| Title | Description | Author | Category |
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| Babel Tower | Part of a trilogy including The Virgin in the Garden and Still Life | A. S. Byatt | Modern British |
| Behind the Scenes at the Museum | Alexandra: I really enjoyed this. It is basically a very funny story about a rather dysfunctional family that is told mainly from the daughter's perspective. It starts right from conception and it is some of these scenes during pregnancy that really made me chuckle!! | Kate Atkinson | Modern British |
| Changing Places : A Tale of Two Campuses | Wonderful novel from the 60s, it is the story of a teaching exchange between a British professor and one Morris Zapp, a California-based Jane Austen expert who has (intentionally) never set foot in England. Hilarious, full of social satire à la Jane, clear-eyed yet indulgent of human foibles. | David Lodge | Modern British |
| Code of the Woosters, The | DavidL: This shows Wodehouse at the very top of his form. In the first few chapters, we get the classic lines, "While not actually disgruntled, he was far from being gruntled" and "She snorted like one of those gas explosions that slay six." | P. G. Wodehouse | Modern British |
| Crampton Hodnet | . | Barbara Pym | Modern British |
| Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, The | Delories: Even those without such a personal interest will find its quirky first-person narrator fascinating, funny, and ultimately very moving, and the "mystery" aspect is well handled. | Mark Haddon | Modern British |
| Edge of Reason, The | Laraine: If you liked Bridget Jones, you will love this book. This time, we have the story of Persuasion in a modern setting. You may want to order it from Amazon UK--the American one is likely to have the "British" parts of the book expunged. | Helen Fielding | Modern British |
| England, England | Laraine: Many Barnes fans consider this to be his best work. The Isle of Wight is proposed as the sight of the ultimate theme park with England as its theme. Guaranteed to make you laugh--and you may die of it! | Julian Barnes | Modern British |
| Excellent Women | JenK: Mildred Lathbury is the wry, observant daughter of a country rector living alone in 1950s London. She fills her life with charity work and the friendships of her local priest, his sister, and the usual parish suspects. Their peaceful but ordinary lives are suddenly upset - for good? - by some new, intriguing neighbors. | Barbara Pym | Modern British |
| Four Dreamers and Emily | LizM: This book is perfect for anyone who has the sweatshirt that says "Bronte-saurus: a voracious reader of English literature." ;-) Stevie Davis pokes fun at academics and Bronte fan (not that the two are mutually exclusive) by serving up four diverse character attending a Bronte conference: a lecturer who is struggling and failing to manage her home and work life. | Stevie Davies | Modern British |
| Frost in May | MarthaBee: The story of Nanda Gray, who in 1908 at the age of eight, goes to live at the Convent of the Five Wounds. The first in a series of four books: Book 2 is The Lost Traveller, Book 3 The Sugar House, and Book 4 Beyond the Glass. | Antonia White | Modern British |
| Harry Potter series | Lots of Pemberleans: Yes, we know -- if you haven't already read the story of Harry Potter you probably won't, but this list would be incomplete without it. If you're one of the few who has refused to read HP, just give "The Prisoner of Azkaban" a try -- you may get hooked. | J. K. Rowling | Modern British(Series) |
| Human Croquet | Atkinson is a true storyteller, weaving the strands like Arachne and what strands they are. Humour, magic, mystery, and imagination are all within her grasp ad she fashions them into a quirky, rich, beautiful novel you won't be able to put aside once you've begun it. | Kate Atkinson | Modern British |
| I, Claudius | Paula: One of my favorites. | Robert Graves | Modern British |
| Ice Age, The | . | Margaret Drabble | Modern British |
| Jane and Prudence | . | Barbara Pym | Modern British |
| Never Let Me Go | Laurel: This haunting story, set in the possibly-near future, is narrated by Kathy, a student at a not-quite-ordinary private school. Multi-layered, atmospheric and thought-provoking, the book asks, what makes one human? | Kazuo Ishiguro | Modern British |
| Pale View of Hills, A | Masterfully crafted story of Japanese women living with post-WWII traumas. Much of the story is a flashback to Japan immediately after the war. A quiet and deeply, deeply moving story of survival that makes profound statements about the cultural differences between Japan and England. | Kazuo Ishiguro | Modern British |
| Possession: A Romance | LeahJL: One of my favorite novels. My students say it's a perfect English major novel because so much of it concerns how literary scholars try to possess and are possessed by the subjects of their scholarship. Byatt so beautifully points out that scholars can't know everything. | A. S. Byatt | Modern British |
| Quartet in Autumn | Recommended for lovers of Jane Austen and Stella Gibbons. She is sort of an Austenesque writer from the 50s-70s. Lots of anthropologists and curates and 'Excellent Women.' Very funny and very much the England we all try to find when we go to visit. | Barbara Pym | Modern British |
| Radiant Way, The | Kate: Three women in middle age, best of friends, find life has some unexpected surprises. Drabble is a major Austen scholar, and she has some of JA's ability to see beyond the facade into the reality. | Margaret Drabble | Modern British |
| Remains of the Day, The | A masterpiece that reveals subtlety of human nature like no other contemporary book. A gem that is much, much better than the sometimes stunningly good movie. | Kazuo Ishiguro | Modern British |
| Right Ho, Jeeves | DavidL: RHJ has the classic scene of Gussie distributing prizes at the Market Snodsbury Grammar School while loaded to the gills with assorted alcoholic stimulants, and Wodehouse never wrote anything to top that. | P. G. Wodehouse | Modern British |
| Splitting | This wickedly incisive portrait divorce swoops with dizzying ease among the conflicting perspectives of a woman whose personality, in the face of her impending divorce, has slivered into a chorus of bickering interior voices. | Fay Weldon | Modern British |
| Still Life | Part of a trilogy including The Virgin in the Garden and Babel Tower | A. S. Byatt | Modern British |
| Summer Before the Dark, The | Kathleen(elder): The story is about Kate Brown, a wife and mother of 4 (mostly) grown children. The Summer of the title covers a change in Kate's life, the time when she realizes that she will soon be redefining her role within the family -- if she is no longer needed to do everything for husband and children, what will she become and how will she see herself. | Doris Lessing | Modern British |
| Unbearable Bassington, The | Constanza: If you like dark humour, you'll love this novel. Saki is a caustic observer, and all his characters are self-centered egotistics, but he has a way with words that is certainly very funny (except for the last four or five chapters, where he certainly turns more melodramatic and bitter; not an ounce of humour there). Note: The linked book is the complete works of H. H. Munro. | H. H. Munro (Saki) | Modern British |
| Virgin in the Garden, The | Part of a trilogy including Still Live and Babel Tower | A. S. Byatt | Modern British |
| Waitress, The | I found it a very enjoyable, positive read. I like the way her characters develop and undergo soul searching (most obvious in the main character of Katie) without being depressing. The only flaw to my way of thinking is that it ended rather abruptly for such a long novel. | Melissa Nathan | Modern British |
| Waterland | The Jeremy Irons film isn't a patch on the novel, Waterland. The novel is fascinating | Graham Swift | Modern British |
| Wild Sargasso Sea | Based on Jane Eyre, this is the story of Antoinette Mason, the madwoman in Rochester's upper floor. Written in 1966, it was the comeback book for Jean Rhys, who'd been popular in the 20's and 30's. | Jean Rhys | Modern British |
