Three stories of a girl growing up in Ohio, in Connecticut, and travelling in Europe, which make a wonderful picture of 19th-century Victorian America. Susan Coolidge's What Katy Did, What Katy Did At School, and What Katy Did Next, are about natural, normal, delightful people, and the way they lived then. Charming, and totally absorbing. For readers who have fallen off a swing.

In Kipling's The Naulakha, Kate goes to New York to train as a nurse. In Louisa May Alcott's Good Wives, Jo goes to New York to work independently as a writer, and turns into a hack journalist for the blood and thunder magazines of the 1860s. But she needs to be saved from this terrible profession, so enter Professor Bhaer, who will bring her back to the good Christian path, and open an orphanage. For readers who need career guidance.

Rudyard Kipling's jointly written novel with a writer we've all forgotten is really very good. The Naulakha may be spelt wrong (Kipling's fault) but its a gripping mix of Victorian adventure and trouncing of feminist aspirations, set in a very corrupt Indian kingdom. For readers whose plans go awry.

Gene Wolfe's The Shadow of the Torturer is about Severian, an apprentice torturer who is banished by his masters. His crime: to allow a client to die sooner than the law had intended. His mission: to not shame the guild. His real mission: to return the alien jewel to its owners. Science fiction par excellence, and linguistic invention to boggle your vocabulary.

It's not at all what you think it is, although a lot of Rosy Barnes's novel Sadomasochism for Accountants takes place in a fetish club. Half of the characters are sweeties, the other half are vile: watch their comeuppance and enjoy the freeing of lonely, fettered souls. Great fun for all the family.

The Dark is Rising was a set of excellent novels for decades before it was a film. Susan Cooper's 1970s series is timeless, a real world quest fantasy steeped in Arthurian magic, where Merlin is a butler and a professor.

The story of Merlin, and how King Uther got to the Duchess of Cornwall's bedroom, Mary Stewart's The Crystal Cave fills in the gaps before Arthur's birth with the brilliant and believable story of Merlin. All the magic by mathematics and psychology you ever wanted.

A late period Rosemary Sutcliff novel, The Lantern-Bearers is set when the Roman Empire has pulled out of Britain, and there is no-one to hold back the Saxon hordes except the Roman-trained Aurelius Ambrosianus, and his nephew Arthur. A novel about what might have been Arthur's boyhood, and the beginnings of the Round Table.

Not one novel about Arthur, but five: The Sword in the Stone, The Queen of Air and Darkness, The Ill-Made Knight, The Candle in the Wind, and The Book of Merlyn. Everything you ever wanted to know about the Arthurian legend, in brilliant postmodern style. T H White was a genius: these books are marvellous.

Here's a fine satire about ignorance and primitive living at Camelot, where the benign reign of King Arthur needs improving. Mark Twain's Connecticut Yankee takes over the kingdom and brings the 19th century into the 6th century: a great novel about the impossibility of messing around with time. For those suspicious about the practicalities of armour.