Shuggie Bain grows up as the youngest child in a working-class family in 1980s Glasgow. Shuggie idolises his mother, Agnes, a strikingly beautiful woman who dreams of a glamorous life but finds herself trapped in the harsh realities of poverty, unemployment, and a growing alcohol addiction. His father, a serial adulterer and wife-beater, is largely absent. A sensitive and slightly effeminate boy, Shuggie is bullied at school and prefers to stay at home and care for his mother.

“Milkman” tells the story of an 18-year-old girl from a working-class neighbourhood in a city in Northern Ireland. Set during the height of the Troubles in the 1970s, she finds herself being stalked by a Republican paramilitary officer. As rumours circulate that she is having an affair with this man, tensions rise within her community, and particularly with her mother.

Tony Webster, a retired man, looks back on his school days in the 1960s, in particular his friendship with Adrian Finn, an exceptionally intelligent boy. Tony reflects on the choices he and his friends later made, and on how those decisions shaped their lives. In the second part of the novel, Tony is drawn back into the past when he reconnects with his former girlfriend, Veronica Ford, who later became Adrian’s lover. He is forced to confront a bitter letter he once sent to Adrian and discovers that Veronica possesses Adrian’s diary. As fragments of memory resurface, Tony begins to question the reliability of his own recollections.

“Wolf Hall” is a historical novel that chronicles the rise to power of Thomas Cromwell at the court of King Henry VIII between 1500 and 1535. The novel traces Cromwell’s journey from an impoverished childhood to his emergence as the trusted adviser to Cardinal Thomas Wolsey and, following Wolsey’s fall from favour, to Henry VIII himself. Mantel vividly depicts major historical events, including King Henry’s attempt to annul his marriage to Catherine of Aragon, his subsequent marriage to Anne Boleyn, and England’s break with Rome leading to the establishment of the Church of England. “Wolf Hall” is the first novel in a trilogy, followed by “Bring Up the Bodies” and “The Mirror & the Light”.

“The Road Home” follows Lev, a middle-aged, recently widowed immigrant from Eastern Europe, who moves to London to better support his young daughter, his mother and his best friend back home. In London, Lev takes on a series of jobs — from working in a kebab shop to washing dishes in an upmarket restaurant. Gradually, he settles into his new life, earns promotion at the restaurant and makes friends, including his compatriot, Lydia; Christy, an Irishman struggling with loneliness; and Sophie, a young chef with whom he develops a close relationship.

“Small Island” is a novel about Jamaican immigrants in London in 1948, in the aftermath of the Second World War. Hortense and Gilbert, a married couple from Jamaica, travel to England with high expectations of British civility and opportunity. Gilbert, who served in the Royal Air Force during the war, quickly realises that Britain falls short of these ideals. Hortense, by contrast, clings to her dignity and education, and struggles to adapt to the realities of post-war London. The novel explores their experiences of disillusionment, racism, and adaptation, particularly through their interactions with their English landlady, Queenie, whose husband Bernard returns unexpectedly from the war.

Set in the 1980s, “The Line of Beauty” follows Nick Guest, a young gay Englishman from a modest background who comes to live as a lodger with the wealthy Fedden family in Notting Hill, West London. Nick is a recent Oxford graduate and has a secret crush on his friend Toby Fedden. In return for his accommodation, Nick is expected to help care for Toby’s sister, Catherine, who suffers from bipolar disorder. The novel traces Nick’s life across three key moments, describing how he becomes drawn into a world of privilege, political power, drugs, money and gay sexual freedom.

Christopher Boone is fifteen-year-old boy with a behavioural disorder and a knack for mathematics, who lives with his father in Swindon, England. When the dog of his neighbour is murdered, he decides to start an investigation. Along the way, he also discovers more about his own family, particularly his mother, whom he was told had died several years earlier.

Nazneen is a Bangladeshi woman who is only eighteen when she arrives in London to marry Chanu, a man twice her age, in an arranged marriage. She speaks very little English and struggles to adapt to her new life, her marriage, and the unfamiliar surroundings of London’s East End. Gradually, however, she finds her footing: she raises her children and eventually becomes the family’s main breadwinner through home-based sewing work. When she falls in love with another man and her husband decides that the family should return to Bangladesh, Nazneen shows that she is no longer the naïve, fate-abiding woman she once was.

“The Rotter’s Club” follows three teenage schoolboys – Ben Trotter, Doug Anderson and Philip Chase – as they grow up in Birmingham during the 1970s. The novel explores their love lives, musical interests and the wider societal events that shaped Britain during the decade, including rock music, labour disputes, and IRA bombings.