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General AAS	L'Amour, Louis	Laclos, Pierre Choderlos de
Lahiri, Jhumpa	Lamb, Charlotte	Lamb, Wally
Lambdin, Dewey	Lambert, Angela	Lamming, George
Lamott, Anne	Lampedusa, Giuseppe Di	Lanchester, John
Landon, Margaret	Landor, Walter Savage	Lansdale, Joe R.
Lardner, Ring	Larsen, Nella	Laurence, Margaret
Lawrence, D.H.	Lawrence, Jerome	Laxness, Halldor
Laye, Camara	Laymon, Richard	Le Carre, John
Leacock, Stephen	Leavitt, David	Lebert, Benjamin
Leckie, Ross	Lee, Chang-Rae	Lee, Gus
Lee, Harper	Lee, Laurie	Lee, Maureen
Lehane, Dennis	Lehmann, Rosamond	Lennox, Judith
Leonard, Elmore	Lermontov, Mikhail	Lessing, Doris
Lette, Kathy	Letts, Billie	Levi, Primo
Levy, Andrea	Levy, Marc	Lewis, C.S.
Lewis, Sinclair	Lewis, Susan	Lewis, Wyndham
Lightman, Alan	Lindsay, Douglas	Lindsey, Johanna
Linklater, Eric	Lipman, Elinor	Litt, Toby
Lively, Penelope	Lloyd, Josie	Lloyd, Kristina
Lodge, David	London, Jack	Long, James
Loos, Anita	Lott, Bret	Lott, Tim
Lovecraft, H. P.	Lowry, Malcolm	Loy, Mina
Lumley, Brian	Lunn, Jonathan	Lunnon-Wood, Mike
Lurie, Alison

1.To Kill a Mockingbird by: Harper Lee October 05, 1989
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It's been ages since I've read this book so I'm not going to say much but this book should be read. Teachers have started not to study this book in schools because it has the word nigger in it (well in this country they have started to stop). It's more important now to read it them ever, this book promotes tolerance rather than racism. It's not the quickest book to read but it's a great book, I'm never going to give this book away.

2.The Golden Notebook (Harper Perennial Modern Classics) by: Doris May Lessing June 18, 2007
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Tedious, ramshackle and utterly utterly self indulgent. I bought this book when I heard she had won the Nobel Prize, and actually read over half of it. But, Oh what torture! All about herself, which is not good as she comes across as batty, but most of all as hugely boring. first part set in Rhodesia, but might as well be Victoria Coach Station. I live in central London, so please come and take my copy away, before I fling it out of my high rise!!

3.The Art of Fiction: Illustrated from Classic and Modern Texts by: David Lodge October 12, 1992
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Terms are bandied around for different forms of novel writing, and you dismiss them as 'jargon', or perhaps 'gobbledegook', and move on. It's only when you've actually written a novel that doesn't fit the standard genre - historical, fantasy, adventure, thriller, etc - that you wish you'd paid more attention. If you've completed writing such a book without having recourse to the Art of Fiction, you'll need it at this point, otherwise you might be excused for thinking you've ploughed a completely new literary furrow. So, before you start preparing your witty acceptance speech on winning the Booker, do read David Lodge and you'll learn that someone famous has been there before you and that, in some cases, they have been lauded and slated by the critics in ... Read More:

4.Small Island by: Andrea Levy September 13, 2004
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Levy takes us back to the Caribbean and Europe of the 30s and 40s in a wholly believable way, through the calmer pre-war years, the horrors and privations of the war, the deflation and dashed hopes that descended after the war, as returning soldiers began to wonder what it had all been for. It's a book that deals with Britain's casually racist past born of the imagined superiority of colonialism, and ponders whether it was really so much better than the Americans' established and open apartheid. But most of all, this is a book about people. It's about making the best of things and getting through. It's a book about dignity, loyalty and hope. Interweaving first person narratives, switching back and forth across time, place and perspective with great ... Read More:

5.Lady Chatterley's Lover (Wordsworth Classics) by: D.H. Lawrence August 01, 2005
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A book which has achieved more notoriety for its sex scenes (shocking in 1930, when the book was written) than for its character studies, Lady Chatterley's Lover focuses on the affair between Constance, the "sturdy" young wife of Clifford Chatterley, and the gamekeeper of the Chatterleys' estate in the remote midlands. Constance, who married Clifford a month before he left for World War I, has become his caretaker since his return from the war, paralyzed from the waist down and impotent. A writer who surrounds himself with intellectual friends, Clifford regards Connie as his hostess and caregiver and does not understand her abject yearning for some life of her own. The distance between Constance and Clifford increases when Mrs. Bolton, a widow from the village, becomes ... Read More:

6.To Love, Honour and Betray (Till Divorce Us Do Part) by: Kathy Lette September 25, 2008
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This is the first Kathy Lette I've read and I think it will probably be the last. The plot was good - Lucy and Jasper move to Australia with their two children when he receives an offer of a good job there. What Lucy doesn't know is that Renee - her 'best' friend is also in Australia and about to be living with Jasper. Lucy descends into the depths in more ways than one until dragged up to the surface by next door neighbour and single parent Susie. So far so good. The jokes are all right for the first few pages but after that you can spot them coming a mile off. Some of the language is crude and unnecessary in my opinion and spoilt the whole thing for me. The dialogue would be all right in a sit. com. on tv but reads as very artificial in a novel. I persevered to the end because ... Read More:

7.Two Caravans by: Marina Lewycka March 05, 2008
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I really enjoyed the first half of this book and found it unputdownable but the second half monumentally lost it's way. Parts of the second half were so depressing I almost had to give up reading the book. Characters who were intriguing that I had engaged with suddenly disappeared never to be heard from again, the plot became tenuous and unbelievable. New characters were introduced who were never properly explained before disappearing just as quickly. Incidents that appear to be about to be developed into plot twists also tail off into nothing. The ending is also unsatisfying and confusing - this really is one of those books you throw at the wall because the ending is so frustrating - especially if like me you've stayed up very late to finish it! Interestingly ... Read More:

8.A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian by: Marina Lewycka March 02, 2006
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Two years after Nadia's mother dies, her 84 year old father marries voluptuous Ukranian Valentina, who is 36. Nadia and her sister Vera see through the gold-digger and bury the hatchet to unite in their determination to protect their father, who is soon being taunted with cries of "squishy squashy, flippy floppy" and worse. The story of how the sisters' family themselves left the Ukraine during the second world war, and the book about tractors their father is writing, reveal much of the tragic history of that country in flashes through the laugh-out-loud humour. A real tragi-comedy with a feel-good ending.

9.The Leopard: Revised and with New Material (Vintage Classics) by: Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa September 06, 2007
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The quality and of writing of "The Leopard" was, for me, perfect. And this bearing in mind it was a translation from Italian. With the exception of the recent nasty (American-English) trend of using "what" rather than "that which", it was English at its best. I would like to read it in Italian some day, but at my level, this would have been hard work. It was just a shame it was not longer. I could see the point of the 20 year gap in the story but it would have been so much more interesting if it had been a continuous story. However, bearing in mind that as one of the few that found "The Grapes of Wrath" one of the most disappointing books I ever read (talk about "The Kings New Clothes", I will never understand why everyone raves about the manufactured English and inconsistently story line), you might not ... Read More:

10.The Grass Is Singing by: Doris May Lessing September 28, 1989
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This novel was published in 1950. As a picture of white society in Rhodesia just before/during World War II, its narrow codes of behavior and its fearful, hateful treatment of the natives, it was enlightening. As a description of a relationship between naive, flawed people and how their marriage slowly went wrong, it was absorbing. As a description of something that developed between the wife and a houseboy, though, in the last 40 pages it wasn't sufficiently clear for me to grasp exactly what occurred. I couldn't understand how far the relationship developed, why she knew what was going to happen, or why the houseboy changed the way he did. Were there limits in those days on what it was possible to write about a relationship that crossed the "color bar"? Toward the novel's end, having brought these two ... Read More:

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