HG Wells' thrilling 'scientific romance' about the Martian landings in Woking and the terrifying alien conquest of London has captured imaginations since 1898, not least in 1938 when Orson Welles' radio dramatization caused panic in New York.

Set in the Yukon during the 1890s Gold Rush, Jack London’s short novel tells of Buck, a pet mongrel – a cross between a St Bernard and a Scottish sheepdog – who is stolen and taken to Alaska to work as a sled dog and has to adapt to life in a pack.

Famously controversial, DH Lawrence’s novel is a reflection on mankind's relation to nature, expressed through the story of an aristocratic woman’s sexual involvement with her gamekeeper.

The comic diary of Mr Pooter records his life in north London, grappling with the minutiae of suburban existence and, as a senior clerk in the City, waging ceaseless war against junior office boys.

As a young, independent woman taking over the running of a rural estate, Bathsheba Everdene attracts the attentions of three very different men: a respectable local farmer, a dashing soldier, and a devoted young shepherd, Gabriel Oak, who works on her land. This was the first of Hardy’s great novels, originally published in 1874.

Memoirs is the second series of Holmes stories written for The Strand Magazine, starting with Silver Blaze (and its 'curious incident of the dog in the night-time’) and ending with Holmes and Moriarty's fatal encounter at the Reichenbach Falls.

In this early masterpiece of detective fiction, Rachel Verinder is given the Moonstone, a large Indian diamond, on her 18th birthday. That very night, the jewel is stolen, and the curse of the Moonstone begins; a renowned detective is called in to unravel a mystery involving hypnotism, opium and Indian jugglers. First published in 1868.

When bodies are discovered bearing the mark of an inverted cross, physician Nicholas Shelby and mysterious tavern keeper Bianca join forces to find a killer who appears to be preying on the weak and destitute of Elizabethan London.

Set during the cholera epidemic of the 1840s, this adventure follows an idealistic young engineer who finds himself drawn into London’s underworld of slum-dwellers and scavengers in search of his missing wife.

Frustrated poet Jesper Humlin tutors three immigrant women in writing workshops. With moments of humour, they learn to narrate their life stories, and show the impact that marginalized citizens and society can have on one another. Slightly off-mint.

In Swansea in 1941, Spark Girl Peggy Collins becomes a squadron leader’s driver, and falls in love with pilot Jim. This romantic saga about a group of women in the ATS follows how their lives were transformed by the war.

Freed from the tight control of her mother, Emily finds a new lease of life while working as a Land Girl during the First World War. But when peace is declared, she is forced to decide where her priorities lie.

Seven prisoners escape from a concentration camp, so the commandant prepares crosses for their punishment: as they strive to reach asylum the prisoners encounter a cross-range of ordinary Germans. Published in 1942, this novel highlighted the horrors of the Nazi regime, which the author had escaped.

When surgeon Paul Starr is killed in a road accident, his personal life is revealed to be as tangled as the wreckage of his car. United by grief and mutual suspicion, the four women in his life begin to question whether they ever really knew him at all. Slightly off-mint.

In the novel that inspired the blockbuster movie, a trapper who is left for dead in the wilderness by his comrades embarks on an epic journey back to civilization, driven by a desire for revenge.

Best known for Gaslight and Hangover Square, Patrick Hamilton captured the seedy side of English life between the wars in his fiction. This darkly humorous trilogy chronicles the crimes and misadventures of the charming but heartless conman Ernest Ralph Gorse.

Set in the 1970s, this thriller follows the planning of an IRA plot and the struggles of a northern football team. The two strands converge when the team travel to London for a crucial fixture.

This 1966 thriller features an archaeological expert (long before Indiana Jones) as the hero who becomes embroiled in the dangerous hunt for a priceless menorah after deciphering an ancient manuscript that has been discovered in the Jerusalem temple.

Private detective Doug Michie’s background in the RUC comes in handy in this thriller when a murder takes place amid sectarian tensions during the Orange Order marching season in the West of Scotland.

A teacher and pupil are found dead at an exclusive girls’ school in Bath. Jack Swann must discover whether their deaths are a tragic accident, a suicide pact, or murder – but unseen forces are tracking his every move.

DI Nick Lowry is on the case of a corpse found on the railway lines near a cottage where another man has apparently committed suicide: this is the second in the series of books set in and around Colchester in the early 1980s.

On the ten-year anniversary of her mother’s disappearance, Claire and a group of friends took part in a disastrous dare as part of Hop-tu-naa (the Manx Halloween). Now a young policewoman, Claire confronts her memories of that night to unmask a killer.

When a couple are murdered and their daughter disappears, her boyfriend is the prime suspect. After he is placed on death row his sister sights the missing girl and calls in private investigator Roxane Weary to solve the case.

Naomi Cotter is an investigator who searches for missing children when the police have given up and the trail has gone cold. This novel is told from the points of view of both Naomi and the girl she is searching for in rural Oregon.

When schoolgirls Lucia and Ana vanish during a snowstorm, a dark cloud of suspicion falls over the Pyrenean village of Monteperdido. Five years later, when Ana emerges from the wreckage of a car crash, she is unable – or unwilling – to explain her absence.

This psychological thriller is set in Oban and Newcastle and begins when the trust between Rachel and her partner, Jack, is undermined by an accidentally viewed email. She then sets out to uncover the secrets of his past.

Rachel Jones and Sophie Jenkins were abducted in 1978, and only Rachel came home. Thirty years later, Sophie’s mother commits suicide, and Rachel realises she will never put the past behind her until she knows what happened to her friend.

After six years in prison for murdering her best friend, Kate Reynolds returns to her home town, unable to move on until she proves her innocence. For help, she turns to Madison Attallee, a private investigator now, but six years ago, the first police detective on the murder scene.

In this eighth Mario Conde mystery, the detective navigates deception and corruption in Havana to uncover the story of a Rembrandt portrait of Christ. Recently auctioned in London, the painting and its owners were last seen on a ship that left Cuba in 1939.

Will Hurley, Dublin’s ‘Canal Killer’, is ten years into his prison sentence when the body of a young woman is pulled from the Grand Canal. It looks like a copycat murder and detectives want to speak to Will, but he will only talk to one person: his girlfriend of ten years ago.

Confident, down-to-earth Rosie Strange doesn’t believe in witches. Then she inherits the ramshackle Essex Witch Museum and, with its enigmatic curator Sam Stone, finds herself investigating a series of eerie, unsettling mysteries. The two titles included in this set are: Strange Sight (Read more...) Strange Fascination (Read more...)

Betty Burton creates a powerful sense of place in her stories, which are often set in her own home county of Hampshire and characterized by strong female characters. The three novels in this set follow a working-class Portsmouth girl as she breaks free of her roots and plays her part in the fight against fascism in the 1930s and 1940s. The three titles included in this set are: Not Just a Soldier's War (Read more...) The Girl Now Leaving (Read more...) The Face of Eve (Read more...)

Jane Austen explores the psychology of romantic love as she tells the story of Mrs Dashwood and her daughters Elinor and Marianne – one full of good sense, the other prone to romantic notions.

James Joyce's meticulously detailed portrait of Dublin is built up through tales of fifteen Dubliners, arranged in a sequence from childhood to death and written in a style that Joyce himself described as 'scrupulous meanness'.

Set in a Nottinghamshire mining village, Lawrence's autobiographical novel centres on the relationship between Paul Morel and his mother – an attachment that becomes a struggle as Paul is attracted first to Miriam, a shy country girl, then to Clara, a married woman.

Aiming foursquare at the legal profession, Dickens’s epic follows the case of Jarndyce and Jarndyce as it steamrollers over the lives and aspirations of a huge cast of characters, including Inspector Bucket, Lady Dedlock and the spontaneously combusting Krook.

Following the death of Sir Charles Baskerville – purportedly killed by a monstrous ghostly hound – Sherlock Holmes and Watson pursue the mystery across wild and desolate Dartmoor.

Jerome's comic masterpiece describes the exploits of three men and a fox terrier named Montmorency messing about on the river. The book was first published in 1889 and remains as fresh and as funny as ever.

Franz Kafka’s strange tale of Gregor Samsa, who wakes one morning to find himself transformed into a monstrous bug, is open to many interpretations – probably as many as it has readers. was written in 1912. Translated from the German, with a short introduction, by William Aaltonen.

Described by Mary Beard as ‘A satisfyingly alternative look at Caligula’, Turney’s novel is narrated by the emperor’s sister Livilla, who tells of a quiet, cautious younger brother transformed into the most powerful man in the Roman world; and of Rome itself, a city of bloodshed and betrayal.

In Norway, across Christendom as far as Jerusalem and finally in England, Harald Hardrada, the ‘Last Viking’, narrates his own adventures in an historical novel that evokes the voice of Harald as he describes his life, loves, travels and battles.

For 1,000 years Constantinople had ruled its Byzantine empire; now Mehmet’s 100,000-strong army of Turks is at the gates and the city’s survival lies in the hands of one tortured and long-exiled man – Gregoras. CC Humphreys’s novel tells the story of one of history’s greatest battles.

As the lies and disguises that have protected them from Papal assassins in Venice start to unravel, the young William Shakespeare and his friends prepare to flee to Verona, only to become embroiled in new intrigues, dangers and romances.

In Paris during the Reign of Terror, a young painter, Évariste Gamelin, joins a revolutionary tribunal. Soon he finds himself dispensing brutal ‘justice’, in the name of his ideals and for personal revenge.

History is two things: event and report, which are not necessarily the same. In this provocative book, historian Simon Schama uses the techniques of fiction to explore the eccentric 19th-century Parkman family of Boston – and to interrogate the practice of his own profession.

Originally published in 1920, Scott Fitzgerald's debut novel tells the story of Amory Blaine's journey from youth to maturity, captures the feel of its era and explores themes such as the quest for success and the power of money that were to reappear in the later novels.

Two teenagers have committed a horrible crime: it was caught on CCTV, but the boys haven’t been identified – except by their parents. Now the parents, two brothers and their wives, meet for dinner and confront the question: how far will we go to protect our children?

Dr Marc Schlosser had, among his wealthy and grateful patients, the actor Ralph Meier, who invited the doctor to stay at his holiday villa. Just months later, Meier was dead. Schlosser is accused of negligence, but the actor’s wife suspects him of murder.

Commander Adam Dalgliesh’s only reason for visiting a remote coastal village in Norfolk is to tie up his late aunt’s estate. A sinister figure known as the Whistler is terrorising the local community, and Dalgliesh finds himself drawn into its dark secrets.

Offered a huge fee to ghost-write the biography of a media magnate, a depressed journalist learns about a far-reaching Fascist conspiracy. At first he is sceptical, but then a man is found stabbed to death in a back alley…

A mother sets out on a desperate search after she receives mysterious messages claiming her son, who died on a camping trip, isn’t actually dead. This thriller has also become famed for a brief scene which apparently ‘predicts’ Covid-19.

Grace has never truly got over the death of her teenage best friend Charlie, and is sinking in depression, addiction and relationship breakdown, when she encounters Anna, Charlie’s sister. She invites her into her life, only to discover that all is not as it seems.

On a summer night in Conduit Street, London, a woman approaches Joe Trayne and asks him for help with a dead man. She leads him to her flat, then disappears – leaving Joe with a body in a box. First published in 1946.

Twenty-five years after the writer MR James gathered friends and fellow academics around the fire on Christmas Eve to listen to ghost stories, the same men are being brutally murdered, one by one. Can CI Archie Penrose and Josephine Tey unite to solve their most challenging case to date?

Traumatized following a brutal attack by her ex-boyfriend, Kate Priddy surprises everyone, herself included, when she impulsively accepts an apartment swap offer from her cousin and moves from London to Boston. When she arrives to find her stateside neighbour has been murdered, she needs to work out who, if anyone, she can trust.

With the publication of the explosive biography of a media business tycoon at stake, this thriller follows literary agent Isabel Reed, CIA Station chief Hayden Gray and book editor Jeffrey Fielder through 24 crucial hours as the politically connected magnate tries to suppress its release.

In this 13th case for Chief Inspector Armand Gamache of the Quebec police department, a mysterious figure appears in Three Pines village, causing unease among the inhabitants. When the figure disappears, Gamache’s worst fears are realized: a dead body is discovered.

An ex-FBI profiler, Jefferson Winter is a freelancer now, specializing in serial criminals. When the Sheriff’s office in Eagle Creek, Louisiana, send him a video clip of a man being burned alive, Winter knows they are dealing with a serial killer – but the film is their only clue.

A freelance detective in 1890s London, William Arrowood is engaged by Mr and Mrs Barclay to find their daughter. The simple missing person investigation takes on a sinister aspect when they visit Birdie’s new home, a run-down pig farm south of London.

In the series’ finale, Detective Henrik Holme investigates a father questionably convicted of killing his wife and child. Working together, he and Hanne Wilhelmsen discover connections between the case, an eccentric blogger’s suicide, and a EuroJackpot millionaire’s grandson’s kidnap. Off-mint.

While Precious Ramotswe toys with entering local politics, the latest case for the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency – involving a ruthless property developer’s plans for a ‘Big Fun Hotel’ – falls to the Agency’s mechanic. When danger looms over his investigation, Precious abandons politics to rescue Charlie.

Lyndsay Faye, a lifelong fan and author of Dust and Shadows (in which Sherlock pursues Jack the Ripper), presents fifteen new stories featuring the classic sleuth, recreating Conan Doyle's style while delving deeper into the psychology of Holmes and Watson. Slightly off-mint.

Set in the present day, the second volume in Welsh’s Plague Times trilogy focuses on London-based comic Marcus McFall. Desperate to find sanctuary from the pandemic known as 'The Sweats', he sets off for his family's remote Scottish island.

The story of a young hobo and an escaped slave who set off to find freedom, journeying by raft down the Mississippi, Huckleberry Finn started out as a sequel to Tom Sawyer, but quickly became accepted as Mark Twain’s masterpiece and one of the great works of American literature. First published in 1884.

In Voltaire's sharp and witty tale, Candide and his tutor Pangloss travel the world testing their philosophy that 'All is for the best in this, the best of all possible worlds'.

Thomas De Quincey's powerful autobiographical study describes his addiction to opium and its psychological effects: childhood experience is turned into dreams that are at first euphoric, but become horrific as his dependence on the drug deepens. Published in 1822, the book brought De Quincey literary fame and became an important influence on later writers.

Tracking Magua with Hawkeye in The Last of the Mohicans; travelling into the Heart of Darkness in search of Kurtz; or entering an extinct volcano on a Journey to the Centre of the Earth ... This set of eight novels could be described as the A-list of adventure stories: the other five are The Man Who Would Be King, Robinson Crusoe, The Odyssey, Gulliver’s Travels and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and a ninth book is a journal to record your own exploits.

Franz Kafka’s strange tale of Gregor Samsa, who wakes one morning to find himself transformed into a monstrous bug, is open to many interpretations – probably as many as it has readers – and was written in 1912. Translated from the German, with a short introduction, by William Aaltonen.

Described by its author as ‘a trap for the unwary’, this supernatural tale is narrated by a young governess, new to a country household, who struggles for the souls of her two charges against the evil ghosts of former employees.

Henry James’s 1881 novel follows Isabel Archer, an attractive American girl, as she explores Europe, is courted by a variety of suitors and makes her fateful choice.

A self-taught young stonemason whose ambition is to go to university, Jude Fawley has his hopes dashed when he is tricked into a bad marriage. Once free again, he finds a soul-mate, but society and class conspire to deny them happiness. Hardy described his novel as the story of a ‘deadly war waged between flesh and spirit’.

While he was drunk at a fair, the hay-trusser Michael Henchard sold his wife and child to a sailor for five guineas. Alone the next morning, he vowed to mend his ways and eventually, by hard work and good judgement, he became mayor of Casterbridge. Then, 18 years after being sold, his wife returns and Henchard finds he cannot escape his past.

Scott Fitzgerald's debut novel, originally published in 1920, captures the feel of its era and explores themes such as the quest for success and the power of money as it tells the story of Amory Blaine's journey from youth to maturity.

Based on the ordeal of a real castaway, Alexander Selkirk, Defoe's novel is narrated by Crusoe, who tells how he survived a shipwreck and 28 years on a desert island before being rescued by an English ship. First published in 1719, Robinson Crusoe remains one of the most convincing adventure stories ever written.

Published in 1907, Conrad’s compelling tale of anarchy, espionage and violence is set in the seedy back streets of Victorian London where Adolf Verloc, a shopkeeper who is also a secret agent, is assigned the task of blowing up the Greenwich Observatory.

Originally published in 20 instalments in 1836–7, Dickens's first novel is a comic masterpiece that follows the illustrious Mr Pickwick, Snodgrass, Winkle et al as they progress around England in the late 1820s.

Georgette Heyer began her hugely successful literary career in the 1920s and was writing up until her death in 1974 – her last book was published posthumously. Mostly set in Regency Bath, with meticulously researched period detail, Heyer’s romances were ignored by critics and adored by her readers. The four titles included in this set are:Lady of Quality (Read more...) Friday's Child (Read more...) Black Sheep (Read more...) Bath Tangle (Read more...)

Known for her adventurous, fast-moving plots that feature strong female protagonists, Dilly Court is a Sunday Times bestselling author. This set comprises six novels, each one rich with period details that create an evocative picture of life in London’s slums in the early 20th century. The six titles included in this set are: The Dollmaker's Daughters (Read more...) The Cockney Sparrow (Read more...) Mermaids Singing (Read more...) The Best of Sisters (Read more...) The Constant Heart (Read more...) Tilly True (Read more...)

John Grisham was a practising lawyer before he turned to writing but since his first book, The Firm, appeared in 1991, he has become the master of the modern legal thriller. Our set contains five cases, plus a story inspired by Grisham’s own childhood in rural Arkansas. The six titles included in this set are: The Broker (Read more...) The Associate (Read more...) The Testament (Read more...) A Painted House (Read more...) The Pelican Brief (Read more...) The King of Torts (Read more...)

Kurt Austin and his teams in the National Underwater and Marine Agency (NUMA) take on six more cases including secret conspiracies, criminal masterminds and even environmental catastrophes in this set of NUMA thrillers from Clive Cussler, the master of underwater action and adventure. The 6 titles included in this set are: Zero Hour (Read more...) Nighthawk (Read more...) The Rising Sea (Read more...) Ghost Ship (Read more...) The Pharaoh's Secret (Read more...) Sea of Greed (Read more...)

Over a career spanning nearly fifty years, the Top Ten Sunday Times bestselling author Katie Flynn published more than 90 romantic sagas, many set in Liverpool in the 1930s and 1940s, under several pen names. This set of five books showcases her talent for creating compelling, likeable characters who face up to life's challenges with courage and determination. The five titles included in this set are: Time to Say Goodbye (Read more...) Sunshine and Shadows (Read more...) The Lost Days of Summer (Read more...) The Forget-Me-Not Summer (Read more...) The Cuckoo Child (Read more...)

This novel incorporates magic, politics, the plague and civil war in a tale of Master Astrologer William Lilly, who is in exile in Suffolk in 1641 because of the widespread witch trials, but who is soon invited to return by the King himself.

In 16th-century Venice, taking the city’s secret technology of making mirrors off the island is punishable by death; but one man has a plan and, in other incarnations of Venice, Venice Beach California, 1953 and the Venetian casino in Las Vegas, 2003, other thieves have similar plans for stealing secrets.

When Charles Rennie Mackintosh moved to the Suffolk coast in 1914 the local community were wary of his curious behaviour, even having him arrested. Based on real events this novel reveals, through the eyes of 13-year-old Thomas, how suspicion about the artist escalated. Off-mint.

In 1940, as the Nazis invade Paris, an old man reflects on his life, his work and his travels. This fictionalized biography reimagines the life of Alexandre Yersin, the Swiss microbiologist who found a cure for bubonic plague. Slightly off-mint with felt-tip mark on lower trimmed edge.

Tom Hazard looks like an ordinary 41-year-old history teacher, but he has lived for centuries, moving through Elizabethan England, gold-rush Arizona and jazz-age Paris, witnessing wars and witch hunts, and continually changing his identity. The one thing he must never do is fall in love.

The Madigan children are living separate lives, but when matriarch Rosaleen announces she is selling the family home they return to west Ireland for Christmas. Spanning thirty years, the novel explores the tensions that could break the family apart and how they might be overcome. Slightly off-mint.

When Hannah was diagnosed with a serious heart condition as a child, her father’s drama group staged a faerie cavalcade for her birthday. The fantastical show became a yearly ritual but with the theatre facing closure and Hannah’s health worsening, another day of magic is desperately needed.

In rural Lancashire in 1900 wealthy Silas Fenshaw proposes to his childhood sweetheart, Cathleen, a baker’s daughter. Together they start making plans; so too does a jealous woman who wants Silas – and Fenshaw House – for herself.

Harald Hardrada, last of the Vikings, is the murderer of an emperor and lover of empresses. But when he leaves Byzantium to claim his Norwegian throne, he faces a bitter struggle for power and revenge.

Written in 1904, William Henry Hudson's beautiful love story is set in the vast forests and grasslands of South America, where European traveller Abel falls tragically in love with Rima, a mysterious girl of the Venezuelan jungle. American cut pages.

After a torrential rainstorm triggers a landslide in Shetland, a woman’s body is found in the rubble of a ruined croft. When it emerges that she was dead before the storm, DI Jimmy Perez becomes obsessed with finding out who she was and how she died.

Memory, albino inmate of a Zimbabwe prison, narrates this novel as she fights to save her life against a conviction of murder. Her story begins when, at the age of nine, she is sold by her parents to a stranger.

Inspired by the Japanese tradition of Kaiju (‘strange beast’) – from which the original Godzilla emerged – this anthology of tales introduces a new breed of city-destroying monsters, including Gary MacMahon’s terror from the deep and Frank Wu’s 80-foot, fire-breathing lizard.

The daughter of Jacquetta, Elizabeth Woodville becomes the wife of the charismatic warrior king, Edward IV of York; but amid the Wars of the Roses, she must fight for her family’s survival – particularly that of her two sons, the future ‘Princes in the Tower’.

Close friends Winnie, Frankie and Bella work for the London Auxiliary Ambulance Service throughout the Second World War. The last in the East End Angels series depicting everyday London life in wartime, this follows the Station 75 crew up to VE Day and peacetime.