Five are still our favourites! Enid Blyton’s 1942 classic The Famous Five tops a list of Britain’s best-loved children’s books – and NONE of the top 10 were published after 1988

The author of children's classic Stig of the Dump, Clive King, has died aged 94.

One of the great American authors, his works included American Pastoral and Portnoy

Jojo Moyes stumps up £360,000 to keep the under-threat Quick Reads adult literacy scheme going.

Tess Of The D’Urbervilles is sympathetic portrayal of a ‘fallen woman’ What Maisie Knew is tale of divorcees who shuttle around blameless daughter Patricia Nichol says no real effort is made to protect her innocence in the novel

Fire and Blood - not to be confused with The Winds of Winter - will be published in November.

From John Bunyan to James Bond, fiction has abounded in cautionary and seductively glamorous tales of gambling. One of my favourite high-stakes players is Becky Sharp, the self-serving anti-heroine of William Makepeace Thackeray's Vanity Fair.

She melded dragons and wizards with spaceships to tackle earth-bound issues of gender and class.

Twelve books to get you through the next 12 months.

What book would you take to a desert island?