Some say that the first hint that Bill Bryson was not of Planet Earth came when his mother sent him to school in lime-green Capri pants. Others think it all started with his discovery, at the age of six, of a woollen jersey of rare fineness. In this memoir, he explores the ordinary kid he once was, and the curious world of 1950s America.

Tells the story of a seventeen-year-old dropout who has been kicked out of his fourth school. This novel dissects the 'phony' aspects of society, and the 'phonies' themselves: the headmaster whose affability depends on the wealth of the parents, his roommate who scores with girls using sickly-sweet affection.

Features the rhythms of 1950s underground America, jazz, sex, generosity, chill dawns and drugs, with Sal Paradise and his hero Dean Moriarty, traveller and mystic, the living epitome of Beat.

Tells the story of Frank and April Wheeler, a bright, beautiful, and talented couple whose empty suburban life is held together by the dream that greatness is only just round the corner. The author shows how Frank and April mortgage their hopes and ideals, betraying in the end not only each other, but their own best selves.

A novel that establishes the author's reputation with a large audience tour-de-force of comic satire on sex and the American ways of life.

Ralph Ellison's impassioned first novel, winner of the prestigious American National Book Award, tells the story of an invisible man simply because people refuse to see me . Yet his powerfully depicted adventures go far beyond the story of one man.

Follows two young men engaged in a passionate search for dharma or truth. Their major adventure is the pursuit of the Zen way, which takes them climbing into the high sierras to seek the lesson of solitude.

Golding's best-known novel is the story of a group of boys who, after a plane crash, set up a fragile community on a previously uninhabited island. As memories of home recede and the blood from frenzied pig-hunts arouses them, the boys' childish fear turns into something deeper and more primitive.

I Capture the Castle meets Nancy Mitford in this novel from Eva Rice.

The Narnia Chronicles, first published in 1950, have been and remain some of the most enduringly popular ever published. The best known, the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, has been translated into 29 languages! The illustrations in this book have been coloured by the original artist, Pauline Baynes.

Contains two stories about members of the Glass family.

Holly Golightly, glittering socialite traveller, generally upwards, sometimes sideways and once in a while down. She's up all night drinking cocktails and breaking hearts. She hasn't got a past. She doesn't want to belong to anything or anyone. One day Holly might find somewhere she belongs. Until then she's travelling.

Mildred Lathbury is one of those 'excellent women' who is often taken for granted. She is a godsend, 'capable of dealing with most of the stock situations of life - birth, marriage, death, the successful jumble sales, the garden fete spoilt by bad weather'.

The hauntingly prophetic classic novel set in a not-too-distant future where books are burned by a special task force of firemen.

A collection of nine short stories which includes a soldier's recollection of his meeting with a young girl, Esme, before being sent into combat.

Jim Dixon has accidentally fallen into a job at one of Britain's new red brick universities. A moderately successful future in the History Department beckons. As long as Jim can survive a madrigal-singing weekend at Professor Welch's, deliver a lecture on 'Merrie England' and resist Christine, the girlfriend of Welch's awful son Bertrand.

The anarchic, phenomenally strong-selling classic from the godfather of the Beats, featuring for the first time the restored text, all the accompanying essays, and newly discovered material from the original manuscript. Revitalised with a new jacket and an anecdote filled P.S. section.

The old man has gone 84 days without catching a fish, everything about him is old except his eyes, they are the colour of the sea. He finally catches a fish, but this is no ordinary fish, nor is his fierce and determined response.

This is a story told by the wife and four daughters of Nathan Price, a fierce evangelical Baptist who takes his family and mission to the Belgian Congo in 1959.

Fern loves a little pig named Wilbur and Wilbur's dear friend, Charlotte A Cavatica, a large grey spider who lived with Wilbur in the barn. With the help of Templeton the rat, who never did anything for anybody unless there was something in it for him, and a wonderfully clever plan of her own, Charlotte saved the life of Wilbur.