List: 100 Novels Everyone Should Read by Telegraph
The Big Sleep
It was about eleven o'clock in the morning, mid October, with the sun not shining and a look of hard wet rain in the clearness of the foothills.
Tess of the D'Urbervilles
On an evening in the latter part of May a middle-aged man was walking homeward from Shaston to the village of Marlott, in the adjoining Vale of Blakemore or Blackmoor.
Beloved
124 was spiteful. Full of baby's venom. The women in the house knew it and so did the children.
Rabbit, Run
Boys are playing basketball around a telephone pole with a backboard bolted to it.
Mrs Dalloway
Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself.<br> <br> For Lucy had her work cut out for her. The doors would be taken off their hinges; Rumpelmayer’s men were coming. And then, thought Clarissa Dalloway, what a morning—fresh as if issued to children on a beach.
Cold Comfort Farm
The education bestowed upon Flora Poste by her parents had been expensive, athletic and prolonged; and when they died within a few weeks of one another during the annual epidemic of influenza or Spanish Plague which occured in her twentieth year, she was discovered to possess every art and grace save that of earning her own living.
The Name of the Rose
In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
Underworld
He speaks in your voice, American, and there's a shine in his eye that's halfway hopeful.Parla la tua lingua, l'americano, e c'è una luce nel suo sguardo che è una mezza speranza.
Cider with Rosie
I was set down from the carrier's cart at the age of three; and there with a sense of bewilderment and terror my life in the village began.
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