British

In the relentless summer heat, four abruptly orphaned children retreat into a shadowy, isolated world, and find their own strange and unsettling ways of fending for themselves.

A collection of texts exploring the ideology of celebrity and death in a surreal state that only J.G. Ballard can achieve.

The Island of Doctor Moreau is a classic of early science fiction and remains one of Wells’ best-known books.

Isserley picks up hitchhikers with big muscles. She has a remarkable face and wears the thickest corrective lenses anyone has ever seen. Her hitchhikers are a mixed bunch, but Isserley is only interested in whether they have families.

Julius lives in a cabin in the hunting heartland of the Maine woods, with only his books and his dog for company. That is until the morning he finds that his dog has been shot dead – and not by accident.

The Wasp Factory comes from Frank’s invention of a house of mirrors, except instead of it being a fun room, it’s a torture device.

Take this as a warning; Crash is not for the faint-hearted or the literary reader. It falls far down the cracks in the gaping abyss between.

Rushdie, at the time, was very much the ‘poster boy’ of free expression in a world of heavy censorship.