Orange

So Long, See You Tomorrow

In rural Illinois two tenant farmers share much, finally too much, until jealously leads to murder and suicide. A tenuous friendship between lonely teenagers - the narrator, whose mother has died young, and Cletus Smith, the troubled witness to his parent's misery - is shattered. After the murder and upheavals that follow, the boys never speak again. Fifty years on, the narrator attempts a reconstruction of those devastating events and the atonement of a lifetime's regret.

"The novel comes from a place so deep inside the human soul that I cannot imagine a time its wisdom would not feel fresh and applicable" Ann Patchett

To the Lighthouse

The serene and maternal Mrs Ramsay, the tragic yet absurd Mr Ramsay, together with their children and assorted guests, are holidaying on the Isle of Skye. From the seemingly trivial postponement of a visit to a nearby lighthouse Virginia Woolf constructs a remarkable and moving examination of the complex tensions and allegiances of family life, and the conflict between male and female principles.

"One of the finest novels in the English language" Helen Dunmore

Revolutionary Road

Books shape our lives and transform the way we see ourselves and each other. The best books are timeless and continue to be relevant generation after generation. Vintage Classics asked the winners of The Orange Prize for Fiction which books they would pass onto the next generation and why. Lionel Shriver chose Revolutionary Road.

This is the story of Frank and April Wheeler, a bright, beautiful, and talented couple whose empty suburban life is held together by the dream that greatness is only just round the corner. With heartbreaking compassion and clarity, Richard Yates shows how Frank and April mortgage their hopes and ideals, betraying in the end not only each other, but their own best selves.

"I can't think of a better novel to hand on to readers growing up today than Revolutionary Road" Lionel Shriver

Life and fate

This is an epic tale of a country told through the fate of a single family, the Shaposhnikovs. As the battle of Stalingrad looms Grossman's characters must work out their destinies in a world torn apart by ideological tyranny and war.

"I have urged all my friends to read it... I want others to feel as I have done - that they are entering the heart of the twentieth century, touching its pulse" Linda Grant

Tess of the D'Ubervilles

Tess is an innocent young girl until the day she goes to visit her rich 'relatives', the D'Urbervilles. Her encounter with her manipulative cousin, Alec, leads her onto a path that is beset with suffering and betrayal. When she falls in love with another man, Angel Clare, Tess sees a potential escape from her past, but only if she can tell him her shameful secret...

"Gloriously physical, full of passion and irony, humour and tenderness" Anne Michaels

Eugénie Grandet

Monsieur Grandet is a very rich man whose chief care is his gold. He runs his household with exacting miserly attention and his wife and daughter suffer a Spartan existence. On the evening of his daughter Eugénie's twenty third birthday his foppish nephew Charles suddenly arrives from Paris. Eugénie has never known passion. Now, in an instant, she falls in love and her life is changed forever. Monsieur Grandet will not countenance his daughter's marriage to her penniless cousin and Eugénie's determination to follow her heart leads her into direct conflict with her father.

"This brilliant but devastatingly sad novel moved me so much, I began it again the moment I got to the end" Rose Tremain