The Night is Darkening Round Me, Emily Brontë

All Quiet on the Western Front is probably the most famous anti-war novel ever written. The story is told by a young 'unknown soldier' in the trenches of Flanders during the First World War

Crime and Punishment is one of the greatest and most readable novels ever written. From the beginning we are locked into the frenzied consciousness of Raskolnikov who, against his better instincts, is inexorably drawn to commit a brutal double murder.

Their story, which encompasses violence, revenge, love and redemption, is grippingly played out against the backdrop of the terrifying brutality of the French Revolution.

Agamemnon's Daughter, written in Albania in the 1980s and smuggled into France a few pages at a time, reveals a world where fear is an instrument of power, but the individual survives despite the odds.From the winner of the first Man Booker International Prize comes a searing story of love denied, then shattered under the chilling wheels of the state.

'My life looks as if it had been wasted for want of chances! When I see what you know, what you have read, and seen, and thought, I feel what a nothing I am!'

Orwell graphically and emphatically describes the hardships of ordinary people living in cramped slum housing, working in dangerous mines and growing hungry through malnutrition and social injustice. It is an honest, gripping and humane study that also looks at socialism as a solution to the problems facing working-class northerners – something many...

In these witty, Machiavellian aphorisms, unlikely Spanish priest Baltasar Gracián shows us how to exploit friends and enemies alike to thrive in a world of deception and illusion.

'He gave orders that they were not to get any hot glum pudding in flames, for fear the spirits in their innards might catch fire'

Self-celebrating and self-mocking autobiographical writings from Ecce Homo, the last work iconoclastic German philosopher Nietzsche wrote before his descent into madness.

As the tension builds and rumours escalate, Kadare draws us into a nightmarish world controlled by rules no one understands, blending dream and reality to produce a mystery and a thriller that seduces and surprises up to the last page.

'Time is a catastrophe, perpetual and irreversible.'

When the body of Sir Charles Baskerville is found on the misty and desolate Devon moors, Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson decide to investigate. The locals blame his death on the family curse, a legendary phantom hound which has supposedly haunted the Baskervilles for generations.

Finally, in ‘The Woman Destroyed’, Simone de Beauvoir tells the story of Monique, trying desperately to resurrect her life after her husband confesses to an affair with a younger woman.

The new notebook he’s begun to write in is definitely against the rules – in fact, the Thought Police could arrest him simply for having it. Yet, as Winston begins to write his own history, a seed of rebellion begins to grow in his heart – one that could have devastating consequences.

In the town they tell the story of the great pearl - how it was found and how it was lost again. They tell of Kino, the fisherman, and of his wife, Juana, and of the baby, Coyotito.