 | The White Hotel by D M Thomas
Buy new: £4.99 / Used from: £1.25 DM Thomas is amazing. I'm surprised he is not better known. Vivid story telling, sometimes surreal, very Freudian, very erotic. This is his masterpiece, but they're all good.
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 | Collected Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe (Wordsworth Special Editions) (Wordsworth Editions) by Edgar Allan Poe
Buy new: £4.27 / Used from: £2.43 I'm not normally so keen on short story collections but these famous tales are amazing. One of the rare writers who combines great writing with great plots.
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 | The Magus (Vintage Classics) by John Fowles
Buy new: £5.36 / Used from: £3.46 All Fowles books are good, and all very different. This is a bit of a student classic. Also try The Collector, A Maggot, and French Lieutenant's Woman.
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 | Therese Raquin (Penguin Classics) by Émile Zola
Buy new: £4.94 / Used from: £2.42 A classic with a gripping murder plot.
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 | Rebecca (Virago modern classics) by Daphne Du Maurier
Buy new: £5.00 / Used from: £1.31 The ultimate novel. I don't expect there are many people reading this list who haven't read it already although it helps put the other recommendations in context of taste.
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 | The Chymical Wedding (Picador Books) by Lindsay Clarke
Buy used from: £0.01 An atmospheric tale of alchemy, paganism and green men.
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 | Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami
Buy new: £5.00 / Used from: £3.24 I've only just discovered this author, and he is currently my favourite. A deceptively simple style of telling simple stories with a surrealistic edge. This one straighter than some & a good first.
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 | Flying in to Love by D.M. Thomas
Buy new: £5.39 / Used from: £0.01 This is one of those fascinating stories that mixes historical fact with fiction. Very clever.
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 | Jane Eyre (Penguin Popular Classics) by Charlotte Brontë
Buy new: £2.00 / Used from: £0.01 Ok, not a very original choice, but a classic that stands out from other classics in my memory.
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 | Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
Buy new: £5.46 / Used from: £0.01 Not to everyone's taste but for me the best book I've read over the last few years. A vast satisfying Russian Doll of a novel.
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 | One Hundred Years of Solitude (Essential Penguin) by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Buy used from: £0.01 The greatest South American family saga
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 | The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
Buy new: £4.44 / Used from: £0.40 A little gem of storytelling. Unique.
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 | Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
Buy new: £2.00 / Used from: £0.01 Conrad's classic short story retold in the film Apocolypse Now
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 | Behold The Man (S.F. Masterworks) by Michael Moorcock
Buy new: £4.49 / Used from: £1.96 A really clever plot. A time traveller goes back to meet Jesus with blasphemous consequences.
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 | The Chrysalids by John Wyndham
Buy used from: £0.01 Another masterful storyteller. They are all great, this one just takes top spot for me.
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 | The New Confessions by William Boyd
Buy new: £5.95 / Used from: £0.01 A romp through the 20th century through the eyes of a flawed movie mogul.
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 | Time's Arrow or the Nature of the Offence by Martin Amis
Buy new: £5.04 / Used from: £1.85 An original novel playing around with time running backwards, a bit like the film Memento. I preferred this to his more celebrated London Fields.
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 | The Lord of The Rings (Based on the 50th Anniversary Single volume edition 2004) by J.R.R. Tolkien
Buy new: £12.47 / Used from: £0.01 Oh yes, of course. The ultimate fantasy, perfect boys' escapism.
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 | The Rabbit Omnibus by John Updike
Buy used from: £2.58 An acknowledged 20th century American masterpiece. This comprises the first 3 in the series. If you want just one read Rabbit Run, but you'll want more!
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 | Into Thin Air: Personal Account of the Everest Disaster by Jon Krakauer
Buy new: £5.36 / Used from: £0.01 I love these human endurance adventures
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 | 1984 Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell
Buy new: £5.09 / Used from: £2.95 The best of its kind
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 | East of Eden (Penguin Modern Classics) by John Steinbeck
Buy new: £6.46 / Used from: £4.46 Great straight forward deceptively simple writing. A magnificent vast novel.
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 | Being Dead by Jim Crace
Buy used from: £0.01 A great beach read
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 | Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter by Mario Vargos Llosa
Buy new: £5.96 / Used from: £0.01 Another favourite from my South American Magic Realism phase
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 | Labyrinths: Selected Stories and Other Writings (Penguin Modern Classics) by Jorge Borges
Buy new: £6.47 / Used from: £3.50 A classic collection of essays and shorts. Some devastating tales, some only a few paras long.
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