Oxford Bookworms Library: Stage 4: The Thirty-Nine Steps

Josh Silver

'Fruit Fly is savage and darkly hilarious. A pointed satire of publishing with flawed, fascinating characters.' Juno Dawson 'This is an incredible book ... tough and raw and merciless but funny and kind at the same time.' Russell T. Davies, writer of It's a Sin Anyone can write a bestseller. Here's how. GO GAY It's been seven years since Mallory shot to fame as a literary sensa...

Josh Silver

'This is an incredible book ... tough and raw and merciless but funny and kind at the same time.' Russell T. Davies, writer of It's a Sin A BBC must-read book of 2026 - 'Sharp, dark and humorous, it's a real nailbiter.' Anyone can write a bestseller. Here's how. GO GAY It's been seven years since Mallory shot to fame as a literary sensation. But after years of struggling with w...

Marcus Kliewer

Follow the Rites... Nothing less than the survival of humanity is at stake. From Marcus Kliewer, a new 'titan of the macabre and unsettling' (Erin A. Craig, #1 New York Times bestselling author), comes a supernatural horror about a young woman who accepts a caretaking job from Craigslist, only to discover the position has consequences far greater--and more dangerous--than she...

Katie Kitamura

**LONGLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2026** **SHORTLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2025** A GUARDIAN, INDEPENDENT and NEW STATESMAN Book of the Year 'Slick, sharp, strange and singular . . . You'll gulp this novel down in one in-breath' SAMANTHA HARVEY, Booker Prize-winning author of Orbital 'A lightning bolt of a novel' FINANCIAL TIMES 'I'm not sure there's anyone be...

Susana Monsó

How animals conceive of death and dying—and what it can teach us about our own relationships with mortalityWhen the opossum feels threatened, she becomes paralyzed. Her body temperature plummets, her breathing and heart rates drop to a minimum, and her glands simulate the smell of a putrefying corpse. Playing Possum explores what the opossum and other creatures can teach us abo...

Mónica Ojeda

The ear is the organ of fear. It is a door to that which is not of this world. Leaving behind the dread and decay of the city, Noa and her best friend, Nicole, travel up into the Andes, headed for Solar Noise: an eight-day festival that takes place in the infinite expanse of the páramo. Nestled on the side of a volcano, it is a world of mysticism, shamanism and underground m...

John Buchan

John Buchan wrote The Thirty-Nine Steps while he was seriously ill at the beginning of the First World War. In it he introduces his most famous hero, Richard Hannay, who, despite claiming to be an `ordinary fellow', is caught up in the dramatic race against a plot to devastate the British war effort. Hannay is hunted across the Scottish moors by police and spy-ring alike, and m...

John Buchan

In this fast-paced spy thriller, a self-described "ordinary fellow" stumbles upon a plot involving not only espionage and murder but also the future of Britain itself. Richard Hannay arrives in London on the eve of World War I, where he encounters an American agent seeking help in preventing a political assassination. Before long, Hannay finds himself in possession of a little ...

John Buchan

Sir Edward Leithen - perhaps the autobiographical of Buchan's characters - is dying of tuberculosis and has been given a year to live. After this prognosis, Leithen undertakes a profoundly heroic quest from London to the Canadian Northwest, tracking down a missing man who is literally 'sick at heart'. In the course of this epic journey, Leithen finds redemption for himself. Sic...

John Buchan

In 1925, John Buchan published his second most famous novel, John Macnab; three high-flying men - a barrister, a cabinet minister and a banker - are suffering from boredom. They concoct a plan to cure it. They inform three Scottish estates that they will poach from each two stags and a salmon in a given time. They sign collectively as 'John Macnab' and await the responses. This...

John Buchan

John Buchan

Recalled from active service on the Western Front, Richard Hannay is sent undercover on a secret mission to find a dangerous German agent at large in Britain. Disguised as a pacifist, Hannay travels from London to Glasgow to the Scottish Highlands and Islands in his search, which eventually ends in a spectacular climax above the battlefields of Europe.John Buchan's inside knowl...