English Department
Key Stage 4
Reading Recommendations
Most of these novels can be found in the school library.
Where an author has written several novels, we have only listed one here as an example.
Prose:
Adams, Douglas
Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
Atwood, Margaret
The Handmaid’s Tale
Austen, Jane
Pride and Prejudice
Banks, Ian
The Wasp Factory
Blackman, Malorie
Noughts and Crosses
Brontë, Charlotte
Jane Eyre
Brontë, Emily
Wuthering Heights
Brown, Dan
The Da Vinci Code
Bryson, Bill
Notes from a Small Island
Burgess, Melvin
Junk
Clarke, Susanna
Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell
Collins, Wilkie
The Woman in White
Conan Doyle, Arthur
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
Coupland, Douglas
Girlfriend in a Coma
Dickens, Charles
David Copperfield
Du Maurier, Daphne
Rebecca
Faulks, Sebastian
Birdsong
Fitzgerald, F.Scott
The Great Gatsby
Freud, Esther
Hideous Kinky
Golding, William
Lord of the Flies
Greene, Graham
Brighton Rock
Haddon, Mark
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time
Hardy, Thomas
Far from the Madding Crowd
Harper Lee, Nell
To Kill a Mockingbird
Harris, Robert
Enigma
Heller, Joseph
Catch 22
Heller, Zoe
Notes on a Scandal
Hemingway, Ernest
A Farewell to Arms
Hill, Susan
The Woman in Black
Homer
The Iliad
Hornby, Nick
Fever Pitch
Kingsolver, Barbara
The Poisonwood Bible
Ishiguro, Kazuo
Never Let Me Go
James, Henry
The Turn of the Screw
Joyce, James
Ulysses
Kidd, Sue Monk
The Secret Life of Bees
Lawrence, D.H
Sons and Lovers
Martel, Yann
Life of Pi
McCarthy, Cormac
The Road
McEwan, Ian
Atonement
Orwell, George
1984
Pratchett, Terry
The Colour of Magic
Rosoff, Meg
How I Live Now
Salinger, J.D
The Catcher in the Rye
Shelley, Mary
Frankenstein
Simpson, Joe
Touching the Void
Smith, Zadie
White Teeth
Steinbeck, John
Of Mice and Men
Stevenson, Robert Louis
The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
Stockett, Kathryn
The Help
Stoker, Bram
Dracula
Syal, Meera
Anita and Me
Zafón, Carlos Ruiz
Shadow of the Wind
Zephaniah, Benjamin
Refugee Boy
Walker, Alice
The Color Purple
Wells, H.G
The War of the Worlds
Wilde, Oscar
The Picture of Dorian Grey
Woolf, Virginia
Mrs Dalloway
Zusak, Markus
The Book Thief
Any Shakespeare play or collection of sonnets
Poetry:
John Agard, Simon Armitage, Maya Angelou, John Betjeman, William Blake, Robert
Browning, Gillian Clarke, Emily Dickinson, Carol Ann Duffy, Robert Frost, Seamus
Heaney, Ted Hughes, Rudyard Kipling, Grace Nichols, Sylvia Plath, Christina
Rossetti, Dylan Thomas