Dan Brown leapt to fame and fortune in 2003 with his fourth novel, The Da Vinci Code, which was made into a big-budget Hollywood movie in 2006.

Brown has come in for some criticism, notably from the Catholic Church and some Christian groups: feathers were ruffled by his depiction of the Catholic organisation Opus Die in The Da Vinci Code as a sinister underground organisation full of secrets, riddles and even ruthless assassins, bent on preventing scandalous ancient truths becoming public.

Perhaps the most important point to remember is that no one reads a Dan Brown novel for religious enlightenment, or even for literary finesse: he is a story-teller extraordinaire, with a fantastic talent for keeping you frenetically turning his pages until the book is finished. Fascinated by cryptology (the art of concealing secret messages in symbols), Brown places this subject at the heart of his Robert Langdon novels, the fictional Professor of Symbology from Harvard University. The stories offer compellingly enigmatic examples of covert ingenuity and coded concealment, whilst yielding abundant edge-of-the-seat, heart-pounding thrills along the way. Brown’s novels are lengthy, but his prose style is addictive: he writes in short bursts, a technique that keeps you compulsively glued to the text.

The success of Da Vinci boosted the sales of Brown’s earlier works, including Digital Fortress and the first Robert Langdon novel, Angels and Demons. The third Robert Langdon novel, The Lost Symbol, is reportedly due for release in September 2009; set in Washington DC, it apparently features the byzantine secrecy of the Freemasons.

This young mother of three is a ‘demon writer’ as well as writer of demons. In other words, she is a most readable prose stylist who also writes darkly romantic stories about demons. Her first novel, ‘Twilight’ written in 2005 has been made into a blockbuster movie and began as a dream – literally.

Stephanie Meyer dreamt of a teenage girl who became the focus of a vampire’s romantic longing – even though he also longed for her blood. The tension between the vampire’s two appetites – for love and for destruction – haunts the novel compellingly. Whilst it is a rattling good read and is almost impossible to put down once you start reading, Ms Meyer drew from numerous literary works for inspiration, including Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice for the first novel in the three-book series; Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet for the second (New Moon), and Bronte’s Wuthering Heights for the third (Eclipse).

The stories bring to the fore the often impossible contradictions love seeks to navigate – between good and evil, the permissible and the forbidden, the safe and the dangerous – and it may be that in narrating these irreconcilable tensions, the novels touch all of us who sense them at work in out own loves and life paths. That they have sold in their millions suggests a universal appeal.

In writing novels for teenagers, which can be (and are) read avidly by adults, Ms Meyer’s extraordinary literary talents and excellent story-telling powers are a dark delight. A graphic novel of Twilight is about to be published.

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is another book that I can remember reading at an early age.

The book really captured my imagination as a child and i would imagine that it would still do so now. As a child it was very easy to believe that this could happen to you. The story was based around a little boy from a poor family who lives with his parents and both set of grandparents. There is a big marvelous chocolate factory in the town where Charlie the little boy lives and they decide to run a competition for 5 people to go and visit inside the chocolate factory and meet Willy Wonka the creator of all these marvelous confectionaries. This is a once in a lifetime trip as no one is ever seen entering or leaving the chocolate factory.

There have been 2 film adaptations of the book, but these have been called Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory which was released in 1971 and stared gene wilder which nearly everyone has seen.

And the modern Charlie and the Chocolate Factory 2005 film which was produced by Tim Burton which help create a dark side to the film and starred Johnny Depp.