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Since it was first published in 1954, The Lord of the Rings has been a book people have treasured. Steeped in unrivalled magic and otherworldliness, its sweeping fantasy has touched the hearts of young and old alike. Sauron, the Dark Lord, has gathered to him the Rings of Power - the means by which he will be able to rule the world. All he lacks in his plan for dominion is the Ruling Ring, which has fallen into the hands of the hobbit Bilbo Baggins.

This ironic novel of manners follows the tale of Elizabeth Bennett and her prejudice for her suitor Darcy. The delineations of middle-class attitudes, moral firmness and the author's sense of comic and satirical ridicule make "Pride and Prejudice" one of the enduring classics.

"His Dark Materials" trilogy consisting of "Northern Lights", "The Subtle Knife" and "The Amber Spyglass" starts when Lyra's friend Roger disappears. She and her daemon, Pantalaimon, determine to find him. Their quest leads them to the bleak splendour of the North where a team of scientists are conducting unspeakably horrible experiments.

Just when Arthur thinks he has found his true vocation on the backwater planet of Lamuella, the original Trillian turns up with more than a little spanner in the works. A stolen ship, a dramatic stampede and a new and sinister Guide lead to a race to save the Earth again. But this time, will they succeed?

The fourth book of the Potter's phenomena starts. Harry Potter can't wait for the start of the school year. It is his fourth year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, and there are spells to be learnt and Divination lessons (sigh) to be attended. Harry is expecting these: however, other quite unexpected events are already on the march.

"Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit 'em, but remember it's a sin to kill a mockingbird". This is a lawyer's advice to his children as he defends the real mockingbird of the story - a black man charged with raping a white girl in the 1930s.

The story of Winnie-the-Pooh and his friends Piglet, Christopher Robin, Piglet, Rabbit and Owl, Kanga and Roo - not forgetting Eeyore - and their adventures in the Hundred Acre Wood.

A satire on the horrors of totalitarianism, "Nineteen Eighty-Four" is set in a society run by Big Brother where people are made to conform to orthodoxy by the Thought Police. Winston Smith yearns for truth and liberty, but he comes to realize that he cannot outwit the forces at work.

Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy are evacuated to a house during the war wherein lives a vague professor. Left much to their own devices, they find a way into another world - Narnia - and discover Aslan, the lion king in hiding.

The story of Jane Eyre, who experiences the miseries of being an orphaned child in early Victorian society, before becoming a governess at Thornfield Hall and meeting Mr Rochester. Jane shares many of Brontes' own beliefs about the position of women, arguing for a form of sexual equality.

At the heart of Joseph Heller's bestselling novel, first published in 1961, is a satirical indictment of military madness and stupidity, and the desire of the ordinary man to survive it. It is the tale of the dangerously sane Captain Yossarian, who spends his time in Italy plotting to survive.

The saga of two Yorkshire families in the remote Pennine Hills. The book has been interpreted as an historical romance, a ghostly thriller, a psychological love-story, a religious allegory and a nature poem. This is the author's only novel.

Set in France before and during World War I, this is the story of a young Englishman who is impelled through a series of extreme experiences, including a traumatic love affair which tears apart the bourgeois French family with whom he lives.

A tale of an innocent young bride who finds her life blighted by the mystery surrounding the death of her husband's previous wife.

A 16-year old American boy relates in his own words the experiences he goes through at school and after, and reveals with unusual candour the workings of his own mind. What does a boy in his teens think and feel about his teachers, parents, friends and acquaintances?

The tales of Ratty, Mole, Badger and Toad. When Mole goes boating with the Water Rat instead of spring-cleaning, he discovers a new world. As well as the river and the Wild Wood, there is Toad's craze for fast travel which leads him and his friends on a whirl of trains, barges, gipsy caravans and motor cars and even into battle.

A mysterious benefactor provides Philip Pirrip with the chance to escape his poor upbringing. Aspiring to be a gentleman, and encouraged by his expectations of wealth, he abandons his friends and moves to London. His expectations prove to be unfounded, however, and he must return home penniless.

A classic story of four young women who struggle to overcome the trials of keeping up appearences whilst battling poverty and awaiting news of the fate of their father who is fighting the Civil War.

t is 1941 and Captain Antonio Corelli, a young Italian officer, is posted to the Greek island of Cephallonia as part of the occupying forces. At first he is ostracised by the locals, but as a conscientious but far from fanatical soldier, whose main aim is to have a peaceful war, he proves to be civilised, humorous - and a consummate musician.

This epic novel is centred on Napoleon's war with Russia. It expresses Tolstoy's view that history is an inexorable process which man cannot influence. Three of the characters, Natasha Rostov, Prince Andrew Bolkonsky and Pierre Bezukhov illustrate Tolstoy's philosophy.

When beautiful Scarlett O'Hara learns that Ashley Wilkes, the man she loves, is going to marry another woman, her broken heart seems far worse than the tragedies of the Civil War. However, one man knows her secret, and he wants her for himself.

Harry Potter thinks he is an ordinary boy - until he is rescued by a beetle-browed giant of a man, enrols at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, learns to play Quidditch and does battle in a deadly duel.

This sequel to "The Philosopher's Stone" picks up where the first book finished, with Harry returning to Hogwarts School after his holidays. He is in his second year and little does he know that this year will be just as eventful as the last - even getting there is an adventure in itself!

When Harry and his friends go back for their third year at Hogwarts, the atmosphere is tense. There's an escaped murderer on the loose and the sinister prison guards of Azkaban have been called in to guard the school. Lessons, however, must go on and the subjects include Care of Magical Creatures.

This is the story of an adventure undertaken by a company of dwarves in search of dragon-guarded gold. A reluctant partner in this perilous quest is Bilbo Baggins, a comfort-loving, unambitious hobbit, who surprises even himself by his resourcefulness and skill as a burglar.

Set in Hardy's Wessex, this is a moving novel of hypocrisy and double standards. It tells of Tess Durbeyfield, the daughter of a poor and dissipated villager, who learns that she may be descended from the ancient family of d'Urbeville. Seduced by Alec d'Urbeville, she bears his child.

This novel is a complex tale of idealism, disillusion, profligacy, loyalty and frustrated love. This analysis of the life of a provincial English town during the time of social unrest prior to the Reform Bill of 1832 is told through the lives of Dorothea Brooke and Dr Tertius Lydgate.

Eleven-year-old Owen Meany, playing in a Little League baseball game in New Hampshire, hits a foul ball and kills his best friend's mother. Owen does not believe in accidents and believes he is God's instrument. What happens to Owen after that 1953 foul is both extraordinary and terrifying.

Steinbeck's Pulitzer Prize-winning account of dispossessed migrant labour in the 1930s. Hope turns remorselessly to cruel disillusionment as, with thousands of fellow "Okies", the Joads face the shameless exploitation of Californian orchard-owners.

When Alice follows the White Rabbit down the rabbit-hole, she enters a world of strange scenes and remarkable characters: the Mad Hatter, the Duchess, the Cheshire Cat, the Mock Turtle and many other creatures.

Shortlisted for the 1991 Smarties Prize, this story aims to be both moving and entertaining. 10-years-old Tracy tells of her life in a children's home, and how much she would like a real home and a real family.

A modern parable told without moralizing. Macondo, a paradise land, is changed for ever after Melquiades the gipsy arrives with his knowledge and tools of discovery. The settlement's patriarch uses them to reinvent man's seminal discoveries.

A story of passion and idealism, which describes a group of men and women in the Middle Ages whose destinies are fatefully linked with the building of a cathedral. In a country torn by civil war, two generations struggle to rise above their primitive circumstances and create something beautiful.

In this novel, Dickens describes one boy growing up in a world which is by turns magical, fearful and grimly realistic. In a book which is part autobiographical, the novelist transmutes his life-experience into a series of comic and sentimental adventures.

Mr Wonka's inventions are out of this world. He's thought up every kind of sweet imaginable in his amazing chocolate factory, but no one has ever seen inside, or met Mr Wonka! Charlie can't believe his luck when he finds a golden ticket and wins the trip of a lifetime around the famous factory.

This work of fiction is a tale of pirates and villains, maps, treasure and shipwreck. When young Jim Hawkins finds a package in Captain Flint's sea chest, he could not know that the map inside it would lead him to unimaginable treasure. Mutiny and mayhem ensue.

A novel of the courage of an English girl during World War II.

Differing from Austen's other novels in adopting a more sober tone, Austen's last novel describes the ordeals of Anne Elliot, who has been persuaded by her family to reject Captain Wentworth. The novel opens several years later, when she is 27 and still unattached.

Herbert's evocative, epic tale is set on the desert planet Arrakis, the focus for a complex political and military struggle with galaxy-wide repercussions.

Emma Woodhouse is one of Austen's most captivating and vivid characters. Beautiful, spoilt, vain and irrepressibly witty, Emma organizes the lives of the inhabitants of her sleepy little village and plays matchmaker with devastating effect.

LM Montgomery's 'Anne of Green Gables' is a classic of children's literature. Marilla Cuthbert and her brother Matthew want to adopt an orphan, to help on the farm at Green Gables. They ask for a boy, but they get Anne, who has red hair and freckles, and who talks and talks and talks. They didn't want a girl, but how can they send a child back, like an unwanted parcel!

One of the most remarkable and bizarre British novels of the 1970s, WATERSHIP DOWN'S success has been so great that it is one of the very few books that can be described as having changed a generation's view of the world.

Everybody who is anybody is seen at Gatsby's glittering parties. None of the socialites understand Gatsby. He seems to always be watching and waiting, though no one knows what for. But as the tragic story unfolds, Gatsby's destructive dreams and passions are revealed.

The story of Edmund Dantes, self-styled Count of Monte Cristo. The novel presents a powerful conflict between good and evil, embodied in an epic saga that is complicated by the hero's discomfort with the implications of his own actions.

Written at the end of the World War II, this novel mourns the passing of the aristocratic world which Waugh knew in his youth and recalls the sensuous pleasures denied him by the austerities of war. In so doing, it provides a study of the conflict between the demands of religion and of the flesh.

A cautionary tale in which the animals of Manor Farm oust their human masters and take control of their own lives, but the initial idealism of the creatures soon gives way to human-like power struggles and tyranny. From the author of Nineteen Eighty-Four.

This classic by Charles Dickens relates the conversion of Scrooge, 'a grasping old sinner', by a series of ghostly visitations from the spirits of Christmas past, present and yet to come. Quentin Blake brings visual life to the familiar characters with his spontaneous style of drawing, which have energy and movement in every line

The theme of this novel is the contrast of a patient and generous love with unscrupulous passion. Bathsheba is courted by the brilliant Troy, the obsessive Boldwood and the faithful Gabriel Oak. The third is successful in his suit, but only after violence and murder have eliminated the other two.

Young Willie Beech is evacuated to the country as Britain stands on the brink of World War II. A sad, deprived child, he slowly begins to flourish under the care of old Tom Oakley - but his-new found happiness is shattered by a summons from his mother back in London.

This novel revolves around Penelope Keeling, daughter of the late Pre-Raphaelite artist Lawrence Stern and mother of three very different children. The discovery that her treasured possession - Lawrence's painting "The Shell Seekers" - is worth a small fortune throws her family into turmoil.