With the nation in lockdown and many of us struggling to fill the time profitably, bookshops are reporting a significant increase in sales of longer novels and classic fiction. The book chain Waterstones has seen its online sales rise by 400 percent week on week. It has also reported a “significant uplift” in classic – and often timely – titles, including Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude and Love in the Time of Cholera, Toni Morrison’s Beloved, F Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby and Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar.
But what about Sussex reads? If you’re missing getting out and about across the county, let your imagination take you there instead. Here, with the help of three Sussex writers –Peter James, Lynne Truss, and Simon Brett – we’ve compiled our essential fiction reading list, which will take you from the mean streets of Graham Greene’s Brighton Rock to the genteel cobbled alleyways of Tilling, immortalized in EF Benson’s Mapp and Lucia novels. And once you’ve sated your appetite for fiction, we’ve also thrown in some memoirs, nature writing, and books on the visual arts. Apologies if we’ve missed out on your favorites.
CLASSIC FICTION
Brighton Rock by Graham Greene
(Vintage Classic, £8.99) chosen by Peter James
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