 | Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood
Buy new: £6.63 / Used from: £1.46 2003. Genetic engineering and information technology, frighteningly out of control. Brilliantly researched. Much more than a novel, a lowdown on the mess were making of our precious world.
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 | The Story of Lucy Gault by William Trevor
Buy new: £5.74 / Used from: £0.01 2002. Impeccable, tragic novel about paying the price for one's caprices.
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 | The Hiding Place by Trezza Azzopardi
Buy new: £4.57 / Used from: £0.01 2000. Dysfunctional Family. Capital D, capital F...
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 | The Essence of the Thing by Madeleine St.John
Buy used from: £0.01 1997. Balm for anyone whose happiness has suddenly been shattered. Brilliantly handled.
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 | The Folding Star by Alan Hollinghurst
Buy new: £6.96 / Used from: £0.01 1994. Few novels combine decadence with downright lust so brilliantly. Start with The Swimming Pool Library, but then move on to this.
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 | Daughters of the House by Michele Roberts
Buy new: £5.49 / Used from: £0.01 1992. Skeletons in the cupboard, disturbingly brought to light.
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 | The Book of Evidence by John Banville
Buy used from: £0.18 1989. Why is he so underrated? Start with this and keep going.
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 | Cat's Eye by Margaret Atwood
Buy new: £6.47 / Used from: £0.01 1989. Brilliant evocation of childhood and associated misery.
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 | Nice Work by David Lodge
Buy new: £5.22 / Used from: £0.01 1988. Brilliantly perceptive comic novel about Britain in the eighties, and the clashes of values brought to a head by Thatcherism.
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 | The Book and the Brotherhood (Penguin fiction) by Iris Murdoch
Buy used from: £0.01 1987. Her last great novel.
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 | Gabriel's Lament by Paul Bailey
Buy used from: £0.01 1986. Searching for lost mother-love. With a devastating twist in the tail.
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 | The Handmaid's Tale (Contemporary classics) by Margaret Atwood
Buy new: £4.97 / Used from: £0.01 1986. Frightening, and intensely beautiful. The most important novel of its kind since Orwell's 1984.
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 | Waterland by Graham Swift
Buy used from: £0.01 1983. Wonderful novel about childhood, memory and the English countryside. At least as good as his Last Orders, which won in 1996.
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 | Earthly Powers (Penguin Modern Classics) by Anthony Burgess
Buy used from: £12.25 1980. Encyclopedic, kaleidoscopic. One of the great novels of the second half of the twentieth century.
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 | Quartet in Autumn by Barbara Pym
Buy used from: £0.01 1977. An overwhelmingly touching story about elderly people muddling their way forwards. And everything else she wrote is just as good. A vastly underrated writer.
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 | The Black Prince (Vintage Classics) by Iris Murdoch
Buy new: £6.96 / Used from: £1.99 1973. As good as her The Sea, The Sea, which won in 1978. A meditation on the value of art, but also a great story.
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