While we all take cover and hide from the blizzard taking place outside, what better way to pass the time than with a book. On World Book Day, here are some classics that are must reads to get you through the stormy weather.

Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson

This is the story of Jeanette, adopted and brought up by her mother as one of God’s elect. Zealous and passionate, she seems destined for life as a missionary, but then she falls for one of her converts.

At sixteen, Jeanette decides to leave the church, her home and her family, for the young woman she loves. Innovative, punchy and tender,

Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit is a few days ride into the bizarre outposts of religious excess and human obsession.

Winterson’s other works include the award-winning memoir Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? which is also a very worthy read.

Get a copy of Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit here.

Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe by Benjamin Alire Sáenz

Aristotle is an angry teen with a brother in prison. Dante is a know-it-all who has an unusual way of looking at the world. When the two meet at the swimming pool, they seem to have nothing in common. But as the loners start spending time together, they discover that they share a special friendship—the kind that changes lives and lasts a lifetime. And it is through this friendship that Ari and Dante will learn the most important truths about themselves and the kind of people they want to be.

This book has won many awards including the Stonewall Book Award for Children’s and Young Adult Literature in 2013 and has been hailed as “realistic young adult fiction” by many readers.

Get a copy of Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe here.

Orlando by Virginia Woolf

Virginia Woolf’s Orlando ‘The longest and most charming love letter in literature’, playfully constructs the figure of Orlando as the fictional embodiment of Woolf’s close friend and lover, Vita Sackville-West.

Spanning three centuries, the novel opens as Orlando, a young nobleman in Elizabeth’s England, awaits a visit from the Queen and traces his experience with first love as England under James I lies locked in the embrace of the Great Frost. At the midpoint of the novel, Orlando, now an ambassador in Constantinople, awakes to find that he is a woman, and the novel indulges in farce and irony to consider the roles of women in the 18th and 19th centuries. As the novel ends in 1928, a year consonant with full suffrage for women. Orlando, now a wife and mother, stands poised at the brink of a future that holds new hope and promise for women.

The book was adapted to film in 1992 with Tilda Swinton taking the lead as Orlando.

Get a copy of Orlando here.

The Miseducation of Cameron Post by Emily M. Danforth

When Cameron Post’s parents die suddenly in a car crash, her shocking first thought is relief. Relief they’ll never know that, hours earlier, she had been kissing a girl.

The Miseducation of Cameron Post is a stunning and unforgettable literary debut about discovering who you are and finding the courage to live life according to your own rules.

It has been adapted into a film starring Chloë Grace Moretz which is due for release later this year.

Get a copy of The Miseducation of Cameron Post here.

Tales of the City

San Francisco, 1976. A naïve young secretary, fresh out of Cleveland, tumbles headlong into a brave new world of laundromat Lotharios, pot-growing landladies, cut throat debutantes, and Jockey Shorts dance contests. The saga that ensues is manic, romantic, tawdry, touching, and outrageous – unmistakably the handiwork of Armistead Maupin.

This book is the first in a six-part series constructed from a serial column in the San Francisco Chronicle.

Get a copy of Tales of the City here.