Set in nineteenth-century Russia, as the country was emerging from the painful legacy of serfdom, Fathers and Sons' theme is universal: the ideological conflict between generations. At its center are Bazarov — a posturing nihilist who rejects all social institutions — and Arkady, who has been taken in by Bazarov's revolutionary ideas. When they return from university in St Petersburg to visit their parents, their modern cynicism collides with the liberal-minded and reformist nature of their elders. Emotional concerns complicate political principles, as always, while deepening and confusing alliances. Political and domestic, witty and stern Fathers and Sons is a fresh and compassionate masterpiece that is considered to be Turgenev's best novel.

Severin von Kusiemski is obsessed with the Greek goddess of love, and is consumed by the desire to be dominated. When he meets his voluptuous neighbor, Wanda von Dunajew, he is enthralled, and convinces her to enter into a contract: she is to be his Mistress, he will be her slave. So they travel from the harsh Carpathian slopes to verdant Italy, where Severin's once-reluctant Mistress embraces her power with an icy fervour, testing her slave's devotion to breaking point. This otherworldly study of dominance, lust and submission broke new ground in literature and continues to challenge our learned conventions of love and sexuality.

Philip Pirrip, known as Pip, has big dreams of leaving his lowly upbringing on the Kentish moors behind and becoming a sophisticated gentleman. This, he believes, will give him the manners and the means to win the esteem of the beautiful Estella. When he inherits a sum of money from an anonymous benefactor, his once suffocating existence with his vicious sister and her kindly husband Joe expands to encompass new experiences, people and opportunities. As he narrates a thrilling series of adventures, Pip makes many surprising discoveries, bringing him ever closer to an understanding of himself. Filled with eccentric and wholly original characters — such as Miss Havisham, Joe Gargery and Herbert Pocket — and the archetypal 'twist in the tale'.

On his thirtieth birthday, Josef K. is arrested by two unidentified agents for an unspecified crime. In The Trial, Kafka brings us a nightmarish vision of the irrationality and blindness of modern bureaucracy in twentieth-century totalitarian regimes as the narrative is driven by a terrifying inevitability, driving the protagist towards a meaningless and helpless demise. The Trial is an existential masterpiece that resonates strongly with modern audiences.

Hugely influential in 20th-century literature, Orlando is considered one of Virginia Woolf's most accessible and exciting works. Roundly considered Woolf's most playful work, Orlando is the 'biography' of a unique individual; a protagonist whose search for satisfaction, for a full and all-encompassing life, is entirely unbound by convention. Starting out as an Elizabethan boy, Orlando travels through distant lands and through centuries on a quest to find self-expression, before becoming a twentieth-century female writer. Conceived as a cryptic love letter from Woolf to Vita Sackville-West, Orlando is an ambitious and revolutionary epic that experiments with form and character to create a work that is at once challenging and exuberant.

Considered one the classic science-fiction novels, Journey to the Centre of the Earth celebrates 150 years since its first publication. What lies at the centre of our Earth? When Axel helps his uncle Professor Lidenbrock to decipher a cryptic ancient manuscript that purports to chart this very journey, he is thrust upon an epic adventure. They set off from Germany to Iceland, where, with their guide Hans, they descend a volcano, braced for unimaginable phenomena. Nothing, however, could prepare them for the world beneath. With rapid pace and remarkable detail, Journey to the Centre of the Earth reflects the increasingly enlightened world of the nineteenth century, which resonates strongly with today's ever growing scientific worldview.

Wilde's only novel, first published in 1890, posits the idea that the only thing worth pursuing in life is beauty. The novel's protagonist, entranced by the perfection of his portrait and realising that his beauty will one day fade, makes a Faustian bargain whereby the figure on the canvas ages in his place. Gray embarks upon a hedonistic spree of debauchery and cruelty, which mark's only the portrait's face, while his exquisite beauty remains intact.

One of the most famous works of fiction ever published, Dracula has defined the Vampire in the mind of modern culture. Young lawyer Jonathan Harker is summoned to the Transylvanian castle of Dracula to advise the Count on his relocation to England, but he soon finds himself imprisoned and terrified. Meanwhile, a fog of dark occurrences begins to creep across England, and it is up to a small group of men and women, led by Professor Van Helsing, to battle with the Un-Dead to save the souls of humanity. In this fast-paced gothic horror, with its undertones of sex, violence and colonial politics, Stoker has taken the folklore figure of the vampire and transformed him into an immortal icon.

This book lets you discover the classic novel that has been challenging and changing literary perceptions of the erotic for more than 80 years. Constance Chatterley is not content. Trapped in a humdrum marriage to an impotent man, she becomes drawn to the earthy gamekeeper Oliver Mellors. They embark on a sexually-charged affair that allows them a sense of enlightenment and physical fulfilment. In Lady Chatterley's Lover, D.H. Lawrence masterfully explores themes of class, love, sexuality and the conflict between the physical and the mental. Its famously 'improper' content led to an obscenity trial that placed the role of censorship into the spotlight and challenged the boundaries of acceptability in literature.

Fitzgerald's final completed novel, Tender is the Night was a true labour of love inspired by the author's own life. American psychiatrist Dick Diver and his wife Nicole are glamorous socialites, enjoying sparkling lives amidst a flurry of decadent associates in dazzling 1920s France. But Dick has a weakness, Nicole has a secret, and the entrance of a youthful actress catalyses the unravelling of relationships and tarnishes life under the Riviera sun. Inspired by the darkness in the author's own life and marriage, Tender is the Night is at once a vivid imagining of a unique era, and a delicately crafted and poignant study of the selfishness that simmers within us all.

Dostoyevsky's revolutionary work, was a major influence on James Joyce, Ernest Hemingway, and Friedrich Nietzsche. Notes from the Underground is celebrated as the first existentialist novel; it is the starting point for the sense of meaninglessness that runs through much of twentieth-century writing, including that of Kafka and Beckett. Dostoevsky's most revolutionary work is comprised of the rambling memories of a bitter unnamed narrator who has withdrawn entirely from society into an underground existence. It is a probing and speculative analysis of the political and philosophical questions that were pertinent in Russia and Europe during the mid-19th century.

This is the classic Sherlock Holmes story, and an iconic work of detective fiction. The family is cursed; at least that is the hypothesis when Sir Charles Baskerville is found on the dark and eerie moors near his home, the footprints of some ferocious beast by his lifeless body. In these wild and haunting surroundings it is down to Sherlock Holmes, and his assistant Dr Watson, to solve the mystery of the killing, before the hound returns to claim the heir to Baskerville Hall. The Hound of the Baskervilles is the ultimate in detective fiction, pitting the horror of the supernatural against the cold, hard logic of the unflappable Sherlock Holmes.

Charlotte Bronte's most famous novel was highly controversial when it was first published in 1847, it now regularly features on 'best novel' lists around the world. Jane Eyre is 'obscure, plain and little'. Despite her seeming lack of charm, her strong spirit makes an indelible impression, and many are drawn to her; not least the reader. The uncompromising yet restrained first-person narrative of Jane Eyre powerfully allies one with the heroine and instils an earnest desire to see Jane clear of the many trials, betrayals and cruelties she must endure. Through all her endeavours, Jane's quiet quest is to find the compassion and admiration of a kindred spirit; Charlotte Bronte's genius was to engender just this in the reader.

This title is widely regarded as the Great American Novel. A big-screen adaptation, directed by Baz Lurhman and starring Leonardo Dicaprio will be released in May 2013. On the surface, mysterious millionaire Jay Gatsby has everything, but he maintains a distance from those in his orbit, the guests at his constant decadent parties who indulge in all that sensuous 'Roaring Twenties' New York has to offer. Everything glitters, but beneath the glamour there is lost love, there is moral failure. Then, tragedy. The romance, style, brutality and introspection of The Great Gatsby make it not only the author's magnum opus, but one of the paramount American classics.

Tolstoy's iconoclastic essay exploring art and its relationship with society is as relevant in the 21st century as when it was written over 100 years ago. What is Art? What is value? What is good taste? What makes a cultured class? Tolstoy wrestled with these questions for fifteen years, and this book is the result of his fascination with the evolution of art, and its relationship with religion, commerce, and science. As the growing digitisation of our world continues to provide new ways to create and consume art, and raises questions about its quality and its control, What is Art? challenges us to revert to the visceral, the authentic, and to think carefully about how art can shape our collective future.

Few narratives can rival the way in which Shelley's gothic masterpiece captures the human imagination. The enduring appeal of the tale created its own monster in the form of myriad gory adaptations and whimsical pastiches of the work. These can lead one to forget the powerful, engrossing and thought-provoking nature of the original. In Frankenstein, the creature that has become the grotesque caricature we all know so well raises pertinent questions about science and responsibility that are more relevant today than ever before.