Item category 1: Classics

Alex Garland's The Beach was published to immediate acclaim, and has since become a bestselling cult classic and a Hollywood blockbuster. Richard, a gap-year student, is introduced to a beautiful island by the mysterious Daffy.

Anthony Patch and Gloria Gibson are the golden children of the Jazz Age. They marry and embark on a life of glittering parties, lavish expenditure and scandalous revelry. When the money dries up their marriage founders. In this wistful novel Fitzgerald portrays the decline of youthful promise wit...

'One is repeatedly moved by the delicacy of the imagery and the understated precision' New Statesman The successful writer Oki has reached middle age and is filled with regrets.

The unedited version of 'What we talk about when we talk about Love" before it would be cut by Carver's editor and mentor.

I was supposed to be having the time of my life. When Esther Greenwood wins an internship on a New York fashion magazine in 1953, she is elated, believing she will finally realise her dream to become a writer. But in between the cocktail parties and piles of manuscripts, Esther's life begins to s...

Terrible, unspeakable things happened to Sethe at Sweet Home, the farm where she lived as a slave for so many years until she escaped to Ohio. Her new life is full of hope but eighteen years later she is still not free.

Beowulf tells the story of the heroic Beowulf and of his battles, first with the monster Grendel, then with Grendel's avenging mother, and finally with a dragon that threatens to devastate his homeland. Through its blend of myth and history, Beowulf vividly evokes a twilight world in which men an...

A group of Jewish refugees are thrown together on board a dilapidated freighter charting a course for Australia. Fleeing terrible scenes of destruction in Europe, they are bound by a deep sense of loss and the uncertainty of their fate.