Literature can provide inspiration, education, motivation and perhaps most vitally, relaxation. The literary classics and contemporary novels included in this list help us better understand the world by narrating it through the eyes of another – a child, a victim, a perpetrator, a bystander, or a protagonist faced with an impossible circumstance.

Most of us read To Kill a Mockingbird during our secondary education, and some of us have even returned to Harper Lee’s classic novel a few times. Classics such as Bleak House and A Room of One’s Own have helped shape social movements, while Truman Capote’s true crime novel In Cold Blood and Margaret Attwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale are among the books to have inspired modern adaptations for film and television.