Books about violence

In this nightmare vision of a not-too-distant future, fifteen-year-old Alex and his three friends rob, rape, torture and murder - for fun. Alex is jailed for his vicious crimes and the State undertakes to reform him - but how and at what cost?

Every weekend, in basements and parking lots across the country, young men with good white-collar jobs and absent fathers take off their shoes and shirts and fight each other barehanded for as long as they have to. Then they go back to those jobs with blackened eyes and loosened teeth and the sense that they can handle anything.

Patrick Bateman is twenty-six and works on Wall Street; he is handsome, sophisticated, charming and intelligent. He is also a psychopath. Taking us to a head-on collision with America's greatest dream - and its worst nightmare - this work is a black comedy about a world we all recognize but do not wish to confront.

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.

Built upon the fortunes of a 14 year old kid, this book covers the violence and depravity that attended America's westward expansion, subverting the conventions of the Western novel and the mythology of the Wild West.

Looking at violence through the prism of ethics and honestly addressing both its value and waste, this is the author's meditation on the age-old conundrum: when is violence justified? It was nominated for the US National Book Critic's Circle Award.

A divorced, middle-aged English professor finds himself increasingly unable to resist affairs with his female students. When discovered by the college authorities he is expected to apologize to save his job, but instead he refuses and resigns, retiring to live with his daughter on her remote farm.

Top of the class now has a whole new meaning ...

Presents an analysis of the nature, causes, and significance of violence in the second half of the twentieth century. This title also re-examines the relationship between war, politics, violence, and power.

Eva Khatchadourian's son, Kevin, murdered seven of his fellow high-school students, a cafeteria worker, and a popular algebra teacher. Because he was only fifteen at the time of the killings, he received a lenient sentence. This title tells a story while framing the horrifying tableaux of teenage carnage as a metaphor for the larger tragedy.

What sort of man spends his Saturday afternoons with people named Bonehead, Paraffin Pete and Steamin' Sammy? This is a book about the experience, and the attractions, of crowd violence.

Combines extreme violence with black humour. Jesse Custer is a small-town preacher slowly losing his faith, until he merges with a half-angelic, half-demonic being called Genesis. Now he has his first-hand knowledge of both heaven and hell, he sets out to find God.

From Goya's Disasters of War to news footage and photographs of the conflicts in Vietnam, Rwanda and Bosnia, pictures have been charged with inspiring dissent, fostering violence or instilling apathy in us, the viewer. This is a brilliant analysis of our numbed response to the images of horror.

Greasers, Rockers, different place, different name - but wherever they are, they're outsiders; the rough, tough, long-haired boys from the other side of town, with little hope of Mustangs, madras shirts and the good things of American life in the Sixties.

Every year, Trinity School runs a chocolate sale. Each boy volunteers to sell a quota of boxes. But this year it's different, because new kid Jerry Renault has refused to take part. This small act of defiance starts a chain reaction exposing the corruption running throughout the school.

Perowne makes his way to his weekly squash game through London streets filled with hundreds of thousands of anti-war protestors. A minor car accident brings him into a confrontation with Baxter, a fidgety, aggressive, young man, on the edge of violence. To Perowne's professional eye, there appears to be something profoundly wrong with him.