I am one of those people who always feels sorry for the monster at the end of the movie. I am always more disturbed by the avenging townspeople’s bloodlust than the monster’s destructiveness. At a deeper level, for me these horror stories actually depict compassion, acceptance, and the hysteria whipped up by self-righteous mobs. They are books with very dark themes, and they generally do not have happy endings, but rather than being depressing, I find them instructive, even enriching, and certainly valuable. More than anything, they show me – in bloody detail – the terrifying limits of conformity.
For high school senior Parker, anything less than success is failure. A dropped extracurricular, a C on a calc quiz – one misstep, and his meticulously constructed life splinters. The countdown to HYP (Harvard, Yale, Princeton) has begun, and he will stay focused, no matter what.
That's why he has to keep it a secret. The pocketful of breath mints. The weird smell in the bathroom. Only Parker's little sister, Danielle, seems to notice that he's withering away.
You’ve probably come across the byword “Orwellian” in current headlines. Well, it’s time to read the primary source for yourself. (And if you read 1984 – or any of these classics – in school, read them again!) If you did not read them, you’ll finally gain first-hand mastery of all those slogans people are constantly throwing around (Big Brother is Watching You, Thought Police, Ministry of Truth, 2+2=5).
1984 is the year in which it happens. The world is divided into three superstates. In Oceania, the Party's power is absolute. Every action, word, gesture and thought is monitored under the watchful eye of Big Brother and the Thought Police. In the Ministry of Truth, the Party's department for propaganda, Winston Smith's job is to edit the past. Over time, the impulse to escape the machine and live independently takes hold of him and he embarks on a secret and forbidden love affair. As he writes the words 'DOWN WITH BIG…
Even though this is another book by the same author, it can’t be left off this list. For one, it’s a very easy read, almost like a child’s storybook. And, once again, you’ll gain first-hand knowledge of slogans such as “Some animals are more equal than others.” You may even wince when the sheep in the story start chanting…familiar, isn’t it?
The perfect edition for any Orwell enthusiasts' collection, discover Orwell's classic dystopian masterpiece beautifully reimagined by renowned street artist Shepard Fairey
'All animals are equal. But some animals are more equal than others.'
Mr Jones of Manor Farm is so lazy and drunken that one day he forgets to feed his livestock. The ensuing rebellion under the leadership of the pigs Napoleon and Snowball leads to the animals taking over the farm. Vowing to eliminate the terrible inequities of the farmyard, the renamed Animal Farm is organised to benefit all who walk on four legs. But as time passes, the…
The mother of all monster stories, but deep in its soul, more a tragedy than a horror show, depicting the disastrous limits of acceptance, compassion, and deadly ignorance. In a world that seems to value free thinking less and less, this book will make you think long after you put it down. Mostly, though, it will force you to come to your own conclusions, which is actually the essence of free thinking, no matter who agrees or disagrees with you.
One of the BBC's '100 Novels That Shaped Our World'
'That rare story to pass from literature into myth' The New York Times
Mary Shelley's chilling Gothic tale was conceived when she was only eighteen, living with her lover Percy Shelley on Lake Geneva. The story of Victor Frankenstein who, obsessed with creating life itself, plunders graveyards for the material to fashion a new being, but whose botched creature sets out to destroy his maker, would become the world's most famous work of horror fiction, and remains a devastating exploration of the limits of human creativity. Based on the third…
Similar in vein, a more opaque story than Frankenstein, and with a more indeterminate morality surrounding the main character, who is, after all, a crackpot murderer, but eliciting perhaps the same complex reactions toward him and the other characters at the book’s tragic ending.
The most vicious of the five books, but also the most honest. At its heart, Lord of the Flies is about the thinness of civilization’s veneer; how quickly a community disintegrates down to its barest savagery. It doesn’t take much to smash society – the strong preying on the weak - when kids with runny noses whoop through a jungle impaling each other with spears because they can’t think of anything else to do.
A plane crashes on a desert island and the only survivors, a group of schoolboys, assemble on the beach and wait to be rescued. By day they inhabit a land of bright fantastic birds and dark blue seas, but at night their dreams are haunted by the image of a terrifying beast. As the boys' delicate sense of order fades, so their childish dreams are transformed into something more primitive, and their behaviour starts to take on a murderous, savage significance.
First published in 1954, Lord of the Flies is one of the most celebrated and widely read of modern…
I write historical crime fiction, and my latest novel is set in a hospital, a real place, now closed. The South London Hospital for Women and Children (1912–1985) was set up by pioneering suffragists and women surgeons Maud Chadburn and Eleanor Davies-Colley (the first woman admitted to the Royal College of Surgeons) and I recreate the now almost-forgotten hospital in my book. Events take place in 1946 when wartime trauma still impacts upon a society exhausted by conflict, and my book choices also reflect this.
A historical thriller set in south London just after World War II, as Britain returns to civilian life and the men return home from the fight, causing the women to leave their wartime roles. The South London Hospital for Women and Children is a hospital, (based on a real place) run by women for women and must make adjustments of its own. As austerity bites, the coldest Winter then on record makes life grim. Then a young nurse goes missing.
Days later, her body is found behind a locked door, and two women from the hospital, unimpressed by the police response, decide to investigate. Highly atmospheric and evocative of a distinct period and place.
One cold dark night, as a devastated London shivers through the transition to post-war life, a young nurse goes missing from the South London Hospital for Women & Children. Her body is discovered hours later behind a locked door.
Two women from the hospital join forces to investigate the case. Determined not to return to the futures laid out for them before the war, the unlikely sleuths must face their own demons and dilemmas as they pursue - The Midnight Man.
‘A mystery that evokes the period – and a recovering London – in…
