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Books to help cope with the heat

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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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17 mesmerising graphic novels

50th Anniversary Edition

To Kill A Mockingbird

Enhanced Edition

60th Anniversary Edition

A special edition to celebrate 60 years since the first publication of this unforgettable classic

Lee explores with exuberant humourthe irrationality of adult attitudes to race and class in the Deep South of the 1930s.

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 in the now familiar Southern tradition

Her book is lifted...into the rare company of those that linger in the memory...

There's a beautiful simplicity to it that means anyone can read it... Transcends any particular time or generation

Harper Lee was born in 1926 in Monroeville, Alabama. She attended Huntington College and studied law at the University of Alabama. She is the author of the acclaimed novels To Kill a Mockingbird and Go Set a Watchman, and was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, the Presidential Medal of Freedom and numerous other literary awards and honours. She died on 19 February 2016.

'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.

The stunning graphic novel adaptation

To Kill a Mockingbird

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

Harper Lee (Author) 
 Harper Lee was born in 1926 in Monroeville, Alabama. She attended Huntington College and studied law at the University of Alabama. She is the author of the acclaimed novels To Kill a Mockingbird and Go Set a Watchman, and was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, the Presidential Medal of Freedom and numerous other literary awards and honours. She died on 19 February 2016. 
 
Fred Fordham (Author) 
 Fred Fordham was born in 1985 and grew up in north London. Before beginning work in comics and graphic novels he worked as a traditional portrait painter and muralist. His first published work in the medium appeared in France and he has since written and illustrated stories for various publications, most recently illustrating Philip Pullman's debut graphic-novel, The Adventures of John Blake: Mystery of the Ghost Ship.

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.

Harper Lee's sensational lost novel

Go Set a Watchman

From Harper Lee comes a landmark new novel set two decades after her beloved Pulitzer Prize-winning masterpiece, To Kill a Mockingbird.

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.

_________________ 
A landmark new novel from Harper Lee, set two decades after her beloved Pulitzer Prize-winning masterpiece To Kill a Mockingbird. 
 
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. 
 
Memories from her childhood flood back, and her values and assumptions are thrown into doubt. Featuring many of the iconic characters from To Kill a Mockingbird, Go Set a Watchman perfectly captures a young woman, and a world, in painful yet necessary transition out of the illusions of the past – a journey that can be guided only by one’s own conscience. 
 
Written in the mid-1950s, Go Set a Watchman imparts a fuller, richer understanding and appreciation of Harper Lee. Here is an unforgettable novel of wisdom, humanity, passion, humour and effortless precision – a profoundly affecting work of art that is both wonderfully evocative of another era and relevant to our own times. It not only confirms the enduring brilliance of To Kill a Mockingbird, but also serves as its essential companion, adding depth, context and new meaning to a classic.

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

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

'Her book is lifted...into the rare company of those that linger in the mind long after dramas, sagas and sophisticated frolics have coalesced into a blur of half-forgotten fiction'

'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'

'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

Praise for To Kill A Mockingbird

'No one ever forgets this book'

'Her book is lifted...into the rare company of those that linger in the mind long after dramas, sagas and sophisticated frolics have coalesced into a blur of half-forgotten fiction'

'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'

'No one ever forgets this book'

'Her book is lifted...into the rare company of those that linger in the mind long after dramas, sagas and sophisticated frolics have coalesced into a blur of half-forgotten fiction'

'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'

'No one ever forgets this book'

'Her book is lifted...into the rare company of those that linger in the mind long after dramas, sagas and sophisticated frolics have coalesced into a blur of half-forgotten fiction'

'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'

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

17 mesmerising graphic novels

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