Impress your friends this summer, (or the person on the next sun lounger), with some…
SUMMER CLASSICS!!!
Easy to read, easy to fall asleep over, easy to wake up to and start all over again having realised you dozed through the previous three chapters…
John Buchan, The Thirty-Nine Steps
The grandaddy of all thrillers; nail-biting action from beginning to end in this exciting manhunt, action man Richard Hannay racing from the gaslit streets of London to the wild Scottish moors under threat of his life as he tries to uncover the mysterious secret that his enemies will kill for.
G.K.Chesterton, Father Brown and The Man Who Was Thursday
Father Brown is Sherlock Holmes with a sense of humour – try these short stories out and you’ll be hooked. Then try the ‘The Man Who Was Thursday’, another early detective thriller and one of the best – will the hero beat the sinister cult who (probably, being a sinister cult) want to take over the world?
G. & W.Grossmith, Diary of a Nobody
Gentle English comedy – the diary of a little man, Mr.Pooter, who feels neglected and somehow pointless, thinks about doing something about it, and fails in his inimitable, shy and half-hearted way.
H.Rider (don’t call me Merle) Haggard, King Solomon’s Mines
Featuring Allan Quartermain, the original Indiana Jones, big game hunter and ladies’ man; high adventure in the wilds of 19th Century Africa. Another book featuring Allan Quartermain, entitled – in a brief loss of imagination – ‘Allan Quartermain’, is also available! And, once you’re a Quartermain fan…
H.Rider (yes, again)Haggard, She
One of the best-selling books of all time, and the original ‘lost world’ novel, set in Africa among a tribe of warrior women led by – yes – ‘SHE’ (aka ‘she-who-must-be-obeyed’). How will alpha-male Quartermain fare when up against this attractively sinister, sinisterly attractive new foe?
Samuel Butler, Erewhon
A utopia? A dystopia? Where is the mysterious land of ‘Erewhon’? And why?
Horace Walpole, The Castle of Otranto
Half-ruined castles? Check. Mysterious black-clad strangers? Check. Ghostly sounds at dead of night? Check. Innocent young ladies in desperate need of rescue? Check. This is the original horror fantasy, that put the ‘G’ in Gothic. Without this there would be no Frankenstein’s monster and no Dracula either.