Getting students to read isn’t about forcing thicker books or harder words—it’s about finding stories that pull them in.
In school, reading plays a bigger role than many realise. It shapes how students think, how they express ideas, and how confidently they handle unfamiliar questions in school. Yet with so many books available, choosing the right one can feel overwhelming for both parents and students.
That’s why we’ve curated this list of 100 recommended books for all students, thoughtfully organised into three reading levels: Easy, Intermediate, and Advanced. This allows students to start at a comfortable level and gradually challenge themselves, building confidence and stamina along the way. The list includes a wide range of engaging, age-appropriate reads that are designed to support language growth while keeping reading enjoyable.
You don’t need to read everything. Start at the right level, find a book that sparks interest, and let progress happen naturally.
Getting Started
This section is ideal for students who are building reading confidence. The books here use accessible language and engaging storylines to help students enjoy reading, develop stamina, and finish books with confidence.
| Title | Author | Genre | Summary |
|---|---|---|---|
| The Best of Catherine Lim | Catherine Lim | Prose Fiction Singapore Literature | Compiled here are Catherine Lim’s insightful and mesmerising 12 short stories, selected from her numerous books published over a period of 15 years. |
| Bridge to Terabithia | Katherine Paterson | Prose Fiction Coming of Age | Jess Aarons, a farm boy, and his new friend, a tomboy named Leslie Burke, become best friends, and retreat into their own world, Terabithia, a secret imagined world in the woods. There, they reign as king and queen, and make up imaginary tales and feats of wonder. One day, though, an unexpected tragedy strikes, and the two are separated forever. |
| Danny the Champion of the World | Roald Dahl | Prose Fiction Coming of Age | Danny’s life seems perfect: his home is a gypsy caravan, he’s the youngest car mechanic around, and his best friend is his dad, who never runs out of wonderful stories to tell. And when Danny discovers his father’s secret, he’s off on the adventure of a lifetime. |
| The Harry Potter Series Book 1- 7 | J.K. Rowling | Prose Fiction Fantasy | The Harry Potter series spans 7 years of Harry Potter beginning as an neglected 11 year old orphan living with his aunt, uncle and cousin and discovering he was a wizard. It follows his adventures with his friends at Hogwarts as he discovers his past, reckons with who is he and confronts face to face with the dark wizard who killed his parents. |
| Wonder | R. J. Palacio | Prose Fiction Coming of Age | August (Auggie) Pullman was born with a facial deformity that prevented him from going to a mainstream school—until now. He’s about to start 5th grade at Beecher Prep, and if you’ve ever been the new kid then you know how hard that can be. The thing is Auggie’s just an ordinary kid, with an extraordinary face. But can he convince his new classmates that he’s just like them, despite appearances? |
| White Bird: A Wonder Story | R. J. Palacio | Graphic Novel Coming of Age Historical Novel | In R. J. Palacio’s bestselling collection of stories Auggie & Me, which expands on characters in Wonder, readers were introduced to Julian’s grandmother, Grandmère. In White Bird, Palacio makes her graphic novel debut with Grandmère’s heartrending story: how she, a young Jewish girl, was hidden by a family in a Nazi-occupied French village during World War II; how the boy she and her classmates once shunned became her savior and best friend. Sara’s harrowing experience movingly demonstrates the power of kindness to change hearts, build bridges, and even save lives. With poignant symbolism and gorgeous artwork that brings Sara’s story out of the past and cements it firmly in this moment in history, White Bird is sure to captivate anyone who was moved by the book Wonder. |
| Fistful of Colours | Suchen Christine Lim | Prose Fiction Singapore Literature | Fistful of Colours, is an elegant, multi-layered reflection on Singapore as experienced through one day in the life of Ong Suwen, a young teacher in search of her identity as a woman and an artist. Fistful of Colours is a seminal novel in Singapore’s literary canon and was the first book to receive the Singapore Literature Prize in 1992. |
| The Coffin is too Big for the Hole | Kuo Pao Kun | Prose Fiction Singapore Literature | Most Singaporeans can certainly relate to The Coffin, as Kuo makes a liberal reference at the early governing style in Singapore with this simple comedic play of a grandson trying to bury his grandfather. It reflects the sociopolitical landscape in Singapore till today. |
| Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry | Mildred D. Taylor. | Prose Fiction War and Conflict | The Newbery Medal-winning Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry tells the story of one African American family, fighting to stay together and strong in the face of brutal racist attacks, illness, poverty, and betrayal in the Deep South of the 1930s. |
| I Am David | Anne Holm | Prose Fiction War and Conflict | David’s entire twelve-year life has been spent in a grisly prison camp in Eastern Europe. But when he is given the chance to escape, he seizes it. With his vengeful enemies hot on his heels, David struggles to cope in this strange new world, where his only resources are a compass, a few crusts of bread, his two aching feet, and some vague advice to seek refuge in Denmark. |
| The Boy in Striped Pyjamas | John Boyne | Prose Fiction War and Conflict | The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas is a 2008 British-American historical period drama. The Holocaust drama explores the horror of a World War II Nazi extermination camp through the eyes of two 8-year-old boys; Bruno, the son of the camp’s Nazi commandant, and Schmuel, a Jewish inmate. |
| The Haunting | Margaret Mahy | Prose Fiction Fantasy | After a shy and rather withdrawn eight-year-old begins receiving frightening supernatural images and messages, he learns about a family legacy which could be considered a curse or a rare gift. A Carnegie Medal Book. |
| The Giver | Lois Lowry | Prose Science Fiction | Jonas’s world is perfect. Everything is under control. There is no war or fear or pain. There are no choices. Every person is assigned a role in the Community. When Jonas turns twelve, he is singled out to receive special training from The Giver. The Giver alone holds the memories of the true pain and pleasure of life. Now it’s time for Jonas to receive the truth. There is no turning back. (Blurb) |
| Finding Where the Wind Goes: Moments from My Life | Mae Jemison | Prose Fiction Autobiography | As a young girl, Mae Jemison knew she wanted to travel to space and she refused to be discouraged. Through a lifelong dedication to her dream, she eventually made history when she blasted into orbit aboard the space shuttle Endeavor. Smart, and full of life, her anecdotal account is inspiring and entertaining. |
| Chinese Cinderella: The True Story of an Unwanted Daughter | Adeline Yen Mah | Prose Fiction Asian Literature Memoirs | A riveting memoir of a girl’s painful coming-of-age in a wealthy Chinese family during the 1940s. A Chinese proverb says, “Falling leaves return to their roots.” In Chinese Cinderella, Adeline Yen Mah returns to her roots to tell the story of her painful childhood and her ultimate triumph and courage in the face of despair. |
| Centaurs | Gary Jeffrey | Graphic Novel | A centaur is one of the wildest creations in Greek mythology. In this book, readers explore fascinating tales about centaurs and the dangers they were thought to pose to both themselves and humans. The featured story of Hercules and the Centaurs is presented in exciting graphic-novel form, using engaging artwork and accessible text to draw reluctant readers into the world of these wild and powerful creatures. |
| One of Us Is Lying | Karen M. McManus | Prose Fiction Mystery Thriller | On Monday afternoon, five students at Bayview High walk into detention. Bronwyn, the brain, is Yale-bound and never breaks a rule. Addy, the beauty, is the picture-perfect homecoming princess. Nate, the criminal, is already on probation for dealing. Cooper, the athlete, is the all-star baseball pitcher. And Simon, the outcast, is the creator of Bayview High’s notorious gossip app. Only, Simon never makes it out of that classroom. Before the end of detention Simon’s dead. And according to investigators, his death wasn’t an accident. On Monday, he died. But on Tuesday, he’d planned to post juicy reveals about all four of his high-profile classmates, which makes all four of them suspects in his murder. Or are they the perfect patsies for a killer who’s still on the loose? |
| Fish in a Tree | Lynda Mullaly Hunt | Prose fiction Realistic fiction | Ally has been smart enough to fool a lot of smart people. Every time she lands in a new school, she is able to hide her inability to read by creating clever yet disruptive distractions. She is afraid to ask for help; after all, how can you cure dumb? However, her newest teacher Mr. Daniels sees the bright, creative kid underneath the trouble maker. With his help, Ally learns not to be so hard on herself and that dyslexia is nothing to be ashamed of. As her confidence grows, Ally feels free to be herself and the world starts opening up with possibilities. |
| Pax | Sarah Pennypacker | Prose Fiction | Pax was only a kit when his family was killed, rescued by “his boy,” Peter, from abandonment and certain death. Now the war front approaches, and when Peter’s father enlists, Peter has to move in with his grandfather. Far worse than being forced to leave home is the fact that Pax can’t go. Peter obeys his stern father and agrees to release Pax back into the wild. But before Peter makes it through even one night under his grandfather’s roof, regret and duty spur him to action; he sneaks out into the night, determined to find his beloved friend. This is the story of Peter, Pax, and their independent struggles to return to each other in the face of war. From bestselling and award-winning author Sara Pennypacker comes a beautifully wrought, utterly compelling novel about the essential truths that define us and the devastating costs of war. Pax is destined to become a classic, beloved for generations to come. |
| Ghost | Jason Reynolds | Prose Fiction Coming of Age | Running. That’s all Ghost (real name Castle Cranshaw) has ever known. But Ghost has been running for the wrong reasons—it all started with running away from his father, who, when Ghost was a very little boy, chased him and his mother through their apartment, then down the street, with a loaded gun, aiming to kill. Since then, Ghost has been the one causing problems—and running away from them—until he meets Coach, an ex-Olympic Medalist who sees something in Ghost: crazy natural talent. If Ghost can stay on track, literally and figuratively, he could be the best sprinter in the city. Can Ghost harness his raw talent for speed, or will his past finally catch up to him? |
| Warcross | Marie Lu | Prose Fiction | This is Hunger Games meets Minecraft. For the millions who log in every day, Warcross isn’t just a game—it’s a way of life. The obsession started ten years ago and its fan base now spans the globe, some eager to escape from reality and others hoping to make a profit. Struggling to make ends meet, teenage hacker Emika Chen works as a bounty hunter, tracking down Warcross players who bet on the game illegally. But the bounty-hunting world is a competitive one, and survival has not been easy. To make some quick cash, Emika takes a risk and hacks into the opening game of the international Warcross Championships—only to accidentally glitch herself into the action and become an overnight sensation. Convinced she’s going to be arrested, Emika is shocked when instead she gets a call from the game’s creator, the elusive young billionaire Hideo Tanaka, with an irresistible offer. He needs a spy on the inside of this year’s tournament in order to uncover a security problem . . . and he wants Emika for the job. With no time to lose, Emika’s whisked off to Tokyo and thrust into a world of fame and fortune that she’s only dreamed of. But soon her investigation uncovers a sinister plot, with major consequences for the entire Warcross empire. |
| They Called Us Enemy | George Takei | Graphic Novel Historical Fiction Autobiography | A recount of George Takei‘s (from Star Trek fame) recount of hist childhood imprisoned within American concentration camps during World WarII. A tale of courage, country, loyalty and love. |
| Miles Morales: Spider Man | Jason Reynolds | Prose Fiction Adventure Science Fiction | Half Black, half Puerto Rican, Miles Morales is comfortable in his own skin, even if some people aren’t always comfortable with his skin. But the same can’t be said for how Miles feels about other aspects of his identity. He’s a scholarship student from a poor Brooklyn neighborhood attending an elite prep school and he wants to do well for himself, his family, and community, but it’s a lot of pressure. And then there’s the fact that he’s Spider-Man. Only his best friend, Ganke, knows this truth. It was on a visit to his late Uncle Aaron, an ex-con his parents had forbidden him to see, that Miles was bitten by the spider that transformed him. Aaron has been on Miles’s mind a lot lately. For all that he has superpowers, Miles wonders if he has the same bad blood that made his uncle turn to crime. And being a superhero doesn’t mean Miles can solve the challenges in his neighborhood, let alone the world; he can’t even challenge a racist teacher without getting suspended. |
| Need | Joelle Charbonneau | Prose Fiction Science Fiction | One by one, the teens in Nottawa, Wisconsin, join the newest, hottest networking site and answer one question: What do you need? A new iPhone? Backstage passes to a concert? In exchange for a seemingly minor task, the NEED site will fulfill your request. Everyone is doing it. So why shouldn’t you? Kaylee Dunham knows what she needs—a kidney for her sick brother. She doesn’t believe a social networking site can help, but it couldn’t hurt to try. Or could it? After making her request, Kaylee starts to realize the price that will have to be paid for her need to be met. The demands the site makes on users in exchange for their desires are escalating, and so is the body count. Will Kaylee be able to unravel the mystery of who created the NEED network before it destroys them all? |
| The Enigma Girls | Candace Fleming | Non fiction History Code-breaking | Imagine accepting a job knowing nothing about the work, only to arrive by train at a nondescript location where the first order of business is to sign the Official Secrets Act. In the early days of World War II, many young British women found themselves arriving at Bletchley Park in the English countryside, the desire to serve their nation guiding their decisions to accept work so secretive that they had no idea what they’d be doing when they agreed they wouldn’t tell anyone about it. Candace Fleming’s fast-paced and engaging text chronicles the contributions of ten white British teens who contributed to the war effort through cipher work and related jobs. Going beyond the stories told by Hollywood, this volume highlights the dedication and daily efforts of young women who were more than just cogs in the machinations of England’s wartime spy and surveillance system. |
| A Deathly Compendium of Poisonous Plants | Rebecca E.Hirsch | Non-fiction Nature Science | Short chapters introduce 25 poisonous plants (actually, 24 plants and one fungus) following a similar format for each, with most including sections titled “Wicked Weed” or “Sinister Seed” (as appropriate), “Bodily Harm” (impact on a human body, including the gross particulars), and “Deadly Details” (such as “Mandrake was a component of witches’ flying ointment—a concoction that when smeared on the skin produced powerful hallucinations of flight.”) Many chapters include a gruesome account of people killed by the plants, some historical and others more recent. The conversational and sometimes sassy tone employs “Dear Reader” moments to emphasize the serious dangers posed by encounters with poisonous plants. |
| Jumper | Melanie Croder | Prose Fiction Adventure | In a ripped-from-the-headlines story, nineteen-year-old Blair’s passion for fighting fires lands her a spot with the Forest Service and sets her on a wilderness adventure that quickly turns catastrophic. How far would you go to save yourself? Blair Scott is in her second season as a wildland firefighter when the Forest Service puts out a call for an additional class of smokejumpers. She and her best friend Jason both apply, though neither expects to get in since they’re only nineteen. But it’s been a devastating fire season, and they are both accepted. But going to training camp is only the first step—everyone expects the teenage rookies will wash out in the first week. Blair has always been touchy about people telling her she isn’t good enough, so she begins taking unnecessary risks to prove herself. It doesn’t take long before everything spins out of control, leaving Blair struggling to cope. A story of courage, self-knowledge, and ultimate triumph over the elements, Jumper is a dramatic wilderness adventure that explores what it takes to survive—in every sense of the word. |
| The Loop Series | Ben Oliver | Prose Fiction Adventure Science Fiction Fantasy | It’s Luka Kane’s 16th birthday and he’s been inside The Loop for over two years. Every inmate is serving a death sentence with the option to push back their execution date by six months if they opt into “Delays,” scientific and medical experiments for the benefit of the elite in the outside world.But rumors of a war on the outside are spreading amongst the inmates, and before they know it, their tortuous routine becomes disrupted. The government-issued rain stops falling. Strange things are happening to the guards. And it’s not long until the inmates are left alone inside the prison. Were the chains that shackled Luka to his cell the only instruments left to keep him safe? In a thrilling shift, he must overcome fellow prisoners hell-bent on killing him, the warden losing her mind, the rabid rats in the train tunnels, and a population turned into murderous monsters to try and break out of The Loop, save his family, and discover who is responsible for the chaos that has been inflicted upon the world. |
| The Teenage Textbook and the Teenage Workbook | Adrian Tan | Prose Fiction Singapore Fiction Coming of Age | This book is for teenagers from 13 to 83. It is a story about first loves, going to JC and figuring it all out, all happening in the pressing space of six-and-a-half weeks (but as this is a family book, we shall not say where or how it’s pressing). Lee Mui Ee is the Ice Cream Girl. Tom D’Cruz, the Dashing Athletic Hero. Yeo Chung Kai is Mr Outstandingly Average while Sissy Song and Loo Kok Sean are the Princess of PJC and the Aspiring College Cassanova respectively. Who will melt the Ice Cream Girl? Who or what will sort out this mess? Will it be 1. The Teenage Textbook? 2. Dr E. Sopramaniam, MA (East Anglia), PhD (Calcutta)? 3. Irene Pates, Dear Adam, Paik Choo’s Problem Page, the editors of Female Magazine and Mills & Boon? 4. Who cares!? The answers to these and many other earth-(or should we say), milk-shaking problems, are here, as the Ice Cream Girl decides to come clean… “I’ve Passed Teenhood.” |
| Needle | Patricia Lawrence | Prose Fiction Crime Fiction | Award-winning author Patrice Lawrence explores the harsh reality of the criminal justice system for young people in this riveting teen drama. Charlene is a demon knitter. It’s the only thing she enjoys and the only thing she believes she’s really good at. So when her foster mum’s son destroys her latest creation, Charlene loses it and stabs him in the hand with her knitting needle. It damages a nerve and she gets sucked into the criminal justice system for assault. Charlene’s not sorry and she’s never apologised to anyone in her life. But people keep telling her that if she says sorry, they’ll go easier on her. Can she bring herself to say it and not mean it when her freedom’s at stake? |
| A Monster Calls | Patrick Ness | Prose Fiction Coming of Age Grief | The monster showed up just after midnight. As they do. But it isn’t the monster Conor’s been expecting. He’s been expecting the one from his nightmare, the one he’s had nearly every night since his mother started her treatments, the one with the darkness and the wind and the screaming… This monster is something different. Something ancient, something wild. And it wants the most dangerous thing of all from Conor. It wants the truth. Patrick Ness takes the final idea of the late, award-winning writer Siobhan Dowd and weaves an extraordinary and heartbreaking tale of mischief, healing and above all, the courage it takes to survive. |
| Holes | Louis Sachar | Prose Fiction Coming of Age | Stanley Yelnats’ family has a history of bad luck, so when a miscarriage of justice sends him to Camp Green Lake Juvenile Detention Centre (which isn’t green and doesn’t have a lake) he is not surprised. Every day he and the other inmates are told to dig a hole, five foot wide by five foot deep, reporting anything they find. Why? The evil warden claims that it’s character building, but this is a lie. It’s up to Stanley to dig up the truth. |
| War Horse | Michael Morpugo | Prose Fiction War | In the deadly chaos of the First World War, one horse witnesses the reality of battle from both sides of the trenches. Bombarded by artillery, with bullets knocking riders from his back, Joey tells a powerful story of the truest friendships surviving in terrible times. One horse has the seen the best and the worst of humanity. The power of war and the beauty of peace. This is his story. |
Intermediate Reader
This section is for students who are comfortable with regular reading and ready for more challenge. The books here introduce richer language, more complex ideas, and deeper themes, helping students strengthen comprehension and stretch their thinking while staying engaged.
| Title | Author | Genre | Summary |
|---|---|---|---|
| Here & Beyond: 12 stories | Cyril Wong (Editor) | Prose Fiction Singapore Literature | These stories chart the emotional ups and downs of protagonists who strive to find meaning against the backdrop of negotiations between the local and the global, between the past and an ever-changing, urbanised present. |
| Island Voices | Angelia Poon, Sim Wai Chew (Editor) | Prose Fiction Singapore Literature | Island Voices contains fifteen examples of Singapore short story at its best, Here are works that touch on love, family, relationships, growing up, growing old; works that explore despair, courage, competition as well as collaboration. Collectively, the stories highlight the multifaceted and mosaic nature of Singapore society and history. They testify to the pressures and dilemmas faced by a nation that leaped in one generation from tradition and modernity. |
| Plays for Schools | Haresh Sharma | Drama Singapore Literature | Award-winning playwright Haresh Sharma has created stories and characters that will entertain, delight and surprise the reader. The plays include contemporary adaptations such as Hamlet, Such Sweet Sorrow, What Big Bombs You Have and Ah Boy and the Beanstalk. The collection also includes the hugely entertaining History, Whose Story? And Survivor Singapore. |
| The Village by the Sea | Anita Desai | Prose Fiction Asian Literature | A story of survival set in a small fishing village near Bombay. Lila and Hari, aged 13 and 12, struggle to keep the family, including two young sisters, going when their mother is ill and their father usually the worse for drink. When Hari goes to Bombay to find work, Lila seems to be responsible for everything. Although the book paints a picture of extreme poverty, it demonstrates the strength of the family even in the most extreme circumstances and offers a powerful picture of another culture. |
| The Whale Rider | Witi Ihimaera | Prose Fiction Pacific Literature | Eight year old Kahu, a member of the Maori tribe of Whangara, New Zealand, fights to prove her love, her leadership, and her destiny. Her people claim descent from Kahutia Te Rangi, the legendary “whale rider.” In every generation, a male heir has inherited the title of chief. But now there is no male heir. Kahu is his only great-grandchild – and Maori tradition has no use for a girl. The movie adaptation of the book won The Independent Spirit Award for Best Foreign Film and Critic’s Choice Award for Best Young Performer in 2004. |
| Joy Luck Club | Amy Tan | Prose Fiction Coming of Age | Tracing the life of a group of Asian families whose leader has passed on, leaving her daughter with the unpleasant task of filling her shoes, The Joy Luck Club deals with topics such as death, family, marriage, divorce and togetherness. |
| The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time | Mark Haddon | Prose Fiction Coming of Age | Christopher John Francis Boone knows all the countries of the world and their capitals. He relates well to animals but has no understanding of human emotions. And he detests the colour yellow. This improbable story of Christopher’s quest to investigate the suspicious death of a neighbourhood dog makes for one of the most captivating, unusual, and widely heralded novel. |
| The Outsiders | S. E. Hinton | Prose Fiction Coming of Age | The Outsiders tells of the struggle of three brothers to stay together after their parents’ death and their quest for identity among the conflicting values of their adolescent society. |
| Lord of the Flies | William Golding | Prose Fiction Coming of Age | A tale about a group of English schoolboys who are plane-wrecked on a deserted island is just as chilling and relevant today as when it was first published. |
| Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood | Marjane Satrapi | Prose Fiction War and Conflict | Wise, funny, and heartbreaking, Persepolis is Marjane Satrapi’s memoir of growing up in Iran during the Islamic Revolution. In powerful black-and white comic strip images, Satrapi tells the story of her life in Tehran from ages six to fourteen, years that saw the overthrow of the Shah’s regime, the triumph of the Islamic Revolution, and the devastating effects of war with Iraq. |
| Cry, The Beloved Country | Alan Paton | Prose Fiction War and Conflict | Cry, the Beloved Country, the most famous and important novel in South Africa’s history, was an immediate worldwide bestseller in 1948. Alan Paton’s impassioned novel about a black man’s country under white man’s law is a work of searing beauty. |
| First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers | Loung Ung | Prose Fiction War and Conflict | One of seven children of a high-ranking government official, Loung Ung lived a privileged life in the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh until the age of five. Then, in April 1975, Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge army stormed into the city, forcing Ung’s family to flee. Loung was assigned a work camp for orphans, her siblings were sent to labor camps, and those who survived the horrors would not be reunited until the Khmer Rouge was destroyed. |
| To Kill a Mockingbird | Harper Lee | Prose Fiction Classics | A lawyer’s advice to his children as he defends the real mockingbird of Harper Lee’s classic novel—a black man charged with the rape of a white girl. Through the young eyes of Scout and Jem Finch, Harper Lee explores with rich humour and unswerving honesty the irrationality of adult attitudes toward 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 and quiet heroism of one man’s struggle for justice—but the weight of history will only tolerate so much. |
| The Book Thief | Marcus Zusak | Prose Fiction War and Conflict | It is 1939. Nazi Germany. The country is holding its breath. Death has never been busier. Liesel Meminger is a foster girl living outside of Munich, who scratches out a meagre existence for herself by stealing when she encounters something she can’t resist–books. With the help of her accordion-playing foster father, she learns to read and shares her stolen books with her neighbours during bombing raids. |
| The Freedom Writer’s Diary | Erin Gruwell | Prose Fiction Memoirs | As an idealistic twenty-three-year-old English teacher at Wilson High School in Long beach, California, Erin Gruwell confronted a room of “unteachable, at-risk” students. She undertook a life-changing, eyeopening, spirit-raising odyssey against intolerance and misunderstanding and recorded their thoughts and feelings in diaries. |
| To Sir, With Love | E.R. Braithwaite | Prose Fiction Memoirs | To Sir, with Love is an unbelievably inspiring story. E. R. Braithwaite, the author of this memoir, captures the shame and hatred of prejudices and racism. Rick Braithwaite is a young black man, born in South America, who just got out of the Air Force. Braithwaite’s looks for a career, mainly to pay for food, but things don’t work out as planned. |
| A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier | Ishmael Beah | Prose Fiction Memoirs | In A Long Way Gone, Beah, now twenty-five years old, tells a riveting story of how at the age of twelve, he fled attacking rebels and wandered a land rendered unrecognizable by violence. By thirteen, the militia picked him up, and Beah, at heart a gentle boy, found that he was capable of truly terrible acts. |
| Kindred | Octavia E. Butler | Prose Fiction Historical Fiction | Dana, a modern Black woman, is celebrating her 26th birthday with her new husband when she is snatched abruptly from her home in California and transported to the antebellum South. Rufus, the white son of a plantation owner, is drowning, and Dana has been summoned to save him. Dana is drawn back repeatedly through time to the slave quarters, and each time the stay grows longer, more arduous, and more dangerous until it is uncertain whether or not Dana’s life will end, long before it has a chance to begin. |
| Everything but the Brain | Jean Tay | Drama Singapore Literature | What do Physics, three bears and a stroke have in common? Take a journey with Elaine, a middle-aged Physics teacher, as she explains the theory of relativity using the metaphor of three bears and a train, and devises a plan to turn back time and save her ailing father from physical deterioration. |
| The Hunger Games Series | Suzanne Collins | Prose Fiction Dystopian Fiction | In a future where corrupt rulers maintain control through a televised survival competition that pits young people against each other in a fight to the death, Katniss Everdeen’s skills are put to the test when she voluntarily takes her younger sister’s place in the Hunger Games. |
| The Running Dream | Wendelin Van Draanen | Prose Fiction Coming of Age | When a school bus accident leaves 16-year-old Jessica an amputee, she returns to school with a prosthetic limb and her track team finds a wonderful way to help rekindle her dream of running again. |
| A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder Series | Holly Jackson | Prose Fiction Murder Mystery Thriller | Pretty and popular high school senior Andie Bell was murdered by her boyfriend, Sal Singh, who then killed himself. And five years later, Pip sees how the tragedy still haunts her town. But she can’t shake the feeling that there was more to what happened that day. She knew Sal when she was a child, and he was always so kind to her. How could he possibly have been a killer? Now a senior herself, Pip decides to reexamine the closed case for her final project, at first just to cast doubt on the original investigation. But soon she discovers a trail of dark secrets that might actually prove Sal innocent . . . and the line between past and present begins to blur. Someone in Fairview doesn’t want Pip digging around for answers, and now her own life might be in danger. |
| American Born Chinese | Gene Luen Yang | Graphic Novel Coming of Age Cultural Identity | American Born Chinese” maps the adolescent Chinese-American experience through three separate but interwoven stories. One story centres on Jin Wang, a Chinese-American student at an all-white California high school. Jin is plagued by jocks and bullies, so when another Chinese student transfers to the school, Jin wants nothing to do with him. Next is a comic update of the legendary story of the Monkey King, an ancient Chinese morality tale. Finally, there’s the gross and surreal stereotype of Chin-Kee, the ultimate negative Chinese cliche, complete with a sitcom-style “laugh track”. These three apparently unrelated tales come together in an astonishing climax – all with a mighty blast of humour, surprising poignancy and skilled artistry. |
| Don’t Read the Comments | Eric Smith | Prose Fiction Gaming | Divya Sharma is a queen. Or she is when she’s playing Reclaim the Sun, the year’s hottest online game. Divya—better known as popular streaming gamer D1V—regularly leads her #AngstArmada on quests through the game’s vast and gorgeous virtual universe. But for Divya, this is more than just a game. Out in the real world, she’s trading her rising-star status for sponsorships to help her struggling single mom pay the rent. Gaming is basically Aaron Jericho’s entire life. Much to his mother’s frustration, Aaron has zero interest in becoming a doctor like her, and spends his free time writing games for a local developer. In the game, there is a problem with a growing legion of trolls populating them. Soon the virtual harassment seeps into reality when a group called the Vox Populi begin launching real-world doxxing campaigns, threatening Aaron’s dreams and Divya’s actual life. The online trolls think they can drive her out of the game, but everything and everyone Divya cares about is on the line. |
| Coraline | Neil Gaiman | Prose Fiction Fantasy | In Coraline’s family’s new flat are twenty-one windows and fourteen doors. Thirteen of the doors open and close. The fourteenth is locked, and on the other side is only a brick wall, until the day Coraline unlocks the door to find a passage to another flat in another house just like her own. Only it’s different. At first, things seem marvelous in the other flat. The food is better. The toy box is filled with wind-up angels that flutter around the bedroom, books whose pictures writhe and crawl and shimmer, little dinosaur skulls that chatter their teeth. But there’s another mother, and another father, and they want Coraline to stay with them and be their little girl. They want to change her and never let her go. Other children are trapped there as well, lost souls behind the mirrors. Coraline is their only hope of rescue. She will have to fight with all her wits and all the tools she can find if she is to save the lost children, her ordinary life, and herself. |
| The Graveyard Book | Neil Gaiman | Prose Fiction Fantasy | Nobody Owens, known to his friends as Bod, is a perfectly normal boy. Well, he would be perfectly normal if he didn’t live in a graveyard, being raised and educated by ghosts, with a solitary guardian who belongs to neither the world of the living nor the world of the dead. There are dangers and adventures for Bod in the graveyard: the strange and terrible menace of the Sleer; a gravestone entrance to a desert that leads to the city of ghouls; friendship with a witch, and so much more.. |
| Midnight’s Children | Salman Rushdie | Prose Fiction Fantasy History | Born at the stroke of midnight, at the precise moment of India’s independence, Saleem Sinai is destined from birth to be special. For he is one of 1,001 children born in the midnight hour, children who all have special gifts, children with whom Saleem is telepathically linked. But there has been a terrible mix up at birth, and Saleem’s life takes some unexpected twists and turns. As he grows up amidst a whirlwind of triumphs and disasters, Saleem must learn the ominous consequences of his gift, for the course of his life is inseparably linked to that of his motherland, and his every act is mirrored and magnified in the events that shape the newborn nation of India. |
| The Kite Runner | Khaleed Hosseini | Prose Fiction Historical Fiction | The unforgettable, heartbreaking story of the unlikely friendship between a wealthy boy and the son of his father’s servant, The Kite Runner is a beautifully crafted novel set in a country that is in the process of being destroyed. It is about the power of reading, the price of betrayal, and the possibility of redemption; and an exploration of the power of fathers over sons—their love, their sacrifices, their lies. A sweeping story of family, love, and friendship told against the devastating backdrop of the history of Afghanistan over the last forty years. |
| Born a Crime | Trevor Noah | Autobiography Comedy | Trevor Noah’s unlikely path from apartheid South Africa to the desk of The Daily Show began with a criminal act: his birth. Trevor was born to a white Swiss father and a black Xhosa mother at a time when such a union was punishable by five years in prison. Living proof of his parents’ indiscretion, Trevor was kept mostly indoors for the earliest years of his life, bound by the extreme and often absurd measures his mother took to hide him from a government that could, at any moment, steal him away. Finally liberated by the end of South Africa’s tyrannical white rule, Trevor and his mother set forth on a grand adventure, living openly and freely and embracing the opportunities won by a centuries-long struggle. Born a Crime is the story of a mischievous young boy who grows into a restless young man as he struggles to find himself in a world where he was never supposed to exist. It is also the story of that young man’s relationship with his fearless, rebellious, and fervently religious mother―his teammate, a woman determined to save her son from the cycle of poverty, violence, and abuse that would ultimately threaten her own life. |
| Little Bang | Kelly McCaughrain | Prose Fiction | A bittersweet romance that takes a new look at teen pregnancy, the magic and mess of first relationships, and a young woman’s right to choose her own future. 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. |
| Moxie | Jennifer Mathieu | Prose Fiction Social Action | Vivian Carter is fed up. Fed up with an administration at her high school that thinks the football team can do no wrong. Fed up with sexist dress codes, hallway harassment, and gross comments from guys during class. But most of all, Viv Carter is fed up with always following the rules. Viv’s mom was a tough-as-nails, punk rock Riot Grrrl in the ’90s, and now Viv takes a page from her mother’s past and creates a feminist zine that she distributes anonymously to her classmates. She’s just blowing off steam, but other girls respond. As Viv forges friendships with other young women across the divides of cliques and popularity rankings, she realizes that what she has started is nothing short of a girl revolution. |
| Mao’s Last Dancer | Li Cunxin | Prose Fiction Autobiography | From a desperately poor village in northeast China, at age eleven, Li Cunxin was chosen by Madame Mao’s cultural delegates to be taken from his rural home and brought to Beijing, where he would study ballet. In 1979, the young dancer arrived in Texas as part of a cultural exchange, only to fall in love with America-and with an American woman. Two years later, through a series of events worthy of the most exciting cloak-and-dagger fiction, he defected to the United States, where he quickly became known as one of the greatest ballet dancers in the world. This is his story, told in his own inimitable voice. |
| The Poet X | Elizabeth Acevedo | Prose Fiction Realistic Fiction Immigrant Fiction | Fifteen-year-old Xiomara is a Dominican American teen living in Harlem. Her twin brother, Xavier, a smart, gentle boy, can do no wrong in their mother’s eyes. Xiomara can do no right. She often feels unseen and misunderstood, even by Xavier, despite the fact she has always defended him, whether from bullies or from their mother’s judgment by keeping his secret that he’s gay. Xiomara is intrigued by the new poetry club at school, and by Aman, a boy she meets in biology class. Her mother forbids dating, however, and insists Xiomara attend Catholic confirmation classes, which are the same afternoon as the club. But she and Aman connect over music. He sees her, not her developing body which often draws unwanted attention, and he becomes the first person she shares one of her poems with as their secret, out-of-school friendship blossoms into romance. There is an intense emotional arc to this electrifying novel in poems showcasing the emergence of a gifted writer. As Xiomara faces her mother’s scorn, questions her faith, and deals with complications of friendship and romance, her journey is heart-wrenching. Her triumph comes in daring and then demanding to be seen, asserting her voice within and beyond her family and claiming her identity as a poet. |
| Becoming | Michelle Obama | Autobiography | In her memoir, a work of deep reflection and mesmerizing storytelling, Michelle Obama invites readers into her world, chronicling the experiences that have shaped her — from her childhood on the South Side of Chicago to her years as an executive balancing the demands of motherhood and work, to her time spent at the world’s most famous address. With unerring honesty and lively wit, she describes her triumphs and her disappointments, both public and private, telling her full story as she has lived it — in her own words and on her own terms. Warm, wise, and revelatory, Becoming is the deeply personal reckoning of a woman of soul and substance who has steadily defied expectations — and whose story inspires us to do the same. |
Higher Level Reads
This section is for confident readers who are ready to engage with more demanding texts. The books here feature sophisticated language, layered themes, and complex perspectives that challenge students to think deeply, analyse ideas, and read with greater maturity.
| Title | Author | Genre | Summary |
|---|---|---|---|
| That Hate U give | Angie Thomas | Prose Fiction Coming of Age Race Relations | After witnessing her friend’s death at the hands of a police officer, Starr Carter’s life is complicated when the police and a local drug lord try to intimidate her in an effort to learn what happened the night Kahlil died. |
| The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy | Douglas Adams | Prose Science Fiction | Seconds before the Earth is demolished to make way for a galactic freeway, Arthur Dent is plucked off the planet by his friend Ford Prefect, a researcher for the revised edition of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy who, for the last fifteen years, has been posing as an out-of-work actor. Together this dynamic pair begin a journey through space aided by quotes from The Hitchhiker’s Guide and a galaxy-full of fellow travellers. |
| Ender’s Game | Orson Scott Card | Prose Science Fiction | In order to develop a secure defense against a hostile alien race’s next attack, government agencies breed child geniuses and train them as soldiers. A brilliant young boy, Andrew “Ender” Wiggin lives with his parents, his sadistic brother Peter, and his sister Valentine. Peter and Valentine were candidates for the soldier-training program but didn’t make the cut–young Ender is the Wiggin drafted to the orbiting Battle School for rigorous military training. Ender’s Game won the 1985 Nebula Award for best novel and the 1986 Hugo Award for best novel. A movie adaption was released in 2013. |
| Great Expectations | Charles Dickens | Prose Fiction Classics | Pip’s life as an ordinary country boy is destined to be unexceptional until a chain of mysterious events lead him away from his humble origins and up the social ladder. His efforts to become a London gentleman bring him into contact not just with the upper classes but also with dangerous criminals. |
| All the Light We Cannot See | Anthony Doerr | Prose Fiction Historical Fiction | From the highly acclaimed, multiple award-winning Anthony Doerr, the stunningly beautiful instant New York Times bestseller about a blind French girl and a German boy whose paths collide in occupied France as both try to survive the devastation of World War II. |
| I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings | Maya Angelou | Autobiographical Fiction | Here is a book as joyous and painful, as mysterious and memorable, as childhood itself. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings captures the longing of lonely children, the brute insult of bigotry, and the wonder of words that can make the world right. Maya Angelou’s debut memoir is a modern American classic beloved worldwide. |
| The Crucible | Arthur Miller | Drama Historical Fiction | Written in 1953, The Crucible is a mirror Miller uses to reflect the anti-communist hysteria inspired by Senator Joseph McCarthy’s “witch-hunts” in the United States. Within the text itself, Miller contemplates the parallels, writing, “Political opposition… is given an inhumane overlay, which then justifies the abrogation of all normally applied customs of civilized behavior. A political policy is equated with moral right, and opposition to it with diabolical malevolence.” |
| The Great Gatsby | F. Scott Fitzgerald | Prose Fiction Classics | The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s third book, stands as the supreme achievement of his career. First published in 1925, this quintessential novel of the Jazz Age has been acclaimed by generations of readers. The story of the mysteriously wealthy Jay Gatsby and his love for the beautiful Daisy Buchanan is an exquisitely crafted tale of America in the 1920s. |
| The Remains of the Day | Kazuo Ishiguro | Prose Fiction Historical Fiction | In the summer of 1956, Stevens, a long-serving butler at Darlington Hall, decides to take a motoring trip through the West Country. The six-day excursion becomes a journey into the past of Stevens and England, a past that takes in fascism, two world wars, and an unrealised love between the butler and his housekeeper. (Goodreads) |
| Kafka on the Shore | Haruki Murakami | Prose Fiction Japanese Literature | Kafka on the Shore, a tour de force of metaphysical reality, is powered by two remarkable characters: a teenage boy, Kafka Tamura, who runs away from home either to escape a gruesome oedipal prophecy or to search for his long-missing mother and sister; and an aging simpleton called Nakata, who never recovered from a wartime affliction and now is drawn toward Kafka for reasons that, like the most basic activities of daily life, he cannot fathom. (Goodreads) |
| The Handmaid’s Tale | Margaret Atwood | Prose Fiction Dystopian Fiction | In Margaret Atwood’s dystopian future, environmental disasters and declining birthrates have led to a Second American Civil War. The result is the rise of the Republic of Gilead, a totalitarian regime that enforces rigid social roles and enslaves the few remaining fertile women. Offred is one of these, a Handmaid bound to produce children for one of Gilead’s commanders. Deprived of her husband, her child, her freedom, and even her own name, Offred clings to her memories and her will to survive. At once a scathing satire, an ominous warning, and a tour de force of narrative suspense, The Handmaid’s Tale is a modern classic. |
| Tomorrow, Tomorrow, Tomorrow | Gabrielle Zevin | Prose Fiction Game Fiction Friendship | In this exhilarating novel, two friends come together as creative partners in the world of video game design, where success brings them fame, joy, tragedy, duplicity, and, ultimately, a kind of immortality. |
| Vera Wang’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers | Jesse Q. Sutanto | Prose Fiction Murder Mystery Thriller | Sixty-year-old self-proclaimed tea expert Vera Wong enjoys nothing more than sipping a good cup of Wulong and doing some healthy ‘detective’ work on the internet. But when Vera wakes up one morning to find a dead man in the middle of her tea shop, it’s going to take more than a strong Longjing to fix things. Knowing she’ll do a better job than the police possibly could – because nobody sniffs out a wrongdoing quite like a suspicious Chinese mother with time on her hands – Vera decides it’s down to her to catch the killer. Nobody spills the tea like this amateur sleuth. |
| The Librarian of Auschwitz | Antonio Iturbe | Prose Fiction Historical Fiction | Based on the experience of real-life Auschwitz prisoner Dita Kraus, this is the incredible story of a girl who risked her life to keep the magic of books alive during the Holocaust. Fourteen-year-old Dita is one of the many imprisoned by the Nazis at Auschwitz. Taken, along with her mother and father, from the Terezín ghetto in Prague, Dita is adjusting to the constant terror that is life in the camp. When Jewish leader Freddy Hirsch asks Dita to take charge of the eight precious volumes the prisoners have managed to sneak past the guards, she agrees. And so Dita becomes the librarian of Auschwitz. Out of one of the darkest chapters of human history comes this extraordinary story of courage and hope. |
| The Book of Lost Names | Kristin Harmel | Prose Fiction Historical Fiction | Eva Traube Abrams, a semi-retired librarian in Florida, is shelving books one morning when her eyes lock on an image of a book she hasn’t seen in sixty-five years—a book she recognizes as The Book of Lost Names. The book appears to contain some sort of code, but researchers don’t know where it came from—or what the code means. Only Eva holds the answer—but will she have the strength to revisit old memories and help reunite those lost during the war? In 1942, Eva was forced to flee Paris after the arrest of her father, a Polish Jew. Finding refuge in a small mountain town in the Free Zone, she begins forging identity documents for Jewish children fleeing to neutral Switzerland. But erasing people comes with a price, and Eva decides she must find a way to preserve the real names of the children who are too young to remember who they really are. The records they keep in The Book of Lost Names will become even more vital when the resistance cell they work for is betrayed. |
| Lessons in Chemistry | Bonnie Garmus | Prose fiction Historical Fiction | Set in 1960s California features the singular voice of Elizabeth Zott, a scientist whose career takes a detour when she becomes the star of a beloved TV cooking show. Elizabeth Zott is not your average woman. But it”s the 1960s and despite the fact that she is a scientist, her peers are very unscientific when it comes to equality. The only good thing to happen to her on the road to professional fulfillment is a run-in with her super-star colleague Calvin Evans (well, she stole his beakers). The only man who ever treated her—and her ideas—as equal, Calvin is already a legend and Nobel nominee. Theirs is true chemistry. But as events are never as predictable as chemical reactions, three years later Elizabeth Zott is an unwed, single mother and the star of America’s most beloved cooking show Supper at Six. Elizabeth’s singular approach to cooking (“take one pint of H2O and add a pinch of sodium chloride”) and independent example are proving revolutionary. Because Elizabeth isn’t just teaching women how to cook, she’s teaching them how to change the status quo. |
| The Martian | Andy Weir | Prose Fiction Science-Fiction | Six days ago, astronaut Mark Watney became one of the first people to walk on Mars. Now, he’s sure he’ll be the first person to die there. After a dust storm nearly kills him and forces his crew to evacuate while thinking him dead, Mark finds himself stranded and completely alone with no way to even signal Earth that he’s alive – and even if he could get word out, his supplies would be gone long before a rescue could arrive. Chances are, though, he won’t have time to starve to death. Damaged machinery, the unforgiving environment, or plain old “human error” are much more likely to kill him first. But Mark isn’t ready to give up yet. Drawing on his ingenuity, his engineering skills and a relentless, dogged refusal to quit, he steadfastly confronts one seemingly insurmountable obstacle after the next. Will his resourcefulness be enough to overcome the impossible odds against him? |
| Artemis | Andy Weir | Prose Fiction Science- Fiction | Jazz Bashara is one of the criminals. She lives in a poor area of Artemis and subsidises her work as a porter with smuggling contraband onto the moon. But it’s not enough. So when she’s offered the chance to make a lot of money she jumps at it. But though planning a crime in 1/6th gravity may be more fun, it’s also a lot more dangerous. When you live on the moon, of course you have a dark side… |
| Project Hail Mary | Andy Weir | Prose Fiction Science Fiction | Ryland Grace is the sole survivor on a desperate, last-chance mission – and if he fails, humanity and the earth itself will perish. Except that right now, he can’t even remember his own name, let alone the nature of his assignment or how to complete it. All he knows is that he’s been asleep for a very, very long time. And he’s just been awakened to find himself millions of miles from home, with nothing but two corpses for company. His crewmates dead, his memories fuzzily returning, Ryland realizes that an impossible task now confronts him. Hurtling through space on this tiny ship, it’s up to him to puzzle out an impossible scientific mystery-and conquer an extinction-level threat to our species. And with the clock ticking down and the nearest human being light-years away, he’s got to do it all alone. |
| V for Vendetta | Alan Moore | Graphic Novel Dystopian Fiction | Set in an imagined future England that has given itself over to fascism, this groundbreaking story captures both the suffocating nature of life in an authoritarian police state and the redemptive power of the human spirit which rebels against it. Crafted with sterling clarity and intelligence, V for Vendetta brings an unequaled depth of characterization and verisimilitude to its unflinching account of oppression and resistance. |
| Babel | RF Kuang | Prose Fiction Historical Fiction Fantasy | 1828. Robin Swift, orphaned by cholera in Canton, is brought to London by the mysterious Professor Lovell. There, he trains for years in Latin, Ancient Greek, and Chinese, all in preparation for the day he’ll enroll in Oxford University’s prestigious Royal Institute of Translation—also known as Babel. The tower and its students are the world’s center for translation and, more importantly, magic. Silver-working—the art of manifesting the meaning lost in translation using enchanted silver bars—has made the British unparalleled in power, as the arcane craft serves the Empire’s quest for colonization. For Robin, Oxford is a utopia dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge. But knowledge obeys power, and as a Chinese boy raised in Britain, Robin realizes serving Babel means betraying his motherland. As his studies progress, Robin finds himself caught between Babel and the shadowy Hermes Society, an organization dedicated to stopping imperial expansion. When Britain pursues an unjust war with China over silver and opium, Robin must decide . . . Can powerful institutions be changed from within, or does revolution always require violence? |
| A Promise Land | Barack Obama | Autobiography | Barack Obama recounts his journey from a young man searching for his identity to the 44th president of the United States, describing in strikingly personal detail his political education and landmark moments of his first term. Reflecting on his presidency, Obama takes readers from his early political dreams to his Iowa caucus victory and the historic night of November 4, 2008, when he became the first African American president. It is the story of one man’s bet with history, the faith of a community organizer tested on the world stage. Obama is candid about the forces that opposed him at home and abroad and bearing the expectation of a generation buoyed by messages of “hope and change”, and unafraid to reveal self-doubt and disappointment. Yet he never wavers from his belief that inside the great, ongoing American experiment, progress is always possible. |
| American Gods | Neil Gaiman | Prose Fiction Fantasy | If you are to survive, you must believe. Shadow Moon has served his time. But hours before his release from prison, his beloved wife is killed in a freak accident. Dazed, he boards a plane home where he meets the enigmatic Mr Wednesday, who professes both to know Shadow and to be king of America. Together they embark on a profoundly strange road trip across the USA, encountering a kaleidoscopic cast of characters along the way. Yet all around them a storm threatens to break. The war has already begun, an epic struggle for the very soul of America, and Shadow is standing squarely in its path. |
| The Way of Kings Stormlight Series | Brandon Sanderson | Prose Fiction Fantasy | Roshar is a world of stone and storms. Uncanny tempests of incredible power sweep across the rocky terrain so frequently that they have shaped ecology and civilization alike. It has been centuries since the fall of the ten consecrated orders known as the Knights Radiant, but their Shardblades and Shardplate remain: mystical swords and suits of armor that transform ordinary men into near-invincible warriors. Men trade kingdoms for Shardblades. Wars were fought for them, and won by them. One such war rages on a ruined landscape called the Shattered Plains. There, Kaladin, who traded his medical apprenticeship for a spear to protect his little brother, has been reduced to slavery. In a war that makes no sense, where ten armies fight separately against a single foe, he struggles to save his men and to fathom the leaders who consider them expendable. Brightlord Dalinar Kholin commands one of those other armies. Like his brother, the late king, he is fascinated by an ancient text called The Way of Kings. Troubled by over-powering visions of ancient times and the Knights Radiant, he has begun to doubt his own sanity. |
| Who Thought This Was a Good Idea?: And Other Questions You Should Have Answers to When You Work in the White House | Alyssa Mastromonaco | Autobiography | Alyssa Mastromonaco worked for Barack Obama for almost a decade, and long before his run for president. From the then-senator’s early days in Congress to his years in the Oval Office, she made Hope and Change happen through blood, sweat, tears and lots of briefing binders. But for every historic occasion – meeting the queen at Buckingham Palace, bursting in on secret climate talks, or nailing a campaign speech in a hailstorm – there were dozens of less-than-perfect moments when it was up to Alyssa to save the day. Like the time she learned the hard way that there aren’t nearly enough bathrooms at the Vatican. Full of hilarious, never-before-told stories, Who Thought This Was a Good Idea? is an intimate portrait of a president, a book about how to get stuff done, and the story of how one woman challenged, again and again, what a ‘White House official’ is supposed to look like. Here Alyssa shares the strategies that made her successful in politics and beyond, including the importance of confidence, the value of not being a jerk, and why ultimately everything comes down to hard work. |
| The Lord of the Rings Trilogy | JRR Tolkien | Prose Fiction Fantasy | Readers will be able to follow the complete story of the Hobbits and their part in the quest for the Ring – beginning with Bilbo’s fateful visit from Gandalf and culminating in the dramatic climax between Frodo and Gollum atop Mount Doom. |
| A Gentleman in Moscow | Amor Towles | Prose Fiction Historical Fiction | On 21 June 1922, Count Alexander Rostov – recipient of the Order of Saint Andrew, member of the Jockey Club, Master of the Hunt – is escorted out of the Kremlin, across Red Square and through the elegant revolving doors of the Hotel Metropol. Deemed an unrepentant aristocrat by a Bolshevik tribunal, the Count has been sentenced to house arrest indefinitely. But instead of his usual suite, he must now live in an attic room while Russia undergoes decades of tumultuous upheaval. Can a life without luxury be the richest of all? |
| Rebecca | Daphne Du Maurier | Prose Fiction Historical Fiction Mystery | 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. |
| A Hundred Years of Solitude | Gabriel Garcia Marquez | Prose Fiction Fantasy Fiction | Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s great masterpiece is the story of seven generations of the Buendia family and of Macondo, the town they have built. Though little more than a settlement surrounded by mountains, Macondo has its wars and disasters, even its wonders and its miracles. A microcosm of Columbian life, its secrets lie hidden, encoded in a book, and only Aureliano Buendia can fathom its mysteries and reveal its shrouded destiny. Blending political reality with magic realism, fantasy and comic invention, One Hundred Years of Solitude is one of the most daringly original works of the twentieth century. |
| Song of Solomon | Toni Morrison | Prose Fiction African American Fiction | In 1930s America Macon learns about the tyranny of white society from his friend Guitar, though he is more concerned with escaping the familial tyranny of his own father. So while Guitar joins a terrorist group Macon goes home to the South, lured by tales of buried family treasure. But his odyssey back home and a deadly confrontation with Guitar leads to the discovery of something infinitely more valuable than gold: his past and the origins of his true self. |
| All Quiet on the Western Front | Erich Maria Remarque | Prose Fiction Historical Fiction | In 1914 a room full of German schoolboys, fresh-faced and idealistic, are goaded by their schoolmaster to troop off to the ‘glorious war’. With the fire and patriotism of youth they sign up. What follows is the moving story of a young ‘unknown soldier’ experiencing the horror and disillusionment of life in the trenches. |
| 1984 | George Orwell | Prose Fiction Political Dystopian Fiction | Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past’ 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. |
| Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust | Daniel Goldhagen | Non-Fiction History | Daniel Goldhagen re-visits a question which history has treated as settled, and his research leads him to the inescapble conclusion that none of the answers holds true. That question is: How could the Holocaust happen? His response is an exploration of German society and its ingrained anti-semitism that demands a fundamental revision of our thinking about the years 1933-1945. The author marshals fresh, primary evidence – including extensive testimony from the actual perpetrators – to show that the killers were ordinary Germans who were not compelled to act as they did (they knew they could refuse without retribution) yet they killed willingly and zealously. |
Indigo 100 Book Challenge
Consistent reading, paired with reflection, is one of the most effective ways students build confidence and maturity.
As part of Indigo’s 15th anniversary, we’re celebrating this journey with something meaningful for our students—the 100 Books Challenge. It’s a simple way to stay consistent, think more deeply about each book, and get rewarded along the way. Whether students start at the Easy, Intermediate, or Advanced level, every book completed is meaningful progress.
- Read. Review. Reward.
Join the 100 Books Challenge and earn $10 Popular vouchers*!
How it works:
Step 1: Pick a book from our list of 100
Step 2: Post your review on Instagram or TikTok, tag @indigogroupsg and a friend,
and use #Indigo100BooksChallengeSG
Step 3: Get rewarded! Receive a $10 Popular voucher* upon approval
*Limited to the first 100 reviews only