The Thirty-Nine Steps: Popular Penguins

John Buchan

Richard Hanney, an expatriated Scot, returns from a long stay in South Africa to his flat in London. One night he is buttonholed by an American who appears to know of an anarchist plot to destabilise Europe, and claims to be in fear for his life. Hannay lets the American hide in his flat, and returns la...

The Overstory

Richard Powers

An artist inherits a hundred years of photographic portraits, all of the same doomed American chestnut. A hard-partying undergraduate in the late 1980s electrocutes herself, dies, and is sent back into life by creatures of air and light. A hearing- and speech-impaired scientist discovers that trees are ...

Burma Sahib

Paul Theroux

From renowned author Paul Theroux comes the fascinating, atmospheric tale of George Orwell's years in Burma. 'There is a short period in everyone's life when his character is fixed forever.' - George Orwell Before George Orwell was Orwell - the pen name he took on becoming a writer - he was Eric Blair...