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Reading lists

Books to help cope with the heat

A bright, colourful image showing the Henry James quote, “Summer afternoon – summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language.”

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Features

The best literary quotes about summer

There are plenty of great dads in books who set as good an example when it comes to parenting.

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The novels that taught me to be a better dad

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Audiobooks everyone should listen to, as chosen by our readers

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6 unforgettable fathers in literature

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Extracts

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, adapted and illustrated by Fred Fordham

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6 life lessons from Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird

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16 mesmerising graphic novels

50th Anniversary Edition

To Kill A Mockingbird

Enhanced Edition

Centenary Edition

65th Anniversary Edition

Someone rare has written this very fine novel, a writer with the liveliest sense of life and the warmest, most authentic humor. A touching book; and so funny, so likeable

There is humour as well as tragedy in this book, besides its faint note of hope for human nature; and it is delightfully written in the now familiar Southern tradition

It would be difficult to argue that Harper Lee’s classic isn’t one of the most—if not the most—beloved of American novels

The enduring appeal of Mockingbird lies not only in the plot or characters; the book is a mirror, a source of endless and revelatory conversation about who we are and have been as a country

The names Scout and Atticus—and, perhaps above all, the name Harper—reflect a respect not just for the arc of history, but for the hope that it does indeed bend toward justice

Novels like To Kill a Mockingbird enlarge the heart and inspire the mind. They have the power to uplift readers and enrich them — no matter where those readers live or how they worship or the color of their skin

A first novel of such rare excellence

The rare classic that speaks to all ages about the less triumphant aspects of American history

A seminal American story, a touchstone of racial tolerance. . . . The book is a marvel, brilliantly structured, wonderfully told in the voice of Scout Finch, a stand-in for its tomboyish author as a child. . . . It’s a book determined to make young readers feel like grownups. . . and grownups feel like children

Here is a storyteller justifying the novel as a form that transcends time and place. . . . [A] winning first novel by a fresh writer with something significant to say, South and North

All of the tactile brilliance and none of the precocity generally supposed to be standard swamp-warfare issues for Southern writers. . . . Novelist Lee’s prose has an edge that cuts through cant, and she teaches the reader an astonishing number of useful truths about little girls and about Southern life

That rare literary phenomenon, a Southern novel with no mildew on its magnolia leaves. Funny, happy and written with unspectacular precision, To Kill a Mockingbird is about conscience … and how conscience crows in their small Alabama town

Harper Lee was born in 1926 in Monroeville, Alabama. She is the author of the acclaimed To Kill a Mockingbird, originally published in 1960; and Go Set a Watchman, published in July 2015. Ms Lee received the Pulitzer Prize, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and numerous other literary awards and honours. She died in 2016.

~~ A special centenary edition of the Pulitzer Prize-winning classic of American literature to mark one hundred years since the birth of Harper Lee ~~ 
 
'Someone rare has written this very fine novel, a writer with the liveliest sense of life and the warmest, most authentic humor.' 
TRUMAN CAPOTE 
 
'No one forgets this book.' 
INDEPENDENT 
 
'One of the best first novels I remember ... uniquely unsentimental.' 
GUARDIAN 
 
'There is humour as well as tragedy in this book, besides its faint note of hope for human nature; and it is delightfully written.' 
SUNDAY TIMES 
 
'Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit 'em, but remember it's a sin to kill a mockingbird.' 
A lawyer’s advice to his children as he defends the real mockingbird of Harper Lee’s classic novel – a black man charged with a serious crime.Through the young eyes of Scout and Jem Finch, Harper Lee explores the irrationality of adult attitudes to race and class in the Deep South of the 1930s.The conscience of a town steeped in prejudice, violence and hypocrisy is pricked by the stamina of one man’s struggle for justice.But the weight of history will only tolerate so much.

It would be difficult to argue that Harper Lee's classic isn't one of the most - if not the most - beloved of American novels

The enduring appeal of Mockingbird lies not only int he plot or characters; the book is a mirror, a source of endless and revelatory conversation about who we are and have been as a country

The names Scout and Atticus - and, perhaps above all, the name Harper - reflect a respect not just for the arc of history, but for the hope that it does indeed bend toward justice

Novels like To Kill a Mockingbird enlarge the heart and inspire the mind. They have the power uplift readers and enrich them - no matter where those readers live or how they worship or the color of their skin

A seminal American story, a touchstone of radical tolerance .. The book is a marvel, brilliantly structured, wonderfully told in the voice of Scout Finch, a stand-in for its tomboyish author as a child ... It's a book determined to make young readers feel like grownups ... and grownups feel like children

Here is a storyteller justifying the novel as a form that transcends time and place ... [A] winning first novel by a fresh writer with something significant to say, South and North

All of the tactile brilliance and none of the precocity generally supposed to be standard swamp-warfare issues for Southern writers ... Novelist Lee's prose has an edge that cuts through cant, and she teaches the reader an astonishing number of useful truths about little girls and about Southern life

That rare literary phenomenon, a Southern novel with no mildew on its magnolia leaves. Funny, happy and written with unspectacular precision, To Kill a Mockingbird is about conscience ... and how conscience crows in their small Alabama town

ONE OF THE GREATEST AMERICAN NOVELS EVER WRITTEN 
 
WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE FOR FICTION 
 
'No one forgets this book' Independent 
'One of the best first novels I remember ... uniquely unsentimental' Guardian 
'There is humour as well as tragedy in this book, besides its faint note of hope for human nature; and it is delightfully written' Sunday Times 
'A rare literary phenomenon' Vogue 
 
The iconic modern classic and coming-of-age novel exploring racism in the American South. 
 
'Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit 'em, but remember it's a sin to kill a mockingbird.' 
 
A lawyer's advice to his children as he defends the real mockingbird of Harper Lee's classic novel - a black man charged with a serious crime. 
 
Through the young eyes of Scout and Jem Finch, Harper Lee explores the irrationality of adult attitudes to race and class in the Deep South of the 1930s. 
 
The conscience of a town steeped in prejudice, violence and hypocrisy is pricked by the stamina of one man's struggle for justice. 
 
But the weight of history will only tolerate so much. 
 
'Someone rare has written this very fine novel, a writer with the liveliest sense of life and the warmest, most authentic humour. A touching book; and so funny, so likeable.' Truman Capote

Go Set a Watchman

A new work, and a pleasure, revelation and genuine literary event…Go Set a Watchman shakes the settled view of both an author and her novel…This publication intensifies the regret that Harper Lee published so little.

Go Set a Watchman is the more radical, ambitious and politicised of the two novels Lee has now published…It has contemporary relevance where Mockingbird is safely sealed off as a piece of American history…It does not undermine Mockingbird but it makes a reassessment of that story absolutely necessary…It is a book of enormous literary interest…Beguiling and distinctive, and reminiscent of Mockingbird…Go Set a Watchman can’t be dismissed as literary scraps from Lee’s’ imagination. It has too much integrity for that.

More edgy and thought provoking [than To Kill a Mockingbird] … It has a power to it beyond being a mere historical curio or more lit crit material for Harper Lee studies… Eccentric characters are brightly drawn. There is Lee’s trademark warmth, some droll lines and the sense of place and time is strong…[It has] a surprisingly provocative message — don’t airily dismiss the prejudices of others, try to understand them.

The flashes of lyrical genius and ability to evoke the intensity of childhood play that come to fruition in To Kill a Mockingbird are in evidence…It’s nowhere near the novel Mockingbird is. It is much better than that…What Watchman tells us, and tells us rather powerfully, is that racism is not confined to people who are so clearly not like us…Watchman is for grown-ups. It asks serious questions about what racism is. And it comes at a time when American desperately needs a grown-up conversation about race.

I’m happy to report that most of the caveats and conspiracy theories surrounding Go Set a Watchman melt away as you read the opening chapters and reacquaint yourself with that beguiling Harper Lee narrative style — warm, sardonic, amused by male folly and social pretension, wryly funny, a sassy Southern voice, Mark Twain with a dash of Katharine Hepburn.

We have travelled into the past and returned to find that our present is not quite the same as we left it. Atticus Finch will never again be the white knight we once thought him. And yet the mockingbird still sings — no longer a song of innocence, but maybe one of experience; a song that combines sorrow, forgiveness — and, ultimately, a kind of hope.

There are some flashes of genius…My favourite scene is at “a coffee”, where our rebellious Scout must make small talk with a bunch of married former acquaintances whom she deliberately hasn’t seen since school. Lee’s précis of their vapid conversation is hilarious, feminist and wickedly modern.

Go Set A Watchman is a powerful and moving novel… The opening chapters are slow and languorous, beautifully setting the scene. Lee’s unadorned style is lit up by the occasional sparkling metaphor.

A literary masterpiece, and an enjoyable one at that.

Equally significant today, and imbued with Lee’s wisdom, humanity and humour.

It ignited a fascinating debate on the place and portrayal of racism in both books, as well as about the magic and hard graft of novel writing.

The caveats surrounding this companion volume to To Kill a Mockingbird melt away as you read the opening chapters and reacquaint yourself with Lee’s beguiling narrative style – warm, sardonic, wryly funny, a sassy Southern voice…Go Set a Watchman zips along.

Go Set a Watchman is such an important book, perhaps the most important novel on race to come out of the white South in decades

Watchman is compelling in its timeliness

Go Set a Watchman provides valuable insight into the generous, complex mind of one of America’s most important authors

Harper Lee’s second novel sheds more light on our world than its predecessor did

[Go Set a Watchman] contains the familiar pleasures of Ms. Lee’s writing – the easy, drawling rhythms, the flashes of insouciant humor, the love of anecdote

The voice we came to know so well in To Kill a Mockingbird – funny, ornery, rule breaking – is right here in Go Set a Watchman, too, as exasperating and captivating as ever

A significant aspect of this novel is that it asks us to see Atticus now not merely as a hero, a god, but as a flesh-and-blood man with shortcomings and moral failing, enabling us to see ourselves for all our complexities and contradictions

The success of Go Set a Watchman (whose title is a reference to a Biblical verse about the moral compass) lies both in its depiction of Jean Louise reckoning with her father’s beliefs, and in the manner by which it integrates those beliefs into the Atticus we know

Go Set a Watchman’s greatest asset may be its role in sparking frank discussion about America’s woeful track record when it comes to racial equality

Go Set a Watchman comes to us at exactly the right moment. All important works of art do. They come when we don’t know how much we need them. Only in retrospect, only when they’re already here and we’re discussing the issues they raise and the emotions they engender, do we appreciate the beautiful synchronicity that links the historical moment with the individual imagination that so heroically explores it

Go Set a Watchman’s gorgeous opening is better than we could have expected

THE LANDMARK SECOND NOVEL FROM ONE OF AMERICA'S GREATEST WRITERS 
 
'A pleasure, revelation and genuine literary event' GUARDIAN 
'Beguiling and distinctive' INDEPENDENT 
'Warm, sardonic ... wryly funny' SUNDAY TIMES 
'Perhaps the most important novel on race to come out of the white South in decades' NEW YORK TIMES 
'Compelling in its timeliness' WASHINGTON POST 
 
‘Every man’s island, Jean Louise, every man’s watchman, is his conscience.’ 
 
Maycomb, Alabama. Twenty-six-year-old Jean Louise Finch – ‘Scout’ – returns home from New York City to visit her ageing father, Atticus. 
 
Set against the backdrop of the civil rights tensions and political turmoil that were transforming the South, Jean Louise’s homecoming turns bittersweet when she learns disturbing truths about her close-knit family, the town and the people dearest to her. 
 
Featuring many of the iconic characters from To Kill a Mockingbird, and set twenty years after Harper Lee’s beloved Pulitzer Prize-winning masterpiece, Go Set a Watchman is an unforgettable story.

The stunning graphic novel adaptation

To Kill a Mockingbird

A beautifully crafted graphic novel adaptation of Harper Lee’s beloved American classic.

A beautifully crafted graphic novel adaptation of Harper Lee’s beloved American classic, voted the #1 Great American Read 2018. 
 
‘Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit ‘em, but remember it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.’ 
 
A haunting portrait of race and class, innocence and injustice, hypocrisy and heroism, tradition and transformation in the Deep South of the 1930s, Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird remains as important today as it was upon its initial publication in 1960, during the turbulent years of the Civil Rights movement. 
 
Now, this most beloved and acclaimed novel is reborn for a new age as a gorgeous graphic novel. Scout, Jem, Boo Radley, Atticus Finch and the small town of Maycomb, Alabama, are all captured in vivid and moving illustrations by artist Fred Fordham. 
 
Enduring in vision, Harper Lee’s timeless novel illuminates the complexities of human nature and the depths of the human heart with humour, unwavering honesty and a tender, nostalgic beauty. Lifetime admirers and new readers alike will be touched by this special visual edition.

Discover Harper Lee's classic novel and some of the most unforgettable young characters ever written

Harper Lee announced she would be releasing a sequel to To Kill a Mockingbird this summer – 55 years after her debut. Go Set a Watchman, completed in the mid-50s but lost for more than half a century, was written before To Kill A Mockingbird and features Scout as an adult

Someone rare has written this very fine novel, a writer with the liveliest sense of life and the warmest, most authentic humour. A touching book; and so funny, so likeable

There is humour as well as tragedy in this book, besides its faint note of hope for human nature; and it is delightfully written

A hundred pounds of sermons on tolerance, or an equal measure of invective deploring the lack of it, will weigh far less in the scale of enlightenment than a mere eighteen ounces of new fiction bearing the title To Kill a Mockingbird

'Shoot all the Bluejays you want, if you can hit 'em, but remember it's a sin to kill a Mockingbird.' 
 
 Atticus Finch gives this advice to his children as he defends the real mockingbird of this classic novel - a black man charged with attacking a white girl. Through the eyes of Scout and Jem Finch, Lee explores the issues of race and class in the Deep South of the 1930s with compassion and humour. She also creates one of the great heroes of literature in their father, whose lone struggle for justice pricks the conscience of a town steeped in prejudice and hypocrisy. 
This edition of one of the world’s best-loved books features the original text. 
 
 **One of the BBC’s 100 Novels That Shaped Our World**

Harper Lee

Casey Cep

'Unpublished they may have been, but these aren't half-baked sketches: they are stories written with all of Lee's character and descriptive brilliance.' 
- The Times

'When To Kill a Mockingbird was published in the summer of 1960, it seemed to have sprung from nowhere, like an Alabamian Athena: a perfectly formed novel from an unknown southern writer without any evident precedent or antecedent. ... But no writer is without influences and aspirations: Harper Lee had, of course, come from somewhere and worked tremendously hard to become someone. ... How thrilling, then, to encounter a time capsule from the start of Lee's career ... help[ing] to explain how the little girl from South Alabama Avenue turned herself into a bestselling author. ... Brilliance unleashed on the page.' 
- Guardian

'Previously unseen short stories shed fresh light on Harper Lee's unlikely rise to fame.' 
- Guardian

'Eight neatly typed short stories by the To Kill a Mockingbird author ... cast a new light on the literary giant.' 
- Sunday Times

'Previously unseen stories and essays reveal Harper Lee's sharp wit, southern roots, and evolving voice. From small-town Alabama to big-city life, this posthumous collection offers a new window into one of America's literary icons.' 
- iPaper

'Harper Lee's wry humor is on ample display.' 
- Los Angeles Times

'Allow[s] us to see the before and after of a literary sensation.' 
- iPaper

'There's a sweetness of tone in the stories. I came away from reading this thinking I would have liked to know her.' 
- Tom Sutcliffe, BBC Radio 4 Front Row

'There's a joy and simplicity in the way she writes.' 
- Christina Newland, BBC Radio 4 Front Row

'The stories are unmistakably Lee.' 
- The Telegraph

'Tear-inducing' 
- The Express

'A collection of stories and essays by the Mockingbird author. Lee's skill is so seamless and effortless that it seems easy to replicate ... until you try to do so. She brings heart and clarity and conviction with each word, paragraph and character sketch. If this is the last we see of this dearly departed writer's work, it was a poignant finale.' 
- David Baldacci, Daily Express

THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER 
 
'Thrilling ... helps explain how the little girl from South Alabama Avenue turned herself into a bestselling author.' 
Guardian 
 
'Stories written with all of Lee's character and descriptive brilliance.' 
The Times 
 
'Cast[s] a new light on the literary giant.' 
Sunday Times 
 
'A new window into one of America's literary icons.' 
i Paper 
 
'Unmistakably Lee' 
The Telegraph 
 
From the beloved bestseller and Pulitzer Prize-winning author, a posthumous collection of newly discovered writing, offering a fresh perspective on the remarkable literary mind behind To Kill a Mockingbird. 
 
Featuring an introduction by Casey Cep, Harper Lee's appointed biographer. 
 
Harper Lee remains a landmark figure in the American canon – thanks to Scout, Jem, Atticus, and the other indelible characters in her Pulitzer-winning debut, To Kill a Mockingbird; as well as for the darker, late-’50s version of small-town Alabama that emerged in Go Set a Watchman, her only other novel, published in 2015 after its rediscovery. 
 
The Land of Sweet Forever combines Lee’s never-before-seen short stories and published nonfiction in a volume offering an unprecedented look at the development of her inimitable voice. Covering territory from the Alabama schoolyards of Lee’s youth to the luncheonettes and movie houses of midcentury Manhattan, The Land of Sweet Forever invites still-vital conversations about politics, equality, travel, love, fiction, art, the American South, and what it means to lead an engaged and creative life. 
 
This collection comes with an introduction by Casey Cep, Harper Lee’s appointed biographer, which provides illuminating background for our reading of these stories and connects them both to Lee’s life and to her two novels. 
 
Combining Lee's early short fiction and later nonfiction, The Land of Sweet Forever offers an unprecedented look at the development of her inimitable voice.

Harper Lee

Books by Harper Lee

Articles featuring Harper Lee

Books to help cope with the heat

The best literary quotes about summer

The novels that taught me to be a better dad

Audiobooks everyone should listen to, as chosen by our readers

6 unforgettable fathers in literature

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, adapted and illustrated by Fred Fordham

6 life lessons from Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird

16 mesmerising graphic novels

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