10 must-read Novels

1. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

“Nothing is so painful to the human mind as a great and sudden change.”

2. A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini

“Yet love can move people to act in unexpected ways and move them to overcome the most daunting obstacles with startling heroism”

3. Far from the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy

“It is difficult for a woman to define her feelings in language which is chiefly made by men to express theirs.”

4. Passing by Nella Larsen

“Pain, fear, and grief were things that left their mark on people. Even love, that exquisite torturing emotion, left its subtle traces on the countenance.”

5. The Panopticon by Jenni Fagan

“That watchtower doesnae even need staff in it; it just watches - all on its own.”

6. White Noise by Don DeLillo

“No sense of the irony of human experience, that we are the highest form of life on earth, and yet ineffably sad because we know what no other animal knows, that we must die.”

7. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

“There is a stubbornness about me that never can bear to be frightened at the will of others. My courage always rises at every attempt to intimidate me.”

8. Small Island by Andrea Levy

“There are some words that once spoken will split the world in two. There would be the life before you breathed them and then the altered life after they'd been said.”

9. The Odd Women by George Gissing

“The love of a man and a woman who can think intelligently may be the best thing life has to offer them.”

10. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë

“I am no bird; and no net ensnares me: I am a free human being with an independent will.”

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Helen and Mary