Non-Secondhand Books

Jim Dixon has accidentally fallen into a job at one of Britain's new red brick universities. A moderately successful future in the History Department beckons. As long as Jim can...

Meet Ignatius J. Reilly- flatulent, eloquent and pretty much unemployable . . . The ordinary folk of New Orleans seem to think he is unhinged as well. Ignatius ignores them...

Charles Ryder, a lonely student at Oxford, is captivated by the outrageous and decadent Sebastian Flyte. Invited to Brideshead, Sebastian's magnificent family home, Charles welcomes the attentions of its eccentric,...

The air of Eastwick breeds witches - women whose powerful longings can stir up thunderstorms and fracture domestic peace. Jane, Alexandra and Sukie, divorced and dangerous, have formed a coven....

Eight years ago Moose Malloy and cute little redhead Velma were getting married - until someone framed Malloy for armed robbery. Now his stretch is up and he wants Velma...

Set in the volatile Paris summer of 1938, The Age of Reason follows two days in the life of Mathieu Delarue, a philosophy teacher, and his circle in the cafes...

The Hell's Angels erupted into 1960s America, paralysing whole towns with fear. Determined to discover the truth behind the terrifying reputation of these marauding biker gangs, Hunter S. Thompson spent...

In her opulent novel, Eva Luna, Isabel Allende uses exquisite prose to describe the survival of a young Latin American woman whose powers as a storyteller bring her friendship and...

In 1929 Robert Graves went to live abroad permanently, vowing 'never to make England my home again'. This is his superb account of his life from his childhood and desperately...

'Pat Barker's novel is not only a vivid evocation of the agony of the First World War. It is a multi-layered exploration of all wars, challenging assumptions about the relationship...

The townspeople of Oran are in the grip of a deadly plague, which condemns its victims to a horrifying death. Fear, isolation and claustrophobia follow as they are forced into...

For many people watching football is mere entertainment; to some it's more like a ritual; but to others, its highs and lows provide a narrative to life itself. For Nick...

When sensible, sophisticated Flora Poste is orphaned at nineteen, she decides her only choice is to descend upon relatives in deepest Sussex. At the aptly named Cold Comfort Farm, she...

Fifteen-year-old New Yorker Daisy thinks she knows all about love. Her mother died giving birth to her, and now her dad has sent her away for the summer, to live...

Dr Felix Hoenikker, has left a deadly legacy to humanity. He is the inventor of ice-nine, a lethal chemical capable of freezing the entire planet. Writer Jonah's search for its...

The night after a shooting star is seen streaking across the sky, a cylinder is discovered near London. Armed with just a white flag, the locals approach the mysterious object...

'Junk is not, like alcohol or weed, a means to increased enjoyment in life. Junk is not a kick. It is a way of life.' Burrough's cult classic is a...

In the din and stink that is Cannery Row a colourful blend of misfits - gamblers, whores, drunks, bums, and artists - survive side by side in a jumble of...

William Shakespeare's sonnets are a beautiful expression of a range of human emotions - from love to grief, anger, jealousy and lust. Including the instantly recognisable 'Shall I compare thee...

Flame-haired Grady McNeil is beautiful, rich and defiant. Her privileged society life leaves her wanting, and excitement comes in the form of the highly unsuitable Clyde, a Brooklyn-born, Jewish parking...

In a house haunted by memories, the past is everywhere . . . As darkness falls, a man caught in a snowstorm is forced to shelter at the strange, grim...

Wild child Huck has to get away. His violent drunk of a father is back in town again, raising Cain. He won't rest until he has Huck's money. So the...

Out of his smoke-filled rooms in Baker Street stalks a figure to cause the criminal classes to quake in their boots and rush from their dens of iniquity . ....

Emma Bovary is beautiful and bored, trapped in her marriage to a mediocre doctor and stifled by the banality of provincial life. An ardent reader of sentimental novels, she longs...

Eight years ago, Anne rejected the man she loved because her friends and family persuaded her that he wasn't rich or important enough. In all that time, she's never found...

A sinister Countess is driven mad by a dark secret. An innocent woman is made the instrument of retribution. A murdered man's fury reaches beyond the grave. When Countess Narona...

A Room of One's Own grew out of a lecture that Virginia Woolf had been invited to give at Girton College, Cambridge in 1928. Ranging over Jane Austen and Charlotte...

Truman Capote's In Cold Blood is both a masterpiece of journalism and a powerful crime thriller. Inspired by a 300-word article in The New York Times, Capote spent six years...

E. H. Carr's What Is History? is the classic introduction to the theory of history. Exploding the Victorian myth of history as a simple record of fact, Carr draws on...

Simon Winchester's The Surgeon of Crowthorne was an international bestseller and tells an extraordinary true story of murder, madness and an extraordinary friendship in the nineteenth century. It is the...

Paul Davies' The Mind of God is a scientific search for the meaning of the universe. Ranging across the cosmos, Davies explores the origin of the universe, the laws of...

Brian Greene'sThe Fabric of the Cosmosis an astonishing grand tour of the universe and the best layman's guide to current thinking on 'how everything works'. Brian Greene's The Fabric of...

Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep is the definitive hardboiled detective story and Philip Marlowe the perfect expression of the cynical, world-weary gumshoe. Hired by the crippled General Sternwood to shake...

Roald Dahl's Tales of the Unexpected is a delightfully dark collection of sixteen stories, each with a startling end. Among the unforgettable characters lurk the homicidal wife and her deadly...

Sir Ernest Shackleton's South is one of the greatest survival stories of all time. In 1914, Shackleton led a party of men hoping to be the first to traverse the...

John Mortimer's Rumpole and the Penge Bungalow Murders sees our eponymous hero tackle his first ever case. It is just after the war and two RAF heroes are found shot...

Bill Bryson's Mother Tongue is a hymn to the English language. In examining how a second-rate, mongrel tongue came to be the undisputed language of the globe. Bryson explores English...

Gabriel Garcia Marquez's Love in the Time of Cholera is a brilliantly crafted, beautifully written story of love and the love-sick. Spurned as a young man, Florentino Ariza has a...

Nancy Mitford's Love in a Cold Climate is a wickedly funny satire, brilliantly lampooning upper-class society. When Polly, a beautiful aristocrat, declares her love for her married, lecherous uncle -...

D. H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover scandalized the world when it was first published in paperback, and helped put Penguin Books on trial. The powerful depiction of the sexual liaison...

Hunter S. Thompson's Kingdom of Fear is the wild and outrageous autobiography from the world's most notorious journalist. It's an unrestrained and uncensored account of fast living, hard drinking, sharp...

Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre to this day entrances readers with its passionate portrayal of a woman struggling to make a life for herself in a cruel and indifferent world. As...

Nick Hornby's High Fidelity is the brilliant story of one man's journey of self-discovery. When Rob - a thirty-five-year old record shop owner and music obsessive - is dumped by...

Roald Dahl's Going Solo is the marvellous account of his life as a young man. He describes getting his first job in Africa and his wartime exploits as an RAF...

Anais Nin's Delta of Venus is a stunning collection of sexual encounters from the queen of literary erotica. From Mathilde's lust-filled Peruvian opium den to the Hungarian baron driven insane...

Peter Mayle's A Year in Provence is the much-loved account of an English couple living their dream abroad. When they buy a 200-year-old farmhouse in the South of France, Peter...

Evelyn Waugh's A Handful of Dust is a satirical depiction of the 'sterile' generation between the wars. It tells the story of bored Lady Brenda Last, who abandons her husband's...

Throughout history, some books have changed the world. They have transformed the way we see ourselves - and each other. They have inspired debate, dissent, war and revolution. They have...