WBen Nevis Goes East is a 1954 comedy novel by the British writer Compton Mackenzie. It features characters introduced in Mackenzie's The Monarch of the Glen. Donald MacDonald of Ben Nevis and his friend Kilwhillie head to British India in order to save his nephew from what is considered a disastrous marriage to a divorced woman.
WBhowani Junction is a 1954 novel by John Masters, which was the basis of a 1956 film starring Ava Gardner and Stewart Granger. It is set amidst the turbulence of the British withdrawal from India. It is notable for its portrayal of the Eurasian (Anglo-Indian) community, who were caught in their loyalties between the departing British and the majority Indian population. The Anglo-Indian characters in the novel, like many members of their community, are closely involved with the Indian railway system.
WDestination Unknown is a work of spy fiction by Agatha Christie and first published in the UK by the Collins Crime Club on 1 November 1954 and in US by Dodd, Mead and Company in 1955 under the title of So Many Steps to Death. The UK edition retailed at ten shillings and sixpence (10/6) and the US edition at $2.75.
WThe Eagle of the Ninth is a historical adventure novel for children written by Rosemary Sutcliff and published in 1954. The story is set in Roman Britain in the 2nd century AD, after the building of Hadrian's Wall.
WThe Fellowship of the Ring is the first of three volumes of the epic novel The Lord of the Rings by the English author J. R. R. Tolkien. It is followed by The Two Towers and The Return of the King. It takes place in the fictional universe of Middle-earth. It was originally published on 29 July 1954 in the United Kingdom.
WFive Go to Mystery Moor is a popular children's book written by Enid Blyton. It is the thirteenth novel in the Famous Five series of books.
WThe Horse and His Boy is a novel for children by C. S. Lewis, published by Geoffrey Bles in 1954. Of the seven novels that comprise The Chronicles of Narnia (1950–1956), The Horse and His Boy was the fifth to be published. The novel is set in the period covered by the last chapter of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe during the reign of the four Pevensie children as Kings and Queens of Narnia. Though three of the Pevensies appear as minor characters in The Horse and His Boy, the main characters are two children and two talking horses who escape from Calormen and travel north into Narnia. On their journey, they learn of the Prince of Calormen's plan to attack Archenland, and warn the King of Archenland of the impending strike.
WJeeves and the Feudal Spirit is a comic novel by P. G. Wodehouse, first published in the United Kingdom on 15 October 1954 by Herbert Jenkins, London and in the United States on 23 February 1955 by Simon & Schuster, Inc., New York, under the title Bertie Wooster Sees It Through. It is the seventh novel featuring Bertie Wooster and his valet Jeeves.
WKnight Crusader, "the story of Philip d'Aubigny", is a children's historical novel by Ronald Welch, first published by Oxford in 1954 with illustrations by William Stobbs. It is set primarily in the Crusader states of Outremer in the twelfth century and features the Battle of Hattin and the Third Crusade. Welch won the annual Carnegie Medal from the Library Association, recognising the year's best children's book by a British subject.
WLive and Let Die is a spy fiction novel by British auhor Ian Fleming, the second in his James Bond series of stories. Set in London, the United States and Jamaica, it was first published in the UK by Jonathan Cape on 5 April 1954. Fleming wrote the novel at his Goldeneye estate in Jamaica before his first book, Casino Royale, was published; much of the background came from Fleming's travel in the US and knowledge of Jamaica.
WLord of the Flies is a 1954 novel by Nobel Prize-winning British author William Golding. The book focuses on a group of British boys stranded on an uninhabited island and their disastrous attempt to govern themselves. Themes include the tension between groupthink and individuality, between rational and emotional reactions, and between morality and immorality.
WThe Lord of the Rings is an epic high fantasy novel by the English author and scholar J. R. R. Tolkien. Set in Middle-earth, the world at some distant time in the past, the story began as a sequel to Tolkien's 1937 children's book The Hobbit, but eventually developed into a much larger work. Written in stages between 1937 and 1949, The Lord of the Rings is one of the best-selling books ever written, with over 150 million copies sold.
WEleanor Alice Hibbert was an English author who combined imagination with facts to bring history alive through novels of fiction and romance. She was a prolific writer who published several books a year in different literary genres, each genre under a different pen name: Jean Plaidy for fictionalized history of European royalty; Victoria Holt for gothic romances, and Philippa Carr for a multi-generational family saga. A literary split personality, she also wrote light romances, crime novels, murder mysteries and thrillers under the various pseudonyms Eleanor Burford, Elbur Ford, Kathleen Kellow, Anna Percival, and Ellalice Tate.
WLucky Jim is a novel by Kingsley Amis, first published in 1954 by Victor Gollancz. It was Amis's first novel and won the 1955 Somerset Maugham Award for fiction. The novel follows the exploits of the eponymous James (Jim) Dixon, a reluctant lecturer at an unnamed provincial English university.
WThe Magicians is a short novel by J. B. Priestley, first published in 1954. An example of Priestley's perennial concern with the true nature of time, the story uses fantasy elements to discuss the midlife crisis of a successful industrialist, briefly touching on social problems and mass psychology.
WDaphne du Maurier's novel Mary Anne (1954) is a fictionalised account of the real-life story of her great great grandmother, Mary Anne Clarke née Thompson (1776-1852).
WNe'er-Do-Well is a 1954 detective novel by the English author Dornford Yates, his only work of the genre. Although Richard Chandos narrates, the book is not generally classified as a 'Chandos' title.
WOnly Fade Away is a 1954 novel by Scottish writer Bruce Marshall.
WA Proper Marriage (1954) is the second novel in British Nobel Prize in Literature-winner Doris Lessing five volume, semi-autobiographical, series, Children of Violence. The first volume is Martha Quest (1952), and the others are, A Ripple from the Storm (1958), Landlocked (1965), and The Four-Gated City (1969). The Children of Violence series, follows the life of protagonist Martha Quest "from girlhood to middle age".
WReturn to the Lost Planet is a 1954 juvenile science fiction novel by Angus MacVicar, published by Burke, London. It is the second of the Lost Planet series, which was adapted for radio and television.
WThe Road to Samarcand is a novel by English author Patrick O'Brian, published in 1954 and set in Asia during the 1930s. Derrick, an American teen, is brought to China with his missionary parents, then orphaned. He goes to sea with his uncle Captain Sullivan and Ross, the Captain's friend, starting out on the South China Sea. They are the core of a group who has adventures on the road to Samarcand, using skills as required by the challenges of the journey, often for the first time in their lives. They begin on the oldest ways of transportation and end on the newest.
WSafer Dead is a 1954 crime-mystery novel by British writer James Hadley Chase. The novel has Chet Sladen, a journalist, investigating the murder of Fay Benson, a night-club dancer.
WSpinsters in Jeopardy is a detective novel by Ngaio Marsh; it is the seventeenth novel to feature Roderick Alleyn, and was first published in 1954. The novel is set in Southern France, where Alleyn, his painter wife Agatha Troy and their young son Ricky are holidaying, although Alleyn is also tasked by his Scotland Yard superiors with meeting French police colleagues to discuss international drug trafficking through Marseilles. On the overnight sleeper train from Paris, the Alleyns witness what appears to be a fatal night-time stabbing in the illuminated window of a dramatically-set mediaeval castle overlooking the railway line. This proves to be the resort of an élite, louche group of socialites who are dabbling in Black Magic under the auspices of a smoothly dubious host and 'high priest' of a cult that clearly involves recreational drug-taking, with vulnerable wealthy women potentially exploited. Alleyn's investigations are complicated by the kidnapping of Ricky from their hotel.
WThe Starr Affair is a 1954 book written by Jean Overton Fuller. It was published by Victor Gollancz.
WThe Strange Land is a 1954 thriller novel by the British writer Hammond Innes. It was released in the United States by Knopf under the alternative title The Naked Land.
WThe Third Skin is a 1954 thriller novel by the British writer John Bingham. It was released in the United States three years later in 1957, published by Dodd Mead with an alternative title Murder Is a Witch.
WThe Toll-Gate is a Regency novel by Georgette Heyer, which takes place in 1817. Unlike many of Heyer's historical novels which concentrate on a plucky heroine, this one follows the adventures of a male main character, an ex-captain in the British Army who has returned from the Peninsular War and finds life as a civilian rather dull. The setting for this detective/romance story is in and around a Toll-Gate in the Peak District, vastly different from the elegant backgrounds of London, Bath, Brighton, or some stately home, which characterize most of Heyer's Regency novels.
WThe Two Towers is the second volume of J. R. R. Tolkien's high fantasy novel The Lord of the Rings. It is preceded by The Fellowship of the Ring and followed by The Return of the King.
WUnder the Net is a 1954 novel by Iris Murdoch. Set in London, it is the story of a struggling young writer, Jake Donaghue. Murdoch's first novel, its mixture of the philosophical and the picaresque has made it one of Murdoch's most popular novels.
WThe World in the Evening by Christopher Isherwood is a quasi-fictional account of love, loss, and regret. As in many Isherwood novels, the main character is caught in a contest between his personal egoism and the needs of friends and lovers.
WYoung Adam is a 1954 novel by Alexander Trocchi which tells the story of Joe, a young man who labours on the river barges of Glasgow, and who discovers the body of a young woman floating in the canal. The novel focuses on the relationship between Joe and his companions on the barge – a husband, Les and his younger wife, Ella – and it becomes clearer as the novel progresses that Joe is connected to the dead woman he found. From this comes the saying, "I've shed my own skin and merged into the fog".