To Kill a Mockingbird

For eight-year-old tomboy Scout and her older brother Jem - growing up in the 1930s in a sleepy Alabama town under the percipient eye of their lawyer father, Atticus - a favourite pastime is making up stories about local bogeyman, Boo Radley (who 'dines on raw squirrels'). But when Atticus takes on the case of a black man accused of raping a white girl, his children soon learn that the Deep South contains things far more terrifying than Boo. Harper Lee's Pulitzer-prize-winning novel evokes the excitements and fears of childhood with a rare freshness. As they wrestle to understand the 'simple hell people give other people', her characters are real and likeable, and their experiences heart-warming, funny and serious.