Item category 1: Classics

Jonathan Safran Foer's Everything is Illuminated won the Guardian First Book Award in 2002. It tells the story of a young man who goes to the Ukraine in search of the woman who saved his grandfather from the Nazis. He is aided in his quest by a blind old man, a randy guide dog and a very, very ba...

Guide to current thinking on 'how everything works'. Explores the mysteries of space and time; asks questions about the nature of reality, dark matter, space warps and wiggles.

Two women, both artists, no longer young, live and work on opposite sides of a large apartment building, their studios connected by an attic passageway. They have loved and argued for decades, long enough to anticipate the other's next words and to guess her next move. Yet no matter how many time...

This complete collection of all his short stories and novellas contains well-known tales such as 'The Pit and the Pendulum' and the Tell-Tale Heart' alongside hidden gems that both unsettle and enthral the reader.

A young English woman leaves her ageing parents to visit friends living in the Australian outback. She falls in love, both with the country and with Carl, a doctor and Czech refugee. Brought together through dramatic encounters and strange twists of fate, their relationship hangs in the balance w...

Hardy's powerful novel of swift sexual passion and slow-burning loyalty centres on Bathsheba Everdene, a proud working woman whose life is complicated by three different men - respectable farmer Boldwood, seductive Sergeant Troy and devoted Gabriel - making her the object of scandal and betrayal....

Bathsheba Everdene arrives in the small village of Weatherbury and captures the heart of three very different men: Gabriel Oak, a quiet shepherd; the proud, obdurate Farmer Boldwood; and, dashing, unscrupulous Sergeant Troy. The battle for her affections will have dramatic, tragic and surprising ...