Books must read 

Set in a poverty-stricken Glasgow in the early 1980s, Douglas Stuart’s Booker Prize-winning debut is a heartbreaking story which lays bare the ruthlessness of poverty and the limits of love. Agnes Bain has always dreamed of greater things, but when her husband abandons her she finds herself trapped in a decimated mining town with her three children, and descends deeper and deeper into drink. Her son Shuggie tries to help Agnes long after her other children have fled, but he too must abandon her to save himself. Shuggie is different, and he is picked on by the local children and condemned by adults. But he believes that if he tries his hardest he can escape this hopeless place.

One of the most controversial and talked-about novels in modern history, American Psycho is the story of Patrick Bateman, a New York City high-flier with a penchant for fine wines, slickly cut suits and brutal murder. As Bateman's obsession with his hedonistic passions comes to a head, he descends into madness, with macabre and darkly comedic repercussions. Read more about the controversial history of American Psycho. 

Written in 1985, Blood Meridian is set in the anarchic world opened up by America’s westward expansion. Through the hostile landscape of the Texas–Mexico border wanders the Kid, a fourteen year-old Tennessean who is quickly swept up in the relentless tide of blood. But the apparent chaos is not without its order: while Americans hunt Indians – collecting scalps as their bloody trophies – they too are stalked as prey. Powerful, mesmerizing and savagely beautiful, Blood Meridian is considered one of the most important works in American fiction of the last century. 

This Booker Prize-winning novel bottles the essence of the 1980s, as the story follows a quest for beauty against a backdrop of politics, greed and friendships turned toxic. When twenty-year-old Nick Guest moves into an attic room in the Notting Hill home of the wealthy Feddens he is innocent of politics and money. But as he is swept up into the Feddens’ world, Nick must confront the collisions between his own desires, and a world he can never truly belong to. Alan Hollinghurst’s writing style is both stripped back and poetic, and its sensitivity makes this book a true standout.  

Shortlisted for the Booker Prize and celebrated as ‘the great gay novel’, Hanya Yanagihara’s immensely powerful story of brotherly love and the limits of human endurance has had a visceral impact on many a reader. Willem, Jude, Malcolm and JB meet at college in Massachusetts and form a firm friendship, moving to New York upon graduation. Over the years their friendships deepen and darken as they celebrate successes and face failures, but their greatest challenge is Jude himself – an increasingly broken man scarred by an unspeakable childhood. This is a book that will stay with you long after the last page. 

Jack Gladney is the creator and chairman of Hitler studies at the College-on-the-Hill. This is the story of his absurd life; a life that is going well enough, until a chemical spill from a train carriage releases an ‘Airborne Toxic Event’ and Jack is forced to confront his biggest fear – his own mortality. The combination of social satire and metaphysical dilemma that Don DeLillo uses to expose our rampant consumerism and media saturation makes White Noise an unmissable work of modern fiction.  

This Booker Prize-winning novel and 1990s literary sensation follows fraternal twins, Rahel and Estha, in the state of Kerala, India in 1969. Armed only with the invincible innocence of children, they fashion a childhood for themselves in the shade of the wreck that is their family. But when their English cousin and her mother arrive for a Christmas visit, the twins learn that things can change in a day. Covering themes of love, madness and hope, this story uncoils with an agonizing sense of foreboding and inevitability. Yet, readers will not be prepared for what lies at the heart of it.