Preliminary English Advanced: Books

All the boys in Luke’s class see things the same way – except for Luke, who has his own special way of looking. Luke feels as if he doesn’t fit in. And then one day he discovers a place that feels like home. Suddenly, the whole world changes.

Different characters tell the same story from their own perspectives in this timeless children's story book, which explores the themes of alienation, friendship, and the bizarre amid the mundane. Four people enter a park, and through their eyes we see four different visions. There's the bossy woman, the sad man, the lonely boy, and the young girl whose warmth touches those she meets. As the story moves from one voice to another, their perspectives are reflected in the shifting landscape and seasons.

The story of a rebellious and fiercely intelligent young slave and the escape attempt that cost him his life is told from the perspectives of his father, the master, the master's daughter, and the overseer's son.

Set in Jackson, Mississippi in the early 1960s, 'The Help' by Kathryn Stockett shows the peak of racial segregation. The book is narrated by three very different women; Minny, a black maid unable to keep a job due to her hot head, Aibileen, another black maid who is raising her 'seventeenth white child', and Miss Skeeter, at the opposite end of the spectrum, a white woman who wants to be a writer.

Flipped--a classic he-said-she-said romantic comedy!; This is a classic romantic comedy of errors told in alternating chapters by two fresh, funny voices.

Barbara Kingsolver's The Poisonwood Bible is remarkable not just for its story but also for its narrative form. It has five narrators. Orleanna Price and her four daughters accompany her husband Nathan Price, a Baptist missionary, to the Congo in 1959. The Price daughters and their mother narrate in contrapuntal alternation. By turns they describe their lives in a remote Congolese village and the fortunes of Nathan's mission to convert the Congolese

The Zombie War came unthinkably close to eradicating humanity. Max Brooks, driven by the urgency of preserving the acid-etched first-hand experiences of the survivors from those apocalyptic years, traveled across the United States of America and throughout the world, from decimated cities that once teemed with upwards of thirty million souls to the most remote and inhospitable areas of the planet. He recorded the testimony of men, women, and sometimes children who came face-to-face with the living, or at least the undead, hell of that dreadful time.