American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis (1991)

The first person narrative of Patrick Bateman, a wealthy investmant banker and self-proclaimed serial killer as he negotiates the upper echelons of New York society in the 1980s, ponders the latest fashions in clothes and music, and stalks, kills, tortures and mutilates several young women. This controversial novel is disturbingly graphic but also darkly comic in its satire of a materialistic culture and epoch.

Style: first person, unreliable narrator, stream-of-consciousness

Themes: consumerism, inequality, alienation, violence, gap between appearance and reality

Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt (1996)

Frank McCourt's autobiography relating his 'miserable Irish Catholic childhood' is both heart-wrenching in its depiction of the effects of poverty, grief and alcohol on an Irish family in the 1930s and deeply funny in the descriptions of the young Frank's and his brother Malachy's attempts to understand, to survive and ultimately to escape the deprivation and the prejudice of life in the slums.

Style: first person, autobiographical

Themes: childhood, coming-of-age, poverty, religion, class, alcoholism, American dream.

The Collector

A dark and disturbing contemporary novel in which the protagonist, working class lottery winner, Clegg, uses his new found wealth and power to kidnap or 'collect' a beautiful upperclass girl, Miranda, and confine her a windowless basement.

Style/structure: prose, dual narrative, rich in intertextual allusions particularly to Shakespeare's The Tempest.

Themes: class conflict, entrapment, obsession, power, sex, culture

Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh (1993)

Set mainly in Edinburgh amongst an underclass of unemployed drug-users, Trainspotting is the debut novel which inspired the film of the same name. Notable for its distinctive narrative voice which captures the Edinburgh dialect, the novel's episodic structure uses a number of narrators to present different stories of life on the margins of Western society.

Style/structure: episodic, first person, multi-narrator, non-linear

Themes: poverty, class, addiction, outsiders, relationships, death, grief.

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald (1925)

A jazz age classic, The Great Gatsby is the story of Nick Carraway's doomed friendship with Jay Gatsby, his lover Daisy and her husband Tom. At first Nick is impressed by the privileged lifestyle of his newfound friends but he soon becomes disillusioned by their lack of morals, loyalty and integrity.

Style/structure: frame narrative

Themes: wealth, status, class, the American dream, love triangles, morality.

Vernon God Little by DBC Pierre (2003)

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I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou

Untouchable by Mulk Raj Anand