Self-harming Parrots and Exploding Toads - Francesca Gould

SELF-HARMING PARROTS AND EXPLODING TOADS is a marvellous compendium of the world's most unpleasant creatures and animal facts. Entries cover everything from the disgusting to the informative, including:: * Are cows' farts a major cause of climate change? * What happens at a dung beetle wedding? * Why do vultures defecate on themselves? * What's the best way to fight a crocodile?

Running With Scissors - Augusten Burroughs

When Augusten was twelve his mother gave him away to his psychiatrist, and a man who may have benefited from a touch of therapy himself. This is the story of the bizarre years Augusten spent in the doctors dilapidated Victorian mansion, getting to know the pedophile in-paitent who lives in the shed, eating Valium tablets like other kids eat sweeties and resorting to vintage electric shock therapy machine to liven up those quieter moments.

Mister Pip - Lloyd James

Mr Pip, centres around a young girl caught up in civil unrest on an island in the South Pacific.  When everyone who can flees, and only a small village remains,  one of the only remaining White Man decides to take on the task of teaching the local children. However he is not a teacher by trade and the only information he has at his disposal is a copy of Great Expectations. 

Room - Emma Donoghue

     Special Mention - A Must Read

Jack is five. He lives with his Ma. They live in a single, locked room.  Jack doesn't know their is an outside world and every thing he sees on telly is purely fiction. That is until Ma explains theirs more to it than Room. She decides now is the time to escape. 

The Handmaids Tale – Margaret Atwood

The Handmaid's Tale tells the story of Offred – not her real name, but the patronymic she has been given by the new regime in an oppressive parallel America of the future – and her role as a Handmaid. The Handmaids are forced to provide children by proxy for infertile women of a higher social status.  Offred remembers her life before the inception of Gilead, when she had a husband, a daughter and a life. 

Good Omens - Terry Pratchett

According to the Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter - the world's only totally reliable guide to the future - the world will end on a Saturday. Next Saturday, in fact. Just after tea...


You see, there was a bit of a mix-up when the Antichrist was born.  The only person who knows how it will all end is Agnes Nutter, a witch whose prophecies all come true, if one can only manage to decipher them. A story about angels, the antichrist and several other familiar characters, and the end of the world of course.

Redeeming love - Francine Rivers

California's gold country, 1850. Angel expects nothing from men but betrayal. Sold into prostitution as a child, she survives by keeping her hatred alive. What she hates most are the men who use her, leaving her empty and dead inside. Then she meets Michael Hosea. A man who seeks his Father's heart in everything, Michael obeys God's call to marry Angel and to love her unconditionally. Slowly, day by day, he defies Angel's every bitter expectation until, despite her resistance, her heart begins to thaw. But with her unexpected softening come overwhelming feelings of unworthiness and fear. So Angel runs. Back to the darkness...A powerful retelling of the book of Hosea, Redeeming Love is a life-changing story of God's unconditional, redemptive, all-consuming love.

The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold

The Lovely Bones works as an odd yet affecting coming-of-age story. Susie struggles to accept her death while still clinging to the lost world of the living, following her family's dramas over the years. Her family disintegrates in their grief: her father becomes determined to find her killer, her mother withdraws, her little brother Buckley attempts to make sense of the new hole in his family and her younger sister Lindsey moves through the milestone events of her teenage and young adult years with Susie riding spiritual shotgun. Random acts and missed opportunities run throughout the book--Susie recalls her sole kiss with a boy on earth as "like an accident--a beautiful gasoline rainbow".

Mr Nice - Howard Marks

Howard's Marks autobiography takes him from his South Wales childhood and Oxford University education through his life dealing marijuana and the enormous mythology that accrued around what the tabloids called "the English Toff Drugs King of the World".