Reading Essentials: 322 books

Last Train Out must be one of the earliest thrillers to describe the build-up to the Second World War. Its story is built around the fate of a Jewish banker from Vienna to Switzerland to escape capture by the Nazis when Austria is annexed by Germany in March 1938. But the Jewish banker disappears...

In the light of subsequent history, Essays of Persuasion is a remarkably prophetic volume covering a wide range of issues in political economy. In articles on the Versailles Treaty, John Maynard Keynes foresaw all too clearly that excessive Allied demands for reparations and indemnities would lead...

Karen Blixen's Out of Africa is the lyrical and luminous memoir of Africa that launched a million tourist trails. In 1914 Karen Blixen arrived in Kenya with her husband to run a coffee farm. Instantly drawn to the land, she spent her happiest years there until the plantation failed. Karen...

Set in 18th century England. Francis Herries is an eccentric, larger-than-life man tortured by a strong romantic streak. He uproots his entire family from Doncaster, and takes them to live in a crumbling manor-house in the wilds of Borrowdale. A violent and impetuous man, a faithless husband and a...

Anne Jocelyn was beautiful, wealthy, charming and spoilt to the core. She was also killed on a beach in Brittany early in the war. Her estranged husband inherited her money and, three years later, is planning marriage once again. So when Anne arrives at the family home unannounced, having at last...

In this bestselling self-help book, a successful businessman reveals the secrets behind harnessing the unlimited energies of the subconscious. Millions have benefited from these visualization techniques, which show how to turn your thoughts and dreams into effective actions that can lead to enhanced...

Two unknown amateurs help Tommy Hambledon, a British Foreign Intelligence officer, track down Nazi spies in England.

Due to his uncle's diabolical will, Jervis must marry within three months of his uncle's death, or the huge estate and vast fortune will go to his fiance, Rosamund. When Rosamund dumps him just two days before the wedding, Jervis must scramble to find someone else.

In Doctor Dolittle in the Moon Doctor Dolittle has landed on the Moon. He meets Otho Bludge the Moon Man, a Stone Age artist who was the only human on the Moon when it broke away from the Earth. The animals of the Moon flock to Doctor Dolittle, and he discovers how to communicate with the intelligent plants there too. But will the lunar flora and fauna ever let him leave?

A fearless leader with 104 victories to his name, Galland was a legendary hero in Germany's Luftwaffe. Now he offers an insider's look at the division's triumphs in Poland and France and the last desperate battle to save the Reich. "The clearest picture yet of how the Germans lost their war in the air."--Time.

It was a corpse, disfigured and unrecognisable. The sexton found it, and appropriately it was in the churchyard. The Nine Tailors is one of Dorothy Sayers' finest books of detection, featuring her internationally famous detective creation, Lord Peter Wimsey.

The medico-legal forensic investigator, Dr. Thorndyke, becomes embroiled in an astonishing case when a man is found underwater in a pond one morning. This wickedly entertaining detective story reveals that the victim was murdered through a lethal injection and someone out there is trying to cover it up.

11 short stories with entertaining and elaborate plots by the Danish writer. Almost all of Blixen's tales weave Gothic themes such as incest and murder with myth and bewitchment. Very frequently she portrays people with unusual mental states in great depth and with remarkable imaginative clarity.

90-year-old General Fendman was definitely dead, but no one knew exactly when he had died - and the time of death was the determining factor in a half-million-pound inheritance. Lord Peter Wimsey would need every bit of his amazing skills to unravel the mysteries of why the General's lapel was without...