Read Dragonflight and you're confronted with McCaffrey the storyteller in her prime, staking a claim for being one of the influential fantasy and SF novelists of her generation - and doing it, remarkably, in the same novel

A book for anyone who is young, poor, fed up and yearning for something exciting to happen

When I read I Capture the Castle it immediately became one of my favourite novels of all time, and I was very annoyed that nobody had told me about it before

Unputdownable and loved by teenagers and adults everywhere.

Everyone I've passed it on to has found it a hit - it works every time, for absolutely everybody

So what makes these different to any other set of classics? In a moment of inspiration Random House had the bright idea of actually asking Key stage 2 children what extra ingredients they could add to make children want to read. And does it work? Well, put it this way...my 13-year-old daughter announced that she had to read a book over the summer holiday and, without any prompting, spotted The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas...and proceeded to read it! Now, if you knew my 13-year-old daughter, you would realise that this is quite remarkable. She reads texts, blogs and tags by the thousand - but this is the first book she has read since going to high school, so all hail Vintage Classics!

A complete joy of an eccentric English coming-of-age novel

The perfect lockdown read - gentle and infused with a glowing warmth, featuring an emotional complexity that makes the simple story rewarding throughout

Beautiful prose...this is a challenging, thoughtful read, even for the die-hard heathen

Beard writes with sharp clarity; short unadorned sentences that contain an unforced, incisive wit....Lazarus's legend continues to fascinate in this totally original book

A fascinating mixture of fiction and academic essay...using biblical sources and other, less orthodox ones, Beard weaves a compelling tale portrait of first-century Israel, of Jerusalem with its factions and sects, and of Jesus, Lazarus's enigmatic friend, as he makes his journey towards the Cross

I finished the book at a sitting. What makes it so gripping is Beard's limitless curiosity.

The approach is unusual, the narrative bold and exhilarating...this book with its melding of fiction and non-fiction, critical analysis and detective work, consolidation and controversy, is a potent combination that breathes life not only into the 'imaginative representations' of historical events but also into the possibilities of what we think a novel might be able to achieve.

So good it's almost off the scale for me. Brave, brilliant and utterly readable.