Class Texts
The best in Middle Grade and YA Literature to challenge and inspire your students. Hand-picked for their inclusive and relevant story lines these stories will have broad appeal and provide a valuable and engaging experience and provide opportunities for critical analysis and teaching literary techniques.
We would recommend this text for students in Year 9.
Sixteen-year-old Starr lives in two worlds: the poor neighborhood where she was born and raised and her posh high school in the suburbs. The uneasy balance between them is shattered when Starr is the only witness to the fatal shooting of her unarmed best friend, Khalil, by a police officer.
Now what Starr says could destroy her community. It could also get her killed. Inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement, this is a powerful and gripping YA novel about one girl's struggle for justice.
Content warning - this novel deals with issues that some readers may find upsetting, including racially aggravated shootings and the deaths of young people.
If you would like to be invoiced for this product (or would like a different quantity), please email julia@chestnutbooks.co.uk with an order number and we’ll be happy to help.
When fifteen-year-old Tyrell Forrester gets caught up in a high-profile armed robbery, he's sentenced to eighteen months in a young offenders’ prison.
Now he’s getting out, and he’s determined to turn his life around. Despite his release, systemic discrimination makes it difficult for Ty to truly be free. Inspired by a visiting poet while inside, Ty discovers a whole new world through spoken word and is finally finding his voice.
But will society ever see him as anything other than a criminal?
If you would like to be invoiced for this product (or would like a different quantity), please email julia@chestnutbooks.co.uk with an order number and we’ll be happy to help.
Multi-award winning The King of Nothing by Nathanael Lessore
ANTON AND HIS FRIENDS ARE THE KINGS OF YEAR 9. They're used to ruling the school and Anton wears the crown. The other kids run away when he's about but that's the way he wants it - he's got a reputation to live up to after all.
So when he gets into serious trouble at school, he doesn't really care, but his mum most definitely does. She decides it's time for Anton to make some new friends and join the Happy Campers, a local activity group. Anton would quite literally rather do anything else, especially when he finds out Matthew, the biggest loser in school, is also a member.
But after Matthew unexpectedly saves Anton's life, Anton figures maybe this kid is worth a shot. Teaching him some game is the least Anton can do to repay the debt. As the boys strike up an unlikely friendship, Anton finds himself questioning everything he thought was important.
Does he want ruling the school to be his crowning glory or should he set his sights on better things?
If you would like to be invoiced for this product (or would like a different quantity), please email julia@chestnutbooks.co.uk with an order number and we’ll be happy to help.
THEY'RE TOTALLY DIFFERENT. EXCEPT IN ALL THE WAYS THAT MATTER.
Owais lives a chill life. He's well-liked, funny and everything's a breeze - until his estranged cousin shows up. Loud, unpredictable and one bad decision away from serious trouble, Abass crashes into Owais' laidback world like a hurricane: picking fights, ruining parties, disappearing without explanation and clogging toilets in places he absolutely shouldn't. But as the boys get to know each other and their bond deepens, Owais starts to see there's more to Abass than the chaos - and more to himself than just being the popular guy who coasts through life.
Because sometimes, the person who turns your world upside down is also the person who helps you figure out where you're really meant to be . . .
If you would like to be invoiced for this product (or would like a different quantity), please email julia@chestnutbooks.co.uk with an order number and we’ll be happy to help.
Beneath the New Year's Eve fireworks, shy science-nerd Mel and slacker songwriter Sid get pregnant on their first date. Any sixteen-year-olds would expect trouble – but this is Northern Ireland 2018, where abortion is still illegal.
Mel's religious parents insist she must keep the baby, whilst Sid's feminist mum pushes for a termination. Mel and Sid are determined to do this together, but they soon discover that pregnancy is totally different for boys and girls. When their relationship starts to fall apart under all the pressure, Mel finds herself feeling alone with the impossible dilemma of the Little Bang growing inside her.
If you would like to be invoiced for this product (or would like a different quantity), please email julia@chestnutbooks.co.uk with an order number and we’ll be happy to help.
We are in an epidemic. An epidemic of unhappiness. Friends, here is the good news: HappyHead has the answer.
When Seb is offered a place on a radical retreat designed to solve the national crisis of teenage unhappiness, he is determined to change how people see him and make his parents proud. But as he finds himself drawn to the enigmatic Finn, Seb starts to question the true nature of the challenges they must undergo. The deeper into the programme the boys get, the more disturbing the assessments become, until it’s clear there may be no escape...
If you would like to be invoiced for this product (or would like a different quantity), please email julia@chestnutbooks.co.uk with an order number and we’ll be happy to help.
Girl in Pieces meets One of Us is Lying, told in Sarah Crossan’s inimitable and award-winning verse.
Connie Ryder is taken from her home in the dead of night and sent to Silver Lake Academy – a remote, high-security facility for ‘troubled’ teens. At Silver Lake, the vulnerable and the violent are locked in together under a brutal regime that aims to improve their behaviour.
But when Connie learns she’s been given the bed of a missing girl named Belle, she is drawn deep into a chilling web of secrets and lies… A sensational, immersive and hugely propulsive ‘missing girl’ thriller, set against the backdrop of America’s controversial Troubled Teen industry.
If you would like to be invoiced for this product, please email julia@chestnutbooks.co.uk with an order number and we’ll process your order.
The destruction I was destined to cause was unfathomable...
Cursed at birth, 16-year-old Drinn has been hidden away from the world - moved from house to house to ensure that she never finds love. But this year, she has decided to break free.
Fleeing, Drinn finds herself in Oblison, surrounded by others just like her - cursed girls whose lives are dangerous and wild.
They vow to liberate themselves once and for all. But rebellion is dangerous, and if Drinn finds love before the curse can be broken, a terrible fate could befall them all...
If you would like to be invoiced for this product (or would like a different quantity), please email julia@chestnutbooks.co.uk with an order number and we’ll be happy to help.
In a world where bees are at risk of extinction, one girl fights for her own survival. Imagine a world where honeybees have died out. It’s a patriarchal world where famines are rife.
It’s a world without art, without books, without plays. Girls are sent away from home, forced to pollinate crops by hand with brushes and to marry as soon as they can. Inhabiting this world is Jess and her friends Cass, Deva, and Ruth.
But even if one fourteen-year-old knows that the system is dangerous, can she really stoke a revolution?
If you would like to be invoiced for this product (or would like a different quantity), please email julia@chestnutbooks.co.uk with an order number and we’ll be happy to help.
Willow and Alma are best friends, sharing a love of the spotlight. All they want is fame and fortune, and Willow is determined that the best way to get it is to go viral.
So they start filming dares. Okay, so getting stuck in a basketball hoop doesn't get them the sort of attention they were hoping for, but as their challenges get more extreme, their fan base grows. Duct-taping themselves to a wall? No-brainer.
Eating super-hot chillis? Of course! Waxing an eyebrow off? Super funny! And if they get in a bit of trouble, it's worth it. But if they really want to prove themselves, they have to go all-out. So they come up with the perfect idea.
An idea that causes more than just a bit of trouble. An idea that might destroy not just their ambitions but their entire friendship for good.
If you would like to be invoiced for this product (or would like a different quantity), please email julia@chestnutbooks.co.uk with an order number and we’ll be happy to help.
Xiomara has always kept her words to herself.
When it comes to standing her ground in her Harlem neighbourhood, she lets her fists and her fierceness do the talking. But X has secrets – her feelings for a boy in her bio class, and the notebook full of poems that she keeps under her bed. And a slam poetry club that will pull those secrets into the spotlight.
Because in spite of a world that might not want to hear her, Xiomara refuses to stay silent. A novel about finding your voice and standing up for what you believe in, no matter how hard it is to say. Brave, bold and beautifully written – dealing with issues of race, feminism and faith.
If you would like to be invoiced for this product, please email julia@chestnutbooks.co.uk with an order number and we’ll process your order.
From award-winning, bestselling author Ibi Zoboi and prison reform activist Yusef Salaam of the Exonerated Five, comes a powerful YA novel in verse about a boy who is wrongfully incarcerated.
One fateful night, an altercation in a gentrifying neighbourhood escalates into tragedy. ‘Boys just being boys’ turns out to be true only when those boys are white. Suddenly, at just sixteen years old, Amal Shahid’s bright future is upended: he is convicted of a crime he didn’t commit and sent to prison. Despair and rage almost sink him until he turns to the refuge of his words, his art.
This never should have been his story. But can he change it? With spellbinding lyricism, award-winning author Ibi Zoboi and prison reform activist Yusef Salaam tell a moving and deeply profound story about how one boy is able to maintain his humanity and fight for the truth, in a system designed to strip him of both.
If you would like to be invoiced for this product, please email julia@chestnutbooks.co.uk with an order number and we’ll process your order.
Join the Thieves’ Gambit, a cut-throat competition to crown the world’s greatest thiefRule 1: Never fall in love with your opponentRule 2: The only thief you can trust is yourselfEndgame: Win the heist to save your family - and yourself . .
. Seventeen-year-old Rosalyn Quest was raised by a legendary family of thieves with one rule: trust no one. When her mother is kidnapped, her only chance to save her is to win the Thieves’ Gambit – a deadly competition for the world’s best thieves, where the victor is granted one wish. To win, she must outwit all of her backstabbing competitors, including her childhood archnemesis.
But can she take victory from the handsome, charming boy who makes a play for her heart and might be hiding the most dangerous secret of all?
We would recommend this text for students in Year 9 and above.
BEAUTY COMES AT A PRICE. AND GIRLS MUST PAY.
In Belle and Joni's world there are two options for girls:One, follow the rules of the Doctrine like Belle: apply your Mask, work hard to be crowned at the Ceremony, be a Pretty. Or two, fight the rules like Joni: leave your face bare, work hard to escape to the Education, be an Objectionable. But maybe there is a third option...
Change the rules. Reclaim your power. If you can...
What would you choose?Uglies meets The Handmaid's Tale for the new YA generation in this mind-blowing novel from bestselling queen of YA Holly Bourne.
Content warning - this novel deals with issues that some readers may find upsetting, including references to pornography and sexual assault.
If you would like to be invoiced for this product (or would like a different quantity), please email julia@chestnutbooks.co.uk with an order number and we’ll be happy to help.
Existor is the most popular guy in school. Fred is the loser with no friends. And nobody knows they're the same person.
Online, Fred goes by Existor@stmarks. His alter ego is the best gamer around - constantly on a winning streak, with tonnes of followers, and the confidence to go with it. But offline, Fred's life is miserable.
His dad's always working, his mum's struggling, and at school, everyone looks straight through him. Until Existor's notoriety spreads to his school, and Fred sees an opportunity: everyone listens to what Existor has to say, so why not use that?Soon, Fred is coming up with outlandish rumours about his classmates, and everyone's lapping it up. His bullies are shunned, and people are finally taking notice of him.
But it's a slippery slope and Fred struggles to keep track of all the stuff he's posted as his lies start to wreak unexpected havoc. Fred will have to answer for his crimes against reality, but will he ever find someone to like him for who he really is?
If you would like to be invoiced for this product (or would like a different quantity), please email julia@chestnutbooks.co.uk with an order number and we’ll be happy to help.
A powerful coming-of-age story about chance encounters, injustice and how the choices that we make can completely change our future.
When fourteen-year-old Shaq is stabbed outside of a busy shopping centre in Manchester, three teenagers from very different walks of life are unexpectedly brought together. What follows flips their worlds upside down and makes Chantelle, Jackson, and Marc question the deep-rooted prejudice and racism that exists within the police, the media, and the rest of society.
If you would like to be invoiced for this product (or would like a different quantity), please email julia@chestnutbooks.co.uk with an order number and we’ll be happy to help.
Meet Stewart. He’s geeky, gifted and sees things a bit differently to most people. His mum has died and he misses her all the more now he and Dad have moved in with Ashley and her mum.
Meet Ashley. She’s popular, cool and sees things very differently to her new family. Her dad has come out and moved out – but not far enough.
And now she has to live with a freakazoid step-brother. Stewart can’t quite fit in at his new school, and Ashley can’t quite get used to her totally awkward home, which is now filled with some rather questionable decor. And things are about to get a whole lot more mixed up when these two very different people attract the attention of school hunk Jared.
If you would like to be invoiced for this product (or would like a different quantity), please email julia@chestnutbooks.co.uk with an order number and we’ll be happy to help.
Nate’s eleven and has just finished Primary School. After a challenging final year, life is looking up. His brother has recovered from a life-threatening heart condition, he’s got the love of his mum, brothers and Auntie San, and he’s off to Secondary School with his two best mates.
But while he's making new friends and avoiding the fists of Turner, his old nemesis, and struggling to come to terms with a strict new teacher and a sense of isolation from his brothers, a sudden surprise appearance in Nate's life threatens to throw him completely off course. And The Beast - the anger he tries so hard to control - reappears. Will Nate find a way to keep himself and his family together?
If you would like to be invoiced for this product (or would like a different quantity), please email julia@chestnutbooks.co.uk with an order number and we’ll be happy to help.
A powerful novel about second chances, friendship and finding the courage to rewrite your story. Angel finds school hard. She talks back to teachers, she storms out of lessons, and she's had more detentions than any other Year 8 student...ever.
But really, Angel wants to be good. She wants to fit in, she wants to make friends, and she even wants to win the school baking contest. But it's hard to be good when everyone expects the worst.
And with her mum not well enough to look after her, and Angel making more and more bad choices, she's starting to run out of chances...
If you would like to be invoiced for this product (or would like a different quantity), please email julia@chestnutbooks.co.uk with an order number and we’ll be happy to help.
The Last of Us meets Wall-E in this post-apocalyptic tale of family, hope and survival from a multi-award-winning authorJen and her father are making their way across a deserted world after a technological collapse brought civilization as people knew it to an end. The Flood took out all all technology, but also many people who were connected to a central information hive.
Those who are left behind must find each other and build a new life. But Jen's father isn't related to her by blood – he is a human-appearing AI, a glitch in the system, and a secret that must be kept, even from those she wishes she could trust... Exploring themes of what it means to be human, the value of every individual and where true danger lies – in our technological creations, or the ones who create them – this is a powerful and hopeful dystopian adventure.
We’d recommend this book for Year 7 & 8.
If you would like to be invoiced for this product (or would like a different quantity), please email julia@chestnutbooks.co.uk with an order number and we’ll be happy to help.
Fred can't make a decision about anything - his parents always tell him what to do, from what to eat every day to which secondary school to choose. that's how Fred has found himself a pupil at the high-pressure, strict Gains School, when he'd much rather be going to Browtree, with its brilliant art department and kind teachers. As Fred waits for the bus to his new school, he sees the bus for Browtree pull up - and a wild, thrilling, thought strikes him.
Should he jump on this bus and pretend he's a new student at Browtree? Will he be brave enough to follow a different path for once? You, the reader, will stand in Fred's shoes and make decisions alongside him throughout this story. You'll help him stand-up for what he believes in, learn what he truly loves to do, make good friends and face choices about whether to swerve or walk into drama. YOU are in charge of The Boy With Big Decisions! An interactive book with multiple pathways for kids to follow.
A brilliant book to support Year 6- 7 transition.
If you would like to be invoiced for this product (or would like a different quantity), please email julia@chestnutbooks.co.uk with an order number and we’ll be happy to help.
Chernobyl, 1986. Natasha’s world is coming to an end.
Forced to evacuate her home in the middle of the night, she must leave her puppy behind and has no idea if she’ll ever return. Some time later, growing up in the shadow of the ruined nuclear power plant, pups Misha and Bratan have to learn how to live in the wild—and fast. Creatures with sharp teeth, claws, and yellow eyes lurk in the overgrown woods.
And they’re watching the brothers’ every move…But will the dogs survive without humans? And can humans live without them?
If you would like to be invoiced for this product (or would like a different quantity), please email julia@chestnutbooks.co.uk with an order number and we’ll be happy to help.
Acclaimed performance poet and novelist Benjamin Zephaniah's honest, wry and poignant story of a young refugee left in London is of even more power and pertinence today than when it was first published. Life is not safe for Alem.
His father is Ethopian, his mother Eritrean. Their countries are at war, and Alem is welcome in neither place. So Alem is excited to spend a holiday in London with his father – until he wakes up to find him gone.
What seems like a betrayal is in fact an act of love, but now Alem is alone in a strange country, and he must forge his own path...
If you would like to be invoiced for this product (or would like a different quantity), please email julia@chestnutbooks.co.uk with an order number and we’ll be happy to help.
An extraordinary story with historical and family truth at its heart, that tells us as much about the present as the past. Deeply felt, movingly written, a remarkable achievement’ Michael Morpurgo1941. War is raging.
And one angry boy has been sent to the city, where bombers rule the skies. There, Joseph will live with Mrs F, a gruff woman with no fondness for children. Her only loves are the rundown zoo she owns and its mighty silverback gorilla, Adonis.
As the weeks pass, bonds deepen and secrets are revealed, but if the bombers set Adonis rampaging free, will either of them be able to end the life of the one thing they truly love?Inspired by a true story.
If you would like to be invoiced for this product (or would like a different quantity), please email julia@chestnutbooks.co.uk with an order number and we’ll be happy to help.
Get in touch below to order a specific number of books or a title that is not listed.
Set Texts
〰️
Set Texts 〰️
Class sets of GCSE and A Level Set Texts are. Please get in touch if you require a specific number of books or a different title that isn’t listed below.
OCR Immigrant Experience
Excuse me, sir, but may I be of assistance? Ah, I see I have alarmed you. Do not be frightened by my beard. I am a lover of America… So speaks the mysterious stranger at a Lahore cafe as dusk settles.
Invited to join him for tea, you learn his name and what led this speaker of immaculate English to seek you out. For he is more worldy than you might expect; better travelled and better educated. He knows the West better than you do.
And as he tells you his story, of how he embraced the Western dream -- and a Western woman -- and how both betrayed him, so the night darkens. Then the true reason for your meeting becomes abundantly clear.
Challenging, mysterious and thrillingly tense, Mohsin Hamid's masterly The Reluctant Fundamentalist is a vital read teeming with questions and ideas about some of the most pressing issues of today's globalised, fractured world.
If you would like to be invoiced for this product (or would like a different quantity), please email julia@chestnutbooks.co.uk with an order number and we’ll be happy to help.
OCR Women in Literature
On a June morning in 1923, Clarissa Dalloway is preparing for a party and remembering her past. Elsewhere in London, Septimus Smith is suffering from shell-shock and on the brink of madness. Their days interweave and their lives converge as the party reaches its glittering climax.
Here, Virginia Woolf perfected the interior monologue and the novel's lyricism and accessibility have made it one of her most popular works. The Penguin English Library - collectable general readers' editions of the best fiction in English, from the eighteenth century to the end of the Second World War.
If you would like to be invoiced for this product (or would like a different quantity), please email julia@chestnutbooks.co.uk with an order number and we’ll be happy to help.
Other editions available on request.
OCR Women in Literature
Jane Austen's subtle and witty novel of secrets and suppression, lies and seduction, brilliantly portrays a world where rigid social convention clashes with the impulses of the heart. It tells the story of two very different sisters who find themselves thrown into an unkind world when their father dies. Marianne, wild and impulsive, falls dangerously in love, while Elinor suffers her own private heartbreak but conceals her true feelings, even from those closest to her.
If you would like to be invoiced for this product (or would like a different quantity), please email julia@chestnutbooks.co.uk with an order number and we’ll be happy to help.
Other editions available on request.
OCR Dystopia
Hidden away in the Record Department of the sprawling Ministry of Truth, Winston Smith skilfully rewrites the past to suit the needs of the Party. Yet he inwardly rebels against the totalitarian world he lives in, which demands absolute obedience and controls him through the all-seeing telescreens and the watchful eye of Big Brother, symbolic head of the Party. In his longing for truth and liberty, Smith begins a secret love affair with a fellow-worker Julia, but soon discovers the true price of freedom is betrayal.
If you would like to be invoiced for this product (or would like a different quantity), please email julia@chestnutbooks.co.uk with an order number and we’ll be happy to help.
Other editions available on request.
OCR The Gothic
The Penguin English Library Edition of Dracula by Bram Stoker. 'Alone with the dead! I dare not go out, for I can hear the low howl of the wolf through the broken window'A chilling masterpiece of the horror genre, Dracula also illuminated dark corners of Victorian sexuality. When Jonathan Harker visits Transylvania to advise Count Dracula on a London home, he makes a horrifying discovery. Soon afterwards, a number of disturbing incidents unfold in England: an unmanned ship is wrecked at Whitby; strange puncture marks appear on a young woman's neck; and the inmate of a lunatic asylum raves about the arrival of his 'Master', while a determined group of adversaries prepares to face the terrifying Count.
If you would like to be invoiced for this product (or would like a different quantity), please email julia@chestnutbooks.co.uk with an order number and we’ll be happy to help.
OCR The Gothic
Discover Angela Carter’s classic feminist retelling of favourite fairy tales interwoven by a master of seductive, luminous storytelling. From familiar fairy tales and legends - Red Riding Hood, Bluebeard, Puss in Boots, Beauty and the Beast, vampires and werewolves - Angela Carter has created an absorbing collection of dark, sensual, fantastic stories.
If you would like to be invoiced for this product (or would like a different quantity), please email julia@chestnutbooks.co.uk with an order number and we’ll be happy to help.
OCR American Literature
Shocking and controversial when it was first published, The Grapes of Wrath is Steinbeck's Pultizer Prize-winning epic of the Joad family, forced to travel west from Dust Bowl era Oklahoma in search of the promised land of California. Their story is one of false hopes, thwarted desires and powerlessness, yet out of their struggle Steinbeck created a drama that is both intensely human and majestic in its scale and moral vision.
If you would like to be invoiced for this product (or would like a different quantity), please email julia@chestnutbooks.co.uk with an order number and we’ll be happy to help.
AQA Modern Times
This is the story of Jeanette, adopted and brought up by her mother as one of God's elect. Zealous and passionate, she seems destined for life as a missionary, but then she falls for one of her converts.
At sixteen, Jeanette decides to leave the church, her home and her family, for the young woman she loves. Innovative, punchy and tender, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit is a few days ride into the bizarre outposts of religious excess and human obsession.
If you would like to be invoiced for this product (or would like a different quantity), please email julia@chestnutbooks.co.uk with an order number and we’ll be happy to help.
AQA Modern Times
A powerful cultural touchstone of modern American literature, The Color Purple depicts the lives of African American women in early twentieth-century rural Georgia. Sisters Celie and Nettie share the pain and struggle of growing up as African American women in early twentieth-century rural Georgia. Forced into an abusive marriage, at least Celie can offer Nettie refuge from their violent father in her new home - until Nettie catches the attention of Celie's husband and is forced to leave and forge her own journey.
Through a series of letters spanning twenty years - first from Celie to God, then between the two sisters - they manage to sustain their hope in each other across time, distance and silence, in a triumph of resilience, bravery and ultimately, love. Beloved by generations of readers, The Color Purple broke the silence around domestic and sexual abuse, narrating the lives of women through their pain and struggle, companionship and growth, resilience and bravery.
If you would like to be invoiced for this product (or would like a different quantity), please email julia@chestnutbooks.co.uk with an order number and we’ll be happy to help.
AQA Modern Times Post 2000
Enter a vanished and unjust world: Jackson, Mississippi, 1962. Where black maids raise white children, but aren't trusted not to steal the silver… There's Aibileen, raising her seventeenth white child and nursing the hurt caused by her own son's tragic death; Minny, whose cooking is nearly as sassy as her tongue; and white Miss Skeeter, home from College, who wants to know why her beloved maid has disappeared. Skeeter, Aibileen and Minny.
No one would believe they'd be friends; fewer still would tolerate it. But as each woman finds the courage to cross boundaries, they come to depend and rely upon one another. Each is in a search of a truth.
If you would like to be invoiced for this product (or would like a different quantity), please email julia@chestnutbooks.co.uk with an order number and we’ll be happy to help.
AQA Modern Times
He folded his fear into a perfect rose. He held it out in the palm of his hand.
She took it from him and put it in her hair Estha and Rahel, seven-year-old twins, are growing up amidst vats of banana jam, mountains of peppercorns and scenes of political turbulence in Kerala. But when their beautiful young cousin Sophie arrives, their world is irrevocably shaken. An illicit liaison and tragedies both accidental and intentional expose things that lurk unsaid, in a country drifting dangerously towards unrest.
If you would like to be invoiced for this product (or would like a different quantity), please email julia@chestnutbooks.co.uk with an order number and we’ll be happy to help.
AQA Modern Times
Pitching an extraordinary battle between cruel authority and a rebellious free spirit, Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is a novel that epitomises the spirit of the sixties. This Penguin Classics edition includes a preface, never-before published illustrations by the author, and an introduction by Robert Faggen. Tyrannical Nurse Ratched rules her ward in an Oregon State mental hospital with a strict and unbending routine, unopposed by her patients, who remain cowed by mind-numbing medication and the threat of electroshock therapy.
But her regime is disrupted by the arrival of McMurphy - the swaggering, fun-loving trickster with a devilish grin who resolves to oppose her rules on behalf of his fellow inmates. His struggle is seen through the eyes of Chief Bromden, a seemingly mute half-Indian patient who understands McMurphy's heroic attempt to do battle with the powers that keep them imprisoned. The subject of an Oscar-winning film starring Jack Nicholson, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest an exuberant, ribald and devastatingly honest portrayal of the boundaries between sanity and madness.
If you would like to be invoiced for this product (or would like a different quantity), please email julia@chestnutbooks.co.uk with an order number and we’ll be happy to help.
AQA Modern Times Post 2000
In Feminine Gospels, Carol Ann Duffy draws on the historical, the archetypal, the biblical and the fantastical to create various visions – and revisions – of female identity. Simultaneously stripping women bare and revealing them in all their guises and disguises, these poems tell tall stories as though they were true confessions, and spin modern myths from real women seen in every aspect – as bodies and corpses, writers and workers, shoppers and slimmers, fairytale royals or girls-next-door.
If you would like to be invoiced for this product (or would like a different quantity), please email julia@chestnutbooks.co.uk with an order number and we’ll be happy to help.
AQA Modern Times
A Streetcar Named Desire is the tale of a catastrophic confrontation between fantasy and reality, embodied in the characters of Blanche DuBois and Stanley Kowalski. This Penguin Modern Classics edition includes an introduction by Arthur Miller. 'I have always depended on the kindness of strangers'Fading southern belle Blanche DuBois is adrift in the modern world.
When she arrives to stay with her sister Stella in a crowded, boisterous corner of New Orleans, her delusions of grandeur bring her into conflict with Stella's crude, brutish husband Stanley Kowalski. Eventually their violent collision course causes Blanche's fragile sense of identity to crumble, threatening to destroy her sanity and her one chance of happiness. Tennessee Williams's steamy and shocking landmark drama, recreated as the immortal film starring Marlon Brando, is one of the most influential plays of the twentieth century.
If you would like to be invoiced for this product (or would like a different quantity), please email julia@chestnutbooks.co.uk with an order number and we’ll be happy to help.
AQA Modern Times / OCR Dystopia
I believe in the resistance as I believe there can be no light without shadow; or rather, no shadow unless there is also light. Offred is a Handmaid in The Republic of Gilead, a religious totalitarian state in what was formerly known as the United States. She is placed in the household of The Commander, Fred Waterford - her assigned name, Offred, means 'of Fred'.
She has only one function: to breed. If Offred refuses to enter into sexual servitude to repopulate a devastated world, she will be hanged. Yet even a repressive state cannot eradicate hope and desire.
As she recalls her pre-revolution life in flashbacks, Offred must navigate through the terrifying landscape of torture and persecution in the present day, and between two men upon which her future hangs. Masterfully conceived and executed, this haunting vision of the future places Margaret Atwood at the forefront of dystopian fiction.
If you would like to be invoiced for this product (or would like a different quantity), please email julia@chestnutbooks.co.uk with an order number and we’ll be happy to help.
AQA ~ WWI
In the heat of the French summer of 1910, young Englishman Stephen Wraysford arrives in Amiens to stay with the Azaire family. But soon a secret passion emerges that threatens to destroy the household. Six years later, Stephen finds himself on the Western Front with civilization itself in the balance.
And in a maze of tunnels under the trenches he will fight for everything he has known and loved. An epic of love, death and redemption, Birdsong has moved millions of readers all over the world to become a contemporary classic.
If you would like to be invoiced for this product (or would like a different quantity), please email julia@chestnutbooks.co.uk with an order number and we’ll be happy to help.
AQA ~ WWI
Craiglockhart War Hospital, Scotland, 1917, and army psychiatrist William Rivers is treating shell-shocked soldiers. Under his care are the poets Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen, as well as mute Billy Prior, who is only able to communicate by means of pencil and paper.
Rivers's job is to make the men in his charge healthy enough to fight. Yet the closer he gets to mending his patients' minds the harder becomes every decision to send them back to the horrors of the front. Pat Barker's Regeneration is the classic exploration of how the traumas of war brutalised a generation of young men.
If you would like to be invoiced for this product (or would like a different quantity), please email julia@chestnutbooks.co.uk with an order number and we’ll be happy to help.
AQA ~ Love Through The Ages Post-1900
On the hottest day of the summer of 1935, thirteen-year-old Briony Tallis sees her sister Cecilia plunge naked into the fountain in the garden of their country house. Watching her too is Robbie Turner who, like Cecilia, has recently come down from Cambridge. By the end of that day, the lives of all three will have been changed for ever.
Robbie and Cecilia will have crossed a boundary they had not even imagined at its start. Briony will have witnessed mysteries, and committed a crime for which she will spend the rest of her life trying to atone.
If you would like to be invoiced for this product (or would like a different quantity), please email julia@chestnutbooks.co.uk with an order number and we’ll be happy to help.
AQA ~ Love Through The Ages Post-1900
On a trip to the South of France, the shy heroine of Rebecca falls in love with Maxim de Winter, a handsome widower. Although his proposal comes as a surprise, she happily agrees to marry him.
But as they arrive at her husband's home, Manderley, a change comes over Maxim, and the young bride is filled with dread. Friendless in the isolated mansion, she realises that she barely knows him. In every corner of every room is the phantom of his beautiful first wife, Rebecca, and the new Mrs de Winter walks in her shadow.
Not since Jane Eyre has a heroine faced such difficulty with the other woman. An international bestseller that has never gone out of print, Rebecca is the haunting story of a young girl consumed by love and the struggle to find her identity.
If you would like to be invoiced for this product (or would like a different quantity), please email julia@chestnutbooks.co.uk with an order number and we’ll be happy to help.
AQA ~ Love Through the Ages Post 1900
The Penguin English Library Edition of A Room with a View by E. M. Forster. "But you do," he went on, not waiting for contradiction.
The Penguin English Library - 100 editions of the best fiction in English, from the eighteenth century and the very first novels to the beginning of the First World War.
If you would like to be invoiced for this product (or would like a different quantity), please email julia@chestnutbooks.co.uk with an order number and we’ll be happy to help.
AQA ~ Love Through The Ages Post 1900 / OCR American Literature
'It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life' Jay Gatsby is the man who has everything. But one thing will always be out of his reach ... Everybody who is anybody is seen at his glittering parties.
Day and night his Long Island mansion buzzes with bright young things drinking, dancing and debating his mysterious character. For Gatsby - young, handsome, fabulously rich - always seems alone in the crowd, watching and waiting, though no one knows what for. Beneath the shimmering surface of his life he is hiding a secret: a silent longing that can never be fulfilled.
And soon this destructive obsession will force his world to unravel. The Penguin English Library - collectable general readers' editions of the best fiction in English, from the eighteenth century to the end of the Second World War.
If you would like to be invoiced for this product (or would like a different quantity), please email julia@chestnutbooks.co.uk with an order number and we’ll be happy to help.
AQA ~ Love Through The Ages Pre-1900
The Penguin English Library Edition of Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy. "I would be content, ay, glad, to live with you as your servant, if I may not as your wife; so that I could only be near you, and get glimpses of you, and think of you as mine ... I long for only one thing in heaven or earth or under the earth, to meet you, my own dear! Come to me - come to me, and save me from what threatens me!"When Tess Durbeyfield is driven by family poverty to claim kinship with the wealthy D'Urbervilles and seek a portion of their family fortune, meeting her 'cousin' Alec proves to be her downfall. A very different man, Angel Clare, seems to offer her love and salvation, but Tess must choose whether to reveal her past or remain silent in the hope of a peaceful future.
With its sensitive depiction of the wronged Tess and powerful criticism of social convention, Tess of the D'Urbervilles is one of the most moving and poetic of Hardy's novels. The Penguin English Library - 100 editions of the best fiction in English, from the eighteenth century and the very first novels to the beginning of the First World War.
If you would like to be invoiced for this product (or would like a different quantity), please email julia@chestnutbooks.co.uk with an order number and we’ll be happy to help.
AQA ~ Love Through The Ages Pre-1900
'The voice of the sea is seductive; never ceasing, whispering, clamoring, murmuring, inviting the soul to wander for a spell in abysses of solitude'When 'The Awakening' was first published in 1899, charges of sordidness and immorality seemed to consign it into obscurity and irreparably damage its author's reputation. But a century after her death, it is widely regarded as Kate Chopin's great achievement. Through careful, subtle changes of style, Chopin shows the transformation of Edna Pontellier, a young wife and mother, who - with tragic consequences - refuses to be caged by married and domestic life, and claims for herself moral and erotic freedom.
The Penguin English Library - collectable general readers' editions of the best fiction in English, from the eighteenth century to the end of the Second World War.
If you would like to be invoiced for this product (or would like a different quantity), please email julia@chestnutbooks.co.uk with an order number and we’ll be happy to help.
AQA ~ Love Through The Ages Pre-1900
The Penguin English Library Edition of Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë. "May you not rest, as long as I am living. You said I killed you - haunt me, then"Lockwood, the new tenant of Thrushcross Grange on the bleak Yorkshire moors, is forced to seek shelter one night at Wuthering Heights, the home of his landlord. There he discovers the history of the tempestuous events that took place years before: of the intense passion between the foundling Heathcliff and Catherine Earnshaw, and her betrayal of him.
As Heathcliff's bitterness and vengeance is visited upon the next generation, their innocent heirs must struggle to escape the legacy of the past. The Penguin English Library - 100 editions of the best fiction in English, from the eighteenth century and the very first novels to the beginning of the First World War.
If you would like to be invoiced for this product (or would like a different quantity), please email julia@chestnutbooks.co.uk with an order number and we’ll be happy to help.
AQA ~ Love Through The Ages Pre-1900
The Penguin English Library Edition of Persuasion by Jane Austen'Her attachment and regrets had, for a long time, clouded every enjoyment of youth; and an early loss of bloom and spirits had been their lasting effect'Persuasion, Jane Austen's last novel, is a moving, masterly and elegiac love story tinged with the heartache of missed opportunities. It tells the story of Anne Elliot, who, persuaded to break off her engagement to the man she loved because he was not successful enough, has never forgotten him. When he returns, he brings with him a tantalizing second chance of happiness ...
The Penguin English Library - 100 editions of the best fiction in English, from the eighteenth century and the very first novels to the beginning of the First World War.
If you would like to be invoiced for this product (or would like a different quantity), please email julia@chestnutbooks.co.uk with an order number and we’ll be happy to help.
Oxford School Shakespeare is an acclaimed edition especially designed for students, with accessible on-page notes and explanatory illustrations, clear background information, and rigorous but accessible scholarly credentials. Measure for Measure is a popular text for study by secondary students the world over. This edition includes illustrations, preliminary notes, reading lists and classroom notes.
This title is suitable for all exam boards and for the most recent AS/A level specifications.
If you would like to be invoiced for this product (or would like a different quantity), please email julia@chestnutbooks.co.uk with an order number and we’ll be happy to help.
Limited availability~ please get in touch to place an order.
Oxford School Shakespeare is an acclaimed edition especially designed for students, with accessible on-page notes and explanatory illustrations, clear background information, and rigorous but accessible scholarly credentials. King Lear is a popular text for study by secondary students the world over. This edition includes illustrations, preliminary notes, reading lists and classroom notes.
This title is suitable for all exam boards and for the most recent AS/A level specifications.
If you would like to be invoiced for this product (or would like a different quantity), please email julia@chestnutbooks.co.uk with an order number and we’ll be happy to help.
Oxford School Shakespeare is an acclaimed edition especially designed for students, with accessible on-page notes and explanatory illustrations, clear background information, and rigorous but accessible scholarly credentials. The Taming of the Shrew is a popular text for study by secondary students the world over. This edition includes illustrations, preliminary notes, reading lists and classroom notes.
This title is suitable for all exam boards and for the most recent AS/A level specifications.
If you would like to be invoiced for this product (or would like a different quantity), please email julia@chestnutbooks.co.uk with an order number and we’ll be happy to help.
Oxford School Shakespeare is an acclaimed edition especially designed for students, with accessible on-page notes and explanatory illustrations, clear background information, and rigorous but accessible scholarly credentials. Much Ado About Nothing is a popular text for study by secondary students the world over. This edition includes illustrations, preliminary notes, reading lists (including websites) and classroom notes.
This title is suitable for all exam boards and for the most recent GCSE specifications.
If you would like to be invoiced for this product (or would like a different quantity), please email julia@chestnutbooks.co.uk with an order number and we’ll be happy to help.
Oxford School Shakespeare is an acclaimed edition especially designed for students, with accessible on-page notes and explanatory illustrations, clear background information, and rigorous but accessible scholarly credentials. Julius Caesar is a popular text for study by secondary students the world over. This edition includes illustrations, preliminary notes, reading lists (including websites) and classroom notes.
This title is suitable for all exam boards and for the most recent GCSE specifications.
If you would like to be invoiced for this product (or would like a different quantity), please email julia@chestnutbooks.co.uk with an order number and we’ll be happy to help.
70 of the best books of 2025 hand-picked for your secondary school library.
Get The National Year of Reading off to a flying start by bringing your classrooms and libraries up-to-date with inspiring brand new fiction. Featuring new and favourite authors, we’ve chosen the very best stories to inspire a love for reading in KS3.
These stories will whisk your students away to magical worlds, take them on adventures across unknown lands and do battle with monstrous villains. We’ve chosen books that offer challenging narratives and vocabulary to stretch your students whilst immersing them in unforgettable stories. We ensure all our collections represent a range of diverse characters that reflect children’s modern lives and are inclusive of everyone.
Scroll through the galleries to see all the titles included in this collection.
If you would like to be invoiced for this product, please send an order number or enquiry to julia@chestnutbooks.co.uk.