Books, Fiction

CJ Box - Three Weeks to Say Goodbye

(Corvus) He’s a rising star of crime writing in the States, but it’s only a matter of time before CJ Box explodes onto the UK’s radar, thanks in no small part to this storming British debut. Three Weeks to Say Goodbye is a smart place to start for…

A Single to Rome - Sarah Duncan

(Review) A dumped girl goes speed dating and ends up borrowing a guy’s flat in the Italian capital where she falls in love with more than just the ancient city.

Return to Sender - Zoe Barnes

(Piatkus) A woman gets massively broody when she goes to the christening of her sister’s kids, but could time have already run out on Holly Bennett?

More Than Just a Wedding - Nia Pritchard

(Honno Press) In this follow-up to More Than Just a Hairdresser, an undercover sleuth finds it tricky juggling all her balls in the air.

Can I Tell You a Secret? - Evelyn Cosgrave

(Penguin) From the Desperately Seeking author comes this tale of three sisters, each with something to hide, all descending on their gran.

Old School Ties - Kate Harrison

(Orion) A reality TV show about the perfect school reunion gets the green light, but not everything goes according to plan.

Michael Crichton - Pirate Latitudes

(HarperCollins) The first of two books to be published posthumously, Pirate Latitudes was found as a complete manuscript after Michael Crichton’s death in November 2008. Set in the volatile colonial Caribbean in 1665, it details British privateer…

Leanne Shapton - Important Artifacts …

In this empty literary age of celebrity autobiographies written by someone else, increasingly desperate misery memoirs and Dan Brown, the notion of an original novel making its way onto our shelves seems a crazy one. Yet, just when you thought there…

Five unit shifting books

Andy McNab Exit Wound Mr SAS with his latest Nick Stone thriller in which a raid on Saddam Hussein’s gold stash goes horribly awry and a complex conspiracy slowly reveals itself. Bantam. Karin Slaughter Genesis Medical examiner Sara Linton…

Ryan David Jahn - Acts of Violence

(Macmillan) Ryan David Jahn’s first novel takes a rusty knife and taps into the same vein that gore fans like Quentin Tarantino or Frank Miller love aiming for. Set on the mean streets of 1960s Queens – which literally run with blood after the…

Sue Townsend - Adrian Mole: The Prostrate Years

(Michael Joseph) Reneging on her statement that 2004’s Adrian Mole and the Weapons of Mass Destruction would be the final Mole book, Sue Townsend has returned to her most enduring creation in his 39th (and a quarter) year. That he’s back at all is…

Anne Rice - Angel Time

(Chatto & Windus) Occasionally a book comes along that is so mind-bogglingly dreadful that it’s hard to find the words to describe the depths of its naff, cliché-ridden banality. But let’s give it a go. This is the start of a new fictional series…

Requiem Vampire Knight: Resurrection & Danse Macabre/Dracula & The Vampires Ball by Pat Mills and Oliver Ledroit

Veteran British comics writer Pat Mills takes us into hell as Requiem Vampire Knight finally gets printed in English. Originally released in France where, much like the rest of Europe, there’s a burgeoning comics scene that isn’t obsessed with…

Interview: John Irving

Exploring the tragedy and death of the American author's work

In the closing chapter of John Irving’s epic new novel, Last Night in Twisted River, a character struggles to find the opening line for his latest book. He agonises over it for a morning, then puts it to one side – and 24 hours later hits pay…

Only Connect: Gordon Burn

We pay tribute to the late author and journalist

When Gordon Burn died in July, he left behind a shocked and saddened literary community. In the obituaries, Val McDermid wrote of his work as ‘a masterclass in engagement with society’; Richard T Kelly dubbed him one of the country’s ‘foremost prose…

First Word: Ryan David Jahn

We give our questions to the exciting, young American writer

First record you ever bought I ordered three at once from a mail-order catalogue. The Beatles’ Revolver, Nirvana’s Bleach, and Public Enemy’s Fear of a Black Planet. I didn’t exactly buy them, however: when the bill arrived I ignored it. Last…

Jealousy by Catherine Millet

The success of her 2002 memoir, The Sexual Life of Catherine M, propelled French art critic Catherine Millet into the spotlight as one of Europe’s most celebrated contemporary sexual libertines. Indeed, this blisteringly honest dissection of her…

Kevin Jackson - Bite

Less than filling vampire handbook

The symbolic breadth and depth of the vampire has long been the cultural analyst’s wet nightmare. Blood-suckers have variously stood for capitalist tyranny, dictatorial communism, Freudian repression, drug addiction, social Darwinism and sexuality in…

Also Published: Short-story paperbacks

Keeping it brief

Janice Galloway - Collected Stories, Sarah Waters - Dancing With Mr Darcy, Annie Proulx - Fine Just the Way It Is, Catherine O'Flynn - Roads Ahead, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie - The Thing Around Your Neck

Lost World by Patricia Melo

Casually brutal and utterly uncompromising, this Brazilian noir thriller is nerve-shreddingly compelling from start to grizzly finish. A sequel to The Killer, Patricia Melo’s 1995 novel, Lost World picks up the story of amoral ex-contract killer Maiquel…

Eddie Campbell

The comic artist/writer brings his life's work together

Glasgow-born, Brisbane-based Eddie Campbell is best known for illustrating From Hell, his and writer Alan Moore’s exhaustive graphic novel investigation of the Jack the Ripper murders. It’s the Oz-based ex-pat’s autobiographical comics, however, that…

Also published: Books

It'd be criminal to miss out on these

Stieg Larsson The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest The third volume of the bestselling Millenium Trilogy has Lisbeth Salander fighting corruption as she is set to face trial for three murders. Maclehose Press. Ruth Rendell The Monster in the…

Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffeneger

Disappointing ghost story from The Time Traveller's Wife author

Like her debut novel The Time Traveller’s Wife, Audrey Niffenegger’s new offering requests from her readers some suspension of disbelief. When bookseller Elspeth dies, she leaves her plush Highgate flat to her American twin nieces, the daughters of her…

Nick Hornby - Juliet, Naked

(Viking) Never meet your heroes, we are told, they’re bound to be a disappointment. But what happens when you’re going for a run in a dead-end English seaside town and you bump into an ex-girlfriend who introduces you to your all-time, number one icon?

Val McDermid - Fever of the Bone

Staying true to gruesome form, the first murder in the Fife crime novelist’s latest slice of Tartan Noir could’ve been committed in 1880s Whitechapel. After the body of a young girl is found with her genitals removed, psychological profiler Tony Hill…