Jaws by Peter Benchley

Jaws by Peter BenchleyPeter Benchley's Jaws first appeared in 1974. As well as Steven Spielberg's film adaptation, the novel has sold over twenty million copies around the world, creating a legend that refuses to die. It's never safe to go back in the water . . . It was just another day in the life of a small Atlantic resort until the terror from the deep came to prey on unwary holiday makers. The first sign of trouble a warning of what was to come took the form of a young

his time as a young gay man in the 1960s

Kate is in the middle of a two-week quarantine period

When Rachel Vinrace embarks for South America on her father's ship she is launched on a course of self-discovery in a modern version of the mythic voyage

making objects fly and glowing in the dark

He faces a terrible moral choice in a village in Sri Lanka as part of the East Indian Army

)Clever fairy camouflage (Reed fairies living in wetlands usually wear striped clothes to hide among the tall reeds

finds and loses relationships

boys and Boyzone - to worry about the violence on their doorstep

a city that accepts everyone and turns them into Berliners

the occasional chuckling murderer and - perhaps most alarming of all - people whose favourite pastime is discussing the relative merits of the external-frame backpack

with illustrations from Tony Ross

The House of Mirth sees Lily Bart