Clare Higgins

Ten-year-old Amy has been abducted from Acid Row. The revelation that a known paedophile has been re-located to the area leads to rioting, which, after five hours of savagery, leaves three people dead. X rated, contains offensive language and explicit sex.

This, Vera Brittain's autobiographical first novel, published in 1923, is an account of life in Oxford and London following the First World War. It was written when she shared a flat with Winifred Holtby, the friend she made at Oxford University and who helped Vera survive the crushing blows of the war.

According to her own complex moral calculations, Katie Carr has earned her affair. She's a doctor, after all, and doctors are decent people, and on top of that, her husband David is the self-styled Angriest Man in Holloway. But when David suddenly becomes good - properly, maddeningly, give-away-all-his-money good - Katie's sums no longer add up, and she is forced to ask herself some very hard questions. Nick Hornby's brilliant new novel, a No. 1 bestseller in the UK and Ireland, offers a painfully funny account of modern marriage and parenthood, and asks that most difficult of questions: what does it mean to be good?

Jenny and Laura Nightingale are as different as chalk and cheese, Jenny being pretty with a lively sense of humour whilst Laura is spoilt and moody. When Jenny is pursued by the local boys Laura's resentment begins to build.