Banned Books 2025

Banned Books Week UK returns from 5–11 October 2025. It’s a week to celebrate the books that have been challenged, removed or silenced, and to stand with the people who write, sell and share them. Join Kirklees Libraries and Index on Censorship in honouring the right to read freely and the courage it takes to speak up.

www.indexoncensorship.org/bannedbooksweek

Browse, download and read from our eAudio and eBook collection of Banned Books at: kirklees.overdrive.com/bannedbooks

Updated October 7, 2025
Kirklees Libraries
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I know why the caged bird sings
Angelou, Maya
Ebook
The handmaid's tale
Atwood, Margaret
Paper Book
A clockwork orange
Burgess, Anthony
Paper Book
In Anthony Burgess's influential nightmare vision of the future, where the criminals take over after dark, the story is told by the central character, Alex, a teen who talks in a fantastically inventive slang that evocatively renders his and his friends' intense reaction against their society....
The perks of being a wallflower
Chbosky, Stephen
Paper Book
Charlie is a freshman. And while he's not the biggest geek in the school, he is by no means popular. Shy, introspective, intelligent beyond his years yet socially awkward, he is a wallflower, caught between trying to live his life and trying to run from it. Charlie is attempting to navigate his way...
The witches
Dahl, Roald; Blake, Quentin
Paper Book
The witches have a motto- One child a week is fifty-two a year. Squish them and squiggle them and make them disappear. The Grand High Witch of All the World is the scariest of the lot, but one boy and the grandmother he adores have a plan to get rid of the witches for good.
American psycho
Ellis, Bret Easton
Paper Book
One of the most controversial and talked-about novels of all time. Bret Easton Ellis's American Psycho is a multi-million-copy bestseller hailed as a modern classic - a violent and outrageous black comedy about the darkest side of human nature. With an introduction by...
Snow falling on cedars
Guterson, David
Ebook
He saw the soft cedars of San Piedro Island, its high, rolling hills, the low mist that lay in long streamers against its beaches, the whitecaps riffling its shoreline. The moon had risen already behind the island - a quarter moon, pale and indefinite, as ethereal and translucent as the wisps of...
The well of loneliness
Hall, Radclyffe
Audiobook
Kite Runner, The
Hosseini, Khaled
Audiobook
A Stunning Novel of Hope and Redemption Taking us from Afghanistan in the final days of the monarchy to the present, The Kite Runner is the unforgettable and beautifully told story of the friendship between two boys growing up in Kabul. Raised in the same household and sharing the...
Brave new world
Huxley, Aldous
Paper Book
WITH INTRODUCTIONS BY MARGARET ATWOOD AND DAVID BRADSHAW Far in the future, the World Controllers have created the ideal society. Through clever use of genetic engineering, brainwashing and recreational sex and drugs all its members are happy consumers. Bernard Marx seems alone...
One flew over the cuckoo's nest
Kesey, Ken
Ebook
Pitching an extraordinary battle between cruel authority and a rebellious free spirit, Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is a novel that epitomises the spirit of the sixties. Tyrannical Nurse Ratched rules her ward in an Oregon State mental hospital with a strict and...
To kill a mockingbird
Lee, Harper
Paper Book
Look for The Land of Sweet Forever, a posthumous collection of newly discovered short stories and previously published essays and magazine pieces by Harper Lee, coming October 21, 2025. Voted America's Best-Loved Novel in PBS's The Great American Read Harper Lee's Pulitzer Prize...
The giver
Lowry, Lois
Paper Book
In Lois Lowry's Newbery Medal-winning classic, twelve-year-old Jonas lives in a seemingly ideal world. Not until he is given his life assignment as the Receiver does he begin to understand the dark secrets behind his fragile community. Life in the community where Jonas lives is idyllic....
A court of mist and fury
Maas, Sarah J.
Paper Book
A gorgeously written tale as lush and romantic as it is ferocious ... Absolutely spellbinding - New York Times bestselling author Alexandra Bracken on A Court of Thorns and RosesFeyre survived Amarantha's clutches to return to the Spring Court - but at a steep cost. Though she...
Beloved
Morrison, Toni
Paper Book
A beautiful hardback edition of the Pulitzer-prize winning novel, from the great Toni Morrison. Sethe is now miles away from Sweet Home - the farm where she was kept as a slave for many years. Unable to forget the unspeakable horrors that took place there, Sethe is haunted by the...
Lolita
Nabokov, Vladimir Vladimirovich
Paper Book
'You can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style.' Humbert Humbert, a European intellectual adrift in America, is a middle-aged college professor. Haunted by memories of a lost adolescent love, he falls outrageously (and illegally) in lust with his landlady's...
Breathless
Niven, Jennifer
Paper Book
The much anticipated new novel from international bestselling author Jennifer Niven, author of All the Bright Places. You were my first. Not just sex, although that was part of it, but the first to look past everything else into me. Some of the names and places have...
Animal farm : a fairy story
Orwell, George
Paper Book
2015 is the 70th anniversary of Animal Farm. To commemorate this important anniversary, Penguin Classics is republishing the classic illustrated Animal Farm by Joy Batchelor and John Halas. When the downtrodden animals of Manor Farm overthrow their master Mr Jones and take...
Heartstopper. Volume 1
Oseman, Alice
Paper Book
*Acclaimed live-action Netflix series* *Winner of Best Book I Wish I Could Read Again For The First Time - TikTok Book Awards* 'Absolutely delightful. Sweet, romantic, kind. Beautifully paced. I loved this book.' - Rainbow Rowell, author of...
Captain Underpants and the sensational saga of Sir Stinks-A-Lot
Pilkey, Dav
Paper Book
George and Harold, and their doubles, Yesterday George and Yesterday Harold, have a good thing going. Two of them go to school, while the other two hide in the tree house and play video games all day-then they switch! But when their malicious gym teacher, Mr Meaner, creates a method of mind control...
All Quiet on the Western Front
Remarque, Erich Maria
Paper Book
** NOW A HIT NETFLIX FILM, WINNER OF 7 BAFTAS AND 4 OSCARS, INCLUDING BEST INTERNATIONAL FEATURE** One by one the boys begin to fall... In 1914 a room full of German schoolboys, fresh-faced and idealistic, are goaded by their schoolmaster to troop off to the...
Harry Potter and the philosopher's stone [25th Anniversary Ed.]
Rowling, J. K.
Paper Book
Prepare to be spellbound by Jim Kay's dazzling depiction of the wizarding world and much loved characters in this full-colour illustrated hardback edition of the nation's favourite children's book - Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. Brimming with rich detail and humour that...
The Satanic Verses
Rushdie, Salman
Paper Book
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * "[A] torrent of endlessly inventive prose, by turns comic and enraged, embracing life in all its contradictions. In this spectacular novel, verbal pyrotechnics barely outshine its psychological truths."--Newsday ...
The catcher in the rye
Salinger, J. D.
Paper Book
J. D. Salinger wrote one of the most famous books ever written, The Catcher in the Rye. Salinger wrote many stories and, in 1941, after several rejections, Salinger finally cracked The New Yorker, with a story, "Slight Rebellion Off Madison," that was an early sketch of what became a scene in "The...
The complete Persepolis
Satrapi, Marjane
Paper Book
Here, in one volume: Marjane Satrapi's best-selling, internationally acclaimed graphic memoir of growing up as a girl in Iran during the revolution has for twenty years been a classroom staple, a feminist manifesto, and one of the most popular and widely known graphic novels of all time. <...
The adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Twain, Mark
Paper Book
Fresh off of his escapades with Tom Sawyer and with six thousand dollars in the bank, Huck Finn faces a new challenge: his father, Pap, who wants Huck's fortune and will stop at nothing to get his hands on it. Escaping from Pap, Huck meets Miss Watson's slave, Jim, who has run away after learning...
Slaughterhouse-Five
Vonnegut, Kurt.
Ebook
Adapted for a magnificent George Roy Hill film three years later (perhaps the only film adaptation of a masterpiece which exceeds its source), Slaughterhouse-Five (1969) is the now famous parable of Billy Pilgrim, a World War II veteran and POW, who has in the later stage of his life...
The color purple
Walker, Alice
Paper Book
ONE OF THE BBC'S 100 NOVELS THAT SHAPED OUR WORLD WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE AND THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD In rural Georgia, sisters Celie and Nettie share the pain and struggle of growing up as African American women. Forced into an abusive marriage, at least Celie can...

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