Catch-22, Joseph Heller

Taking young Harriet Smith under her wing, Emma sets her sights on finding a suitable match for her friend. Chided for her mistakes by old friend Mr Knightley, it is only when Harriet starts to pursue her own love interests that Emma realises the true hidden depths of her own heart.

‘How fleeting are the wishes and efforts of man! how short his time! and consequently how poor will his products be, compared with those accumulated by nature during whole geological periods.’

'She was bored and fought against her boredom, which only bored her still more.'

'Back, away from here, drowned people, go. I haven't stolen anyone's place'

 In From the Earth to the Moon and Around the Moon, Jules Verne turned the ancient fantasy of space flight into a believable technological possibility an engineering dream for the industrial age. 

Griffin, a stranger, arrives at the local inn of an English village, entirely shrouded in bandages. Forbidding and unfriendly, he confines himself to his room. Driven away by the villagers and turning to an old friend for help, Griffin reveals that he has discovered how to make himself invisible, and plans to use his condition for treacherous ends.

‘When I am king, they shall not have bread and shelter only, but also teachings out of books; for a full belly is little worth where the mind is starved, and the heart.’

The Tenant of Wildfell Hall challenges the social conventions of the early nineteenth century in a strong defence of women's rights in the face of psychological abuse from their husbands. Anne Brontë's style is bold, naturalistic and passionate, and this novel, which her sister Charlotte considered 'an entire mistake', has earned her a position in English...

Little orphan Heidi is sent to live with her grandfather in his remote house in the Swiss Alps. She soon begins to love her life with her grandfather and makes friends with Peter, the goat-herder and his grandmother. Idyllic as her existence is, her aunt sends Heidi to live in Frankfurt to become a companion to the invalid daughter of a wealthy family...

The Castle is the story of K., the unwanted Land Surveyor who is never to be admitted to the Castle nor accepted in the village, and yet cannot go home. As he encounters dualities of certainty and doubt, hope and fear, and reason and nonsense, K.'s struggles in the absurd, labyrinthine world where he finds himself seem to reveal an inexplicable truth...

Mowgli, the man-cub, is raised in the Indian jungle by a pack of wolves. As he grows older, he learns the ‘Law of the Jungle’ with the help of his friends, Bagheera the Panther, Baloo the Bear and Kaa the Python, who try to keep him safe from fearsome Shere Khan, the tiger. Eventually he comes into contact with his own kind, and begins to question his...

Good and bad times come and go as they struggle with the trials of growing up, getting along, and exploring life outside the comforting walls of home, each discovering her own distinct personality along the way.

'The vessel drove before her bows two billows of liquid phosphorus'

Upon finding a map in his parents' inn, young Jim Hawkins joins a crew on route to the Caribbean to find buried treasure. One of his crew, the charming, yet devious Long John Silver is determined to snag the booty for himself and Jim's swashbuckling voyage becomes a mutinous and murderous adventure  where his own bravery is put to the test and he...

The fiery Paul Emanuel, another teacher in the school, proves to be her saviour when he recognizes her passionate nature in spite of the many barriers she has erected to hide it.

The satirical portraits of the revolutionaries, with their naivety, ludicrous single-mindedness and readiness for murder and destruction, might seem exaggerated - until we consider their all-too-recognisable descendants in the real world ever since.