathology department, is his own gloomy realm: always quiet, always night, and always under his control. Until late one evening after a party he stumbles across a body that should not be there. But the investigation he decides to lead into the way she lived and died uncovers a dark secret at the heart of Dublin's high Catholic network.