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.

Through the young eyes of Scout and Jem Finch, this work explores with humour the irrationality of adult attitudes to race and class in the Deep South of the thirties.

Huckleberry Finn had a tough life with his drunk father until an adventure with Tom Sawyer changed everything. But when Huck's dad returns and kidnaps him, he must escape down the Mississippi river with runaway slave, Jim. They encounter trouble at every turn, from floods and gunfights to armed bandits and the long arm of the law.

Depicting the gradual disintegration of the Compson family through four fractured narratives, this title explores passionate family relationships where there is no love, only self-centredness. It is about lovelessness - 'only an idiot has no grief; only a fool would forget it. What else is there in this world sharp enough to stick to your guts?'

Set against the background of dust bowl Oklahoma and Californian migrant life, this novel tells the story of the Joad family, who, like thousands of others, are forced to travel West in search of the promised land.

Features a satirical indicement of military madness and stupidity, and the desire of the ordinary man to survive it. This work tells a tale of the dangerously sane Captain Yossarian, who spends his time in Italy plotting to survive.

Successive episodes in the death and burial of Addie Bundren are recounted by various members of the family circle, principally as they are carting their mother's coffin to Jefferson, Mississippi, in order to bury her among her people.

Centring on the infamous fire-bombing of Dresden in the Second World War, Billy Pilgrim's odyssey through time reflects the journey of our own fractured lives as we search for meaning in what we are afraid to know.

Hemingway's first novel, set in 1920s Paris, a city of Pernod, parties and expatriate Americans, loose-living on money from home. Jake is wildly in love with the aristocratic, beautiful and sensuous Brett Ashley, and the couple are drawn towards the dazzle and excitement of the Spanish fiesta.

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.

A young American volunteers for the Italian ambulance service in World War I. Working near the front, he meets and falls in love with a British nurse. Disillusioned by the war, he makes the decision to desert, taking his new love to Switzerland.

Meg is the eldest and on the brink of love. Then there's tomboy Jo who longs to be a writer. Sweet-natured Beth always puts others first, and finally there's Amy, the youngest and most precocious. Through sisterly squabbles, their happy times and sad ones too, the sisters discover that growing up is sometimes very hard to do.

Streetwise George and his childlike friend Lennie are drifters, searching for work in the fields and valleys of California. They have nothing except the clothes on their back, and a hope that one day they'll find a place of their own and live the American dream. But do dreams come at a price!

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.

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.

This new annotated edition inlcudes Live Oak, with Moss and prose selections from Democratic Vistas and Specimen Days . The text also presents a collection of Whitman's statements about his role as a poet taken from his notebooks, letters, conversations and newspaper articles.

Divers, Dick and Nicole hold court at their villa. Into their circle comes Rosemary Hoyt, a film star, who is instantly attracted to them, but understands little of the dark secrets and hidden corruption that hold them together.

Narrated by Quentin Compson, the suicide in The Sound and the Fury , this is the tale of Thomas Sutpen, a poor White who dreams of founding a dynasty. His refusal to accept his wife's Negro blood initiates a bloody train of events to create a vision of doom of the American South.

High in the pine forests of the Spanish Sierra, a guerrilla band prepares to blow up a vital bridge. Robert Jordan, a young American volunteer, has been sent to handle the dynamiting. There, in the mountains, he finds the dangers and the intense comradeship of war. And there he discovers Maria, a young woman who has escaped from Franco's rebels.

Esther Greenwood is at college and is fighting two battles, one against her own desire for perfection in all things - grades, boyfriend, looks, career - and the other against remorseless mental illness. As her depression deepens she finds herself encased in it, bell-jarred away from the rest of the world. This is the story of her journey back into reality. Highly readable, witty and disturbing, ..