Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

'Psychologically, the latter part of Great Expectations is about the best thing Dickens ever did.'

George Orwell

A terrifying encounter with an escaped convict in a graveyard on the wild Kent marshes.

A summons to meet the bitter, decaying Miss Havisham and her beautiful, cold-hearted ward Estella.

The sudden generosity of a mysterious benefactor.

These form a series of events that change the orphaned Pip's life forever, and he eagerly abandons his humble origins to begin a new life as a gentleman.

Dickens's haunting late novel depicts Pip's education and development through adversity as he discovers thetrue nature of his 'great expectations'!

About the Author

Charles Dickens was born on 7 February 1812. He enjoyed his first commercial success with The Pickwick Papers in 1836, swiftly followed by the serialization of Oliver Twist a year later. By the publication of The Old Curiosity Shop in 1841, Dickens was internationally famous. Great Expectations was first published in serial form in All the Year Round magazine between 1860 and 1861. His novels, many now adapted for TV and film, continue to entertain readers all over the world.

In December the BBC will show a major new adaptation, forming part of their celebration of Dickens and the bicentenary of his birth in 2012.

Generation Dead by Daniel Waters

Newcomer Waters serves up the best YA read of the year with a tale of love, humour, humanity and zombies --err, the differently biotic. Witty and well written, “Generation Dead” is a classic desegregation story that also skewers adult attempts to make teenagers play nice New York Times

In this debut novel, Waters shows an impressive understanding of the factors affecting teens as they navigate the high school environment. Using humor to lighten a world that is mixed with both violence and horror, he is able to capture readers' attention and sympathy for a group of very complex characters.— Caryl Soriano, New York Public Library

All over the country, a strange phenomenon is happening. Some teenagers who die aren't staying dead. They are coming back to life, but they are no longer the same—they stutter, and their reactions to everything are slower. Termed "living impaired" or "differently biotic," they are doing their best to fit into a society that doesn’t want them.

With her pale skin and Goth wardrobe, Phoebe has never run with the popular crowd. But no one can believe it when she falls for Tommy Williams, the leader of the dead kids. Not her best friend, Margi, whose fear of the differently biotic is deeply rooted in guilt over the past. And especially not her neighbor, Adam, the star of the football team. Adam has just realized his feelings for Phoebe run much deeper than just friendship. He would do anything for her, but what if protecting Tommy is the one thing that would make her happy?

This is the first book in the Generation Dead series. To see Dan Waters' website, click below:

http://www.danielwaters.com/

The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize 1921

Set in 1870's New York, Age of Innocence follows the courtship of an upperclass couple and how a beautiful woman surrounded by scandal threatens their happiness.

Newland Archer has made a highly desirable engagement to May Welland but when he meets her cousin, Countess Ellen Olenska who has left her Polish husband, he begins to doubt his choice of bride.

Countess Olenska shocks staid New York society with her unconventional views about how to conduct her life (especially her decision to divorce her husband).

Newland begins to question the hypocrisy of his life in a gilded cage and falls in love with Ellen.


About the Author

Edith Wharton once said, about critics and biographers: "After all, one knows one's weak points so well, that it's rather bewildering to have the critics overlook them & invent others." It seems that there is an abundance of blatantly wrong or just slightly incorrect information about Wharton's life and literature; it also seems that this problem was one Wharton herself faced.

Born Edith Jones, January 24, 1862, she went on to become the first woman to ever win the Pulitzer prize for her novel The Age of Innocence, in 1921. You can read Wharton's own impressions of her life in the autobiography A Backward Glance. Her life story is as interesting as those of the women in her novels, and her biography is an excellent source of history, entertainment and context.

To find out more about Edith Wharton's life, click on the link below

http://www.wsu.edu/~campbelld/wharton/index.html

Here's the trailer for the 1993 Martin Scorcese film starring Daniel Day-Lewis and Michelle Pfeiffer.

Noughts And Crosses by Malorie Blackman

'Against a background of prejudice and distrust, intensely highlighted by violent terrorist activity by Noughts, a romance builds between Sephy and Callum – a romance that is to lead both of them into terrible danger…'

Callum is a nought – a second-class citizen in a world run by the ruling Crosses…

Sephy is a Cross, daughter of one of the most powerful men in the country…

In their world, noughts and Crosses simply don’t mix. And as hostility turns to violence, can Callum and Sephy possibly find a way to be together? They are determined to try.
And then the bomb explodes…
A gripping, stimulating and totally absorbing novel set in a world where black and white are right and wrong.

Malorie Blackman is a fine, award-winning author whose work is always inclined to provoke debate amongst her readers, and indeed her peers. With Noughts and Crosses she surpasses expectation not only with her subject matter, but with the execution of a stimulating and provocative plot line that often leaves the reader chilled to the bone.

Sephy and Callum have been best friends since childhood, and now they are older and they realise they want more from each other. But the harsh realities of lives lived in a segregated society are beginning to take their toll: Callum is a nought--a second-class citizen in a world dominated by the Crosses--and Sephy is a Cross, and the daughter of one of the most powerful men in the country. The barriers they would have to cross to be together at first seem little more than minor obstacles to the two idealistic teenagers, but soon those barriers threaten not only their friendship but their lives.
 
Noughts and Crosses is written with the passion of an author who has a personal message about the perception of the past, present and future, and Blackman has used the clever device of turning preconceived ideas of racial prejudice upside down to make sure that her point is well and truly made. Deeply disturbing and totally absorbing this novel is intriguing from the outset, with a shocking climax that packs an unforgettable punch. Susan Harrison

Malorie Blackman: Developing negatives - Click here to read the novelist talk to Alison Flood about turning racism upside down in her Noughts and Crosses novels...

About the Author

Malorie Blackman was born in 1962. She qualified in Computer Science and followed a successful career in computing, before becoming a writer at the age of 28. Her first published book was Not So Stupid! (1990), a book of short stories.

Since then she has written many books and scripts, and her popularity has steadily grown. Her scripts for television include several episodes of Byker Grove, Whizziwig and Pig-Heart Boy, and she has also written original dramas for CITV and BBC Education. Her stage play, The Amazing Birthday, was performed in 2002.

She writes for all ages of children. Her picture books include I Want a Cuddle! (2001) and Jessica Strange (2002) and she has written many reader books for early and more confident readers. Her novels include: Hacker (1992); the story of Vicky, who saves her father from being wrongly convicted of stealing from the bank after hacking into the bank’s computer to solve the crime herself; Thief! (1995), about a child who is transported into the future after being accused of a crime she did not commit; and Pig-Heart Boy (1997), the diary of 13-year-old Cameron, who needs a heart transplant. The latter book and its subsequent adaptation as a series for television won several awards, including a BAFTA for best children’s drama in 2000.

Malorie Blackman's most well-known books for young adults are: Noughts & Crosses (2001); Knife Edge (2004); and Checkmate (2005) – which form the Noughts & Crosses Trilogy, the tale of two teenagers, Callum and Sephy.  In 2004, she also wrote a novel entirely in verse, Cloud Busting (2004), which won a Nestlé Smarties Book Prize (Silver Award) the same year.

Malorie Blackman lives in Kent. In 2007 she collected stories and poems for the book Unheard Voices, commemorating the bicentenary anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade. Her latest books are The Stuff of Nightmares (2007) and Double Cross (2008). She was awarded an OBE in 2008.

She has recently contributed to Free? (2009), a book of stories celebrating Human Rights.

Find out more about the Author by visiting her website here...

Nobody's Girl by Sarra Manning

Shortlisted for the Booktrust Teenage Fiction Award

'A fabulous coming of age romp.' Now

'One of the most endearing characters you'll ever come across.' Book Fest Reading Guide

I went a little bit stark-raving bonkers. That’s the only explanation that makes any sense.

Usually, I’m not the kind of girl who does crazy, stupid or irresponsible things. I look both ways before I cross the road. I drink two litres of water and eat at least five portions of fruit and vegetables every day. I aim for eight hours’ sleep a night. Respect my elders. Don’t talk back.Mind my Ps and Qs. Floss twice daily.

Let’s face it, no one can be as boring and perfect as me and not lose it just once. But I couldn’t lose it in a safe, controlled environment. No, I had to lose it at a train station in Malaga.

Bea thinks she's the most boring seventeen-year-old in the world. She's not pretty or popular or funny, unlike her mother who had Bea when she was 17. The only glamorous thing about Bea is the French father who left before she was born and lives in Paris.

She yearns for la vie Parisienne every moment of her dull existence. So when Ruby Davies, the leader of her school's most elite clique picks Bea as her new best friend and asks her to go on holiday with them, she's wary but delighted. If nothing else it's two weeks away from her over-protective mother.

But when the gang arrive in Spain, Bea is crushed to realise that Ruby and her posse have simply been using her. Bea wreaks vengeance on her so-called friends, and plans to decamp to Paris to find her father. But when she falls asleep on the train and wakes up in Bilbao, she meets a group of American students who are backpacking around Europe and bonds with them straight away, especially the gorgeous Toph who helps heals Bea's hurting heart.

Though Bea has a shock in store when they finally get to Paris. The 'City of Lovers' really works it magic on Bea and Toph who spend a week wandering the sun-dappled streets of Paris, talking, holding hands and falling in love. When it comes time to go home to confront her Mum about her mysterious father, the new version of Bea is determined that she'll never go back to her old, boring way of life - she's no longer Nobody's Girl; she belongs to herself and to Toph...

But with an ocean between them, will he wait for her?

Find out more about the book and the author by clicking here...

About the Author

Sarra Manning is a teen queen extraordinaire. She spent five years working on the legendary but now sadly defunct UK teen mag, J17, first as a writer and then as Entertainment Editor. She then joined the launch team and became editor of teen fashion bible Ellegirl UK. There followed a stint as editor of the BBC's What To Wear and consulting on Bliss, The Face and More. Sarra now writes for ELLE,  Grazia, Red, InStyle, The Guardian, The Mail On Sunday's You magazine and The Sunday Telegraph's Stella. Her best-selling teen novels, which include Guitar Girl, Let's Get Lost and The Diary Of A Crush trilogy, have been translated into numerous languages and in 2008, she was short listed for the Book People's Queen of Teen award. In 2009, her first adult novel, Unsticky, was published by Headline Review. Sarra lives in North London.

The Silver Blade by Sally Gardner

"There is magic, romance, a hint of gothic coupled with vivid vignettes of Parisian life in all its post revolutionary squalor. The writing is beautiful, never forced and everything is cleverly woven together like an intricate tapestry...read The Silver Blade and succumb to the seduction of this master storyteller."

The French Revolution lives on in children's imaginations, if at all, largely thanks to The Scarlet Pimpernel. The tale of how a seemingly foppish aristocrat leads a double life, rescuing other aristocrats from the guillotine, has been a perennial favourite. Yet what about all the other innocents, who, in the days of the Terror, could be executed simply for showing pity for the condemned?

This, Sally Gardner's sequel to The Red Necklace, plunges us into that very question. At the end of the first book, Yann saved his beloved Sido and discovered that she loved him, but returned to Paris to rescue his friends while she sailed to England.

Now known as the Silver Blade, he performs in the theatre by night and by day rescues others from the guillotine, at enormous risk. A Romany, Yann can read people's thoughts, make them forget things and cause objects to move by force of concentration. The trouble is that his old enemy and Sidonie's, Count Kalliovski, has returned from the dead after making a pact with the Devil. The only man who can walk the streets during the Terror wearing the “decadent symbols of aristocracy”, he is living in a palace of bones in Paris's catacombs, with a monstrous black dog with human eyes.

Why does Kalliovski keep waxwork heads, how does he make them talk and what does he want of the master key-maker Quint? All will be revealed.

Set against a vivid historical background, prize winning author Sally Gardner brings to life the horrors of the French Revolution in this breath-taking adventure, complete with intrepid heroism and a touching love story.

Perfect for readers and fans of The Red Necklace and I, Coriander.

About the Author

Sally Gardner trained at art college and went on to work in the theatre, winning awards for her costume designs for some notable productions. After her twin daughters and her son were born she started to illustrate children's books, and then turned to writing. She lives in north London.  

Watch the author discuss growing up in Dickensian London, dyslexia and her new novel, THE SILVER BLADE.

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Jay Gatsby is the man who has everything. But one thing will always be out of his reach ... Everybody who is anybody is seen at his glittering parties. Day and night his Long Island mansion buzzes with bright young things drinking, dancing and debating his mysterious character. For Gatsby - young, handsome, fabulously rich - always seems alone in the crowd, watching and waiting, though no one knows what for. Beneath the shimmering surface of his life he is hiding a secret: a silent longing that can never be fulfilled. And soon this destructive obsession will force his world to unravel.

In 1922, F Scott Fitzgerald announced his decision to write "something new - something extraordinary and beautiful and simple, intricately patterned". That extraordinary, beautiful, intricately patterned and, above all, simple novel became The Great Gatsby, arguably Fitzgerald's finest work and certainly the book for which he is best known.

A portrait of the Jazz Age in all of its decadence and excess, Gatsby captured the spirit of the author's generation and earned itself a permanent place in American mythology. Self-made, self-invented millionaire Jay Gatsby embodies some of Fitzgerald's--and his country's--most abiding obsessions: money, ambition, greed and the promise of new beginnings. Gatsby's rise to glory and eventual fall from grace be comes a kind of cautionary tale about the American Dream.

It's also a love story, of sorts, the narrative of Gatsby's quixotic passion for Daisy Buchanan. The pair meet five years before the novel begins, when Daisy is a legendary young Louisville beauty and Gatsby an impoverished officer. They fall in love, but while Gatsby serves overseas, Daisy marries the brutal, bullying but extremely rich Tom Buchanan. After the war, Gatsby devotes himself blindly to the pursuit of wealth by whatever means--and to the pursuit of Daisy, which amounts to the same thing. "Her voice is full of money," Gatsby says admiringly, in one of the novel's more famous descriptions. His millions made, Gatsby buys a mansion across Long Island Sound from Daisy's patrician East Egg address, throws lavish parties and waits for her to appear. When s he does, events unfold with all the tragic inevitability of a Greek drama, with detached, cynical neighbour Nick Carraway acting as chorus throughout. Spare, elegantly plotted and written in crystalline prose, The Great Gatsby is as perfectly satisfying as the best kind of poem.
Perry Freeman, Amazon.com

About the Author

F. Scott Fitzgerald was born in 1896 in St Paul, Minnesota, and went to Princeton University which he left in 1917 to join the army. Fitzgerald was said to have epitomised the Jazz Age, an age inhabited by a generation he defined as 'grown up to find all Gods dead, all wars fought, all faiths in man shaken'.

In 1920 he married Zelda Sayre. Their destructive relationship and her subsequent mental breakdowns became a major influence on his writing. Among his publications were five novels, This Side of Paradise, The Great Gatsby, The Beautiful and Damned, Tender is the Night and The Love of the Last Tycoon (his last and unfinished work): six volumes of short stories and The Crack-Up, a selection of autobiographical pieces.

Fitzgerald died suddenly in 1940. After his death The New York Times said of him that 'He was better than he knew, for in fact and in the literary sense he invented a "generation" ... he might have interpreted them and even guided them, as in their middle years they saw a different and nobler freedom threatened with destruction.'

Here's the opening of the 1974 film version starring Robert Redford and Mia Farrow with a screenplay by Francis Ford Coppola to give you a taste for the 1920s...

Possession by AS Byatt

Winner of the Booker Prize

'This proves that a serious, intricate book can also be a page turner...manifest intelligence, subtle humor and extraordinary texturing of the past within the present make Possession original and unforgettable' Sunday Times

'This is a novel for every taste: a heartbreaking Victorian love story, a take-no-prisoners comedy of contemporary academic life, and an unputdownable mystery. You turn the last page feeling stunned and elated, happy to have had the chance to read it.' Washington Post

"Literary critics make natural detectives", says Maud Bailey, heroine of a mystery where the clues lurk in university libraries, old letters and dusty journals. Together with Roland Michell, a fellow academic and accidental sleuth, Maud discovers a love affair between the two Victorian writers the pair has dedicated their lives to studying: Randolph Ash, a literary great long assumed to be a devoted and faithful husband, and Christabel La Motte, a lesser- known "fairy poetess" and chaste spinster.

At first, Roland and Maud's discovery threatens only to alter the direction of their research, but as they unearth the truth about the long- forgotten romance, their involvement becomes increasingly urgent and personal. Desperately concealing their purpose from competing researchers, they embark on a journey that pulls each of them from solitude and loneliness, challenges the most basic assumptions they hold about themselves, and uncovers their unique entitlement to the secret of Ash and La Motte's passion.

Winner of the 1990 Booker Prize, Possession is a gripping and compulsively readable novel. A.S. Byatt exquisitely renders a setting rich in detail and texture. Her lush imagery weaves together the dual worlds that appear throughout the novel--the worlds of the mind and the senses, of male and female, of darkness and light, of truth and imagination--into an enchanted and unforgettable tale of love and intrigue. Lisa Whipple

About the Author

AS Byatt is renowned internationally for her novels and short stories.

Her novels include the Booker Prize-winning Possession, The Biographer’s Tale and the quartet, The Virgin in the Garden, Still Life, Babel Tower and A Whistling Woman.

Her most recent novel, The Children’s Book was published in 2009.

Her highly acclaimed collections of short stories include Sugar and Other Stories, The Matisse Stories, The Djinn in the Nightingale’s Eye, Elementals and Little Black Book of Stories.

A distinguished critic as well as a writer of fiction, AS Byatt was appointed CBE in 1990 and DBE in 1999.

Clik here to find out more about the author and her works...

AS Byatt says women who write intellectual books are seen as unnatural - click here to see if you agree...

I, Coriander by Sally Gardner

'A thrilling story that mixes historic realism, credible characters and the dreamy, sometimes violent, dimension of a netherworld. The two blend seamlessly in this gripping and orginal story that abounds with gritty suspense. An excellent read.' Mary Arrigan, SUNDAY TRIBUNE

I am Coriander Hobie.

I was born in the year of Our Lord 1643, the only child of Thomas and Eleanor Hobie, in our great house on the River Thames in London.

Of my early years I remember only happiness. That was before I knew this world had such evil in it, and that my fate was to be locked up in a chest and left to die.

This is my story. This is my life.
The story is told by Coriander, daughter of a silk merchant in 1650s London. Her idyllic childhood ends when her mother dies and her father goes away, leaving Coriander with her stepmother, a widow who is in cahoots with a fundamentalist Puritan preacher. She is shut away in a chest and left to die, but emerges into the fairy world from which her mother came, and where time has no meaning. When she returns, charged with a task that will transform her life, she is seventeen.

This is a book filled with enchantments -- a pair of silver shoes, a fairy shadow, a prince transformed into a fox - that contrast with the heartbreaking loss and cruelty of Coriander's life in the real world. With its brilliantly realized setting of old London Bridge, and underpinned by the conflict between Royalists and Puritans, it is a terrific page turner, involving kidnapping, murder and romance, and an abundance of vivid characters. Coriander is a heroine to love. Her story will establish Sally Gardner as a children's writer of boundless imagination and originality.

About the Author

Sally Gardner trained at art college and went on to work in the theatre, winning awards for her costume designs for some notable productions. After her twin daughters and her son were born she started to illustrate children's books, and then turned to writing. She lives in north London.

Click here to find out more about the Author...

Ever heard of a dyslexic novelist? Sally Gardner changed her name because she couldn't spell it. So how does she manage to write novels?

The Princess Diaries by Meg Cabot

Tuesday, September 23.

Sometimes it seems like all I ever do is lie.
My mom thinks I'm repressing my feelings about this. I say to her, 'No, Mom, I'm not. I think it's really neat. As long as you're happy, I'm happy.'
 
Mom says, 'I don't think you're being honest with me.'
Then she hands me this book. She tells me she wants me to write down my feelings in this book, since, she says, I obviously don't feel I can talk about them with her.
 
She wants me to write down my feelings? OK, I'll write down my feelings:
 
I CAN'T BELIEVE SHE'S DOING THIS TO ME!
 
Like everybody doesn't already think I'm a freak. I'm practically the biggest freak in the entire school. I mean, let's face it: I'm five foot nine, flat-chested, and a freshman. How much more of a freak could I be?

If people at school find out about this, I'm dead. That's it. Dead.

Oh, God, if you really do exist, please don't let them find out about this.

There are four million people in Manhattan, right? That makes about two million of them guys. So out of TWO MILLION guys, she has to go out with Mr Gianini. She can't go out with some guy I don't know. She can't go out with some guy she met at D'Agostino's or wherever. Oh, no.
She has to go out with my Algebra teacher.
Thanks, Mom. Thanks a whole lot.
Wednesday, September 24, Fifth Period
Lilly's like, 'Mr Gianini's cool.'
Yeah, right. He's cool if you're Lilly Moscovitz. He's cool if you're good at Algebra, like Lilly Moscovitz. He's not so cool if you're flunking Algebra, like me.
 
He's not so cool if he makes you stay after school EVERY SINGLE SOLITARY DAY from 2:30 to 3:30 to practise the FOIL method when you could be hanging out with all your friends. He's not so cool if he calls your mother in for a parent/teacher conference to talk about how you're flunking Algebra, then ASKS HER OUT.
 
And he's not so cool if he's sticking his tongue in your mom's mouth.
Not that I've actually seen them do this. They haven't even been out on their first proper date yet. And I don't think my mom would let a guy put his tongue in her mouth on the first date.
At least, I hope not.
 
I saw Josh Richter stick his tongue in Lana Weinberger's mouth last week. I had this totally close-up view of it, since they were leaning up against Josh's locker, which is right next to mine. It kind of grossed me out.
Though I can't say I'd mind if Josh Richter kissed me like that. The other day Lilly and I were at Bigelow's picking up some alpha hydroxy for Lilly's mom, and I noticed Josh waiting at the check-out counter. He saw me and he actually sort of smiled and said, 'Hey.'
 
He was buying Drakkar Noir, a men's cologne. I got a free sample of it from the salesgirl. Now I can smell Josh whenever I want to, in the privacy of my own home.
 
Lilly says Josh's synapses were probably misfiring that day, due to heatstroke or something. She said he probably thought I looked familiar, but couldn't place my face without the cement block walls of Albert Einstein High behind me. Why else, she asked, would the most popular senior in high school say hey to me, Mia Thermopolis, a lowly freshman?
 
But I know it wasn't heatstroke. The truth is, when he's away from Lana and all his jock friends, Josh is a totally different person. The kind of person who doesn't care if a girl is flat-chested or wears size eight shoes. The kind of person who can see beyond all that, into the depths of a girl's soul. I know because when I looked into his eyes that day at Bigelow's, I saw the deeply sensitive person inside him, struggling to get out.
Lilly says I have an overactive imagination and a pathological need to invent drama in my life. She says the fact that I'm so upset about my mom and Mr G is a classic example.
 
'If you're that upset about it, just tell your mom,' Lilly says. 'Tell her you don't want her going out with him. I don't understand you, Mia. You're always going around, lying about how you feel. Why don't you just assert yourself for a change. Your feelings have worth, you know.'
 
Oh, right. Like I'm going to bum my mom out like that. She's so totally happy about this date, it's enough to make me want to throw up. She goes around cooking all the time. I'm not even kidding. She made pasta for the first time last night in, like, months. I had already opened the Suzie's Chinese take-out menu, and she says, 'Oh, no cold sesame noodles tonight, honey. I made pasta.'
 
Pasta! My mom made pasta!
 
She even observed my rights as a vegetarian and didn't put any meatballs in the sauce.
 
I don't understand any of this.
Things to Do:
1. Buy cat litter.
2. Finish FOIL worksheet for Mr G.
3. Stop telling Lilly everything
4. Go to Pearl Paint: get soft lead pencils, spray mount, canvas stretchers (for Mom).
5. World Civ. report on Iceland (5 pages, double space).
6. Stop thinking so much about Josh Richter.
7. Drop off laundry.
8. October rent (make sure Mom has deposited Dad's cheque!!!).
9. Be more assertive.

About the Author

THE PRINCESS DIARIES series is phenomenally successful having topped the US and UK best-seller lists for weeks and won several awards. Two movies based on the series have been massively popular throughout the world. Meg Cabot is also the author of the bestselling ALL AMERICAN GIRL books, TEEN IDOL, AVALON HIGH, NICOLA AND THE VISCOUNT and THE MEDIATOR series as well as several other books for teenagers and adults.

To find out more about the novel and the other books in the series click here...