Read The Reader

Death narrates a girl stealing books in Nazi Germany.

A lie by a 13-year-old in 1935 and Dunkirk; McEwan's best.

Red-sandstone castle ruin above the old town of Heidelberg and the Neckar valley.

A murder in a 16th-century Bavarian abbey, drawn like a manuscript; Obsidian's history game.

Oskar stops growing at three and drums through Danzig's twentieth century; Grass's Nobel.

A murderer with a perfect nose in 18th-century France distils the scent of girls.

Sethe, a runaway slave, and the ghost of the daughter she killed; Morrison's masterpiece.

The Glanton gang scalp their way across the border in 1849 and the Judge dances; McCarthy's violent Bible.