A lawyer's advice to his children as he defends a black man charged with attacking a white girl. This book explores the irrationality of adult attitudes to race and class in the Deep South. It creates one of the heroes of literature, whose lone struggle for justice pricks the conscience of a town steeped in prejudice, violence and hypocrisy.

Smashing through the Arctic Ocean with the crew of a Russian icebreaker, herding reindeer across the tundra with Lapps and shadowing the Trans-Alaskan pipeline with truckers, the author uncovers the beautiful, brutal reality of the Arctic.

In 1914, a room full of German schoolboys, fresh-faced and idealistic, are goaded by their schoolmaster to troop off to the 'glorious war'. With the fire and patriotism of youth, they sign up. What follows is the story of a young 'unknown soldier' experiencing the horror and disillusionment of life in the trenches.

One windy spring day in the Chilterns Joe Rose's calm, organized life is shattered by a ballooning accident. The afternoon, Rose reflects, could have ended in mere tragedy, but for his brief meeting with Jed Parry.

Hal Treherne is a young and dedicated soldier on the brink of a brilliant career. Impatient to see action, his other deep commitment is to Clara, his beautiful 'red, white and blue girl', who sustains him as he rises through the ranks. When Hal is transferred to the Mediterranean, Clara, now his wife, and their baby daughters join him.

Lance Armstrong won the 1999 Tour de France in spectacular style, taking four stages and both a mountain and a time trial. His story is even more remarkable because he was diagnosed with stage 4 testicular cancer in October 1996.

A story that begins with three young people in the garden of a country house on the hottest day of 1935, and ends with three profoundly changed lives. A depiction of love and war, class, childhood and England, that explores shame and forgiveness, atonement and the possibility of absolution.

A gang war is raging through the dark underworld of Brighton. Seventeen-year-old Pinkie, malign and ruthless, has killed a man. Believing he can escape retribution, he is unprepared for the courageous, life-embracing Ida Arnold. This book aims to expose a world of loneliness and fear, of life lived on the 'dangerous edge of things'.

When Paul McCartney told the world in 1970 that he had no plans to work with the Beatles again, it was widely viewed as a cultural tragedy by the media and public alike. This title tells the dramatic story of the personal and business rivalry that has dominated the Beatles' lives since 1969.

The battle of Agincourt was a slaughter ground designed not to advance England's interests directly but to demonstrate God's approval of Henry's royal authority on both sides of the Channel. 1415 was a year of religious persecution, personal suffering and one horrendous battle. This book presents the story of that year.

Set during a year that begins with France's fall to the Nazis in June 1940 and ending with Germany turning its attention to Russia, this book falls into two parts. It depicts a group of Parisians as they flee the Nazi invasion; and follows the inhabitants of a rural community under occupation who find themselves thrown together in unexpected ways.

Mike Engleby says things that others dare not even think. In the 1970s, he is a university student, having survived a 'traditional' school. A man devoid of scruple or self-pity, Engleby provides an account of English education. Yet, beneath the disturbing surface of his observations lies an unfolding mystery of gripping power.

Lev is on his way to Britain to seek work, so that he can send money back to Eastern Europe to support his mother and little daughter. This book shows readers the struggles that he faces with the rituals of 'Englishness', and the fashions and fads of the London scene.

A title that completes the trilogy of fictionalised memoir begun with Boyhood and Youth .

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.

A memoir that covers Murakami's four-month preparation for the 2005 New York City Marathon and settings ranging from Tokyo's Jingu Gaien gardens, where he once shared the course with an Olympian, to the Charles River in Boston among young women who outpace him.

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.

It's Summer, 1952. Twenty powerful men gather in secret and devise a plot to manipulate the President of the United States. Soon after, writer Eddie Wesley leaves a party hosted by affluent and influential members of black society, and discovers a body. The murdered man had an unusual gold cross gripped between his hands.

Seymour Levov, a devoted family man and inheritor of his father's factory, comes of age in thriving post-war America. His daughter Merry is the apple of his eye until America begins to run amok in the turbulent 1960s, and Merry grows up to be a terrorist bent on destroying her father's paradise.