An unforgettable journey into criminal behaviour that takes me back to my own childhood fantasies

The power of [Dickens] is so amazing, that the reader at once becomes his captive

Dickens is huge - like the sky. Pick any page of Dickens and it's immediately recognizable as him, yet he might be doing social satire, or farce, or horror, or a psychological study of a murderer - or any combination of these

The image of little Oliver Twist victimised by poverty, almost seduced by the specious excitement of crime, and then offered the possibility of a lucrative career in authorship is always compelling

We leave him most reluctantly, and so will every reader who has any capacity to see and feel whatsoever is most loveable, hateful, or laughable, in the character of the everyday life about him

Dickens has genius to vivify his observation

He deals truly with human nature, which never can degrade; he takes up everything, good, bad, or indifferent, which he works up into a rich alluvial deposit.He is natural, and that never can be ridiculous

A moving novel about family duty and friendship set against a London backdrop of national unrest

Deftly controlled and exquisitely measured

How would Socrates get on in 21st century Britain? This is the question at the heart of Samantha Harvey's ambitious second novel

The beauty of the intense plot lies in its economy. The novel is so finely tuned, it is hard to find any passage where she is not fully in control. No matter how dramatic the events she describes, they never drown the ideas being discussed.

Harvey's talent is in the details of both characters and relationships that seem trivial but are telling ... Harvey is a master of language, adept at both Wildean one-liners ... and more profound expression

In this Socrates-like story Samantha Harvey examines a dramatic sibling relationship whilst questioning the place of philosophy in modern life

Lovely observations on a sibling relationship

Graceful and full of sharp observation and moments of understated pathos

[A] satirical debut about the newspaper business

A cutting, hilarious portrait of British print journalism... An entirely human story that brilliantly recreates and analyses the recent past

Those gripped by the escalating News International scandal might enjoy the latest newspaper novel Annalena McAfee's The Spoiler

authentic, entertaining and draws on her own experience as an arts journalist

The Spoiler - set in the halcyon days before phone hacking - was one of the funniest and sharpest fleet street novels in years.

McAfee - herself a former journalist - evokes two distinct eras and styles of journalism, that of fearless frontline reportage and that of its successor: style-oriented, celebrity-obsessed features coverage... This is a pacy read that leaves little doubt in the reader's mind that one school of journalism deserves more mourning than the other

Marvellous satire...the novel is cunningly plotted and satisfyingly nuanced

If the peek into the world of newspaper journalism afforded by the Leveson inquiry has you gasping for more, then this timely paperback release is perfect...a fiendishly funny (and frighteningly plausible) world of fiddled expenses and suspect tactics

Thoroughly enjoyable behind-the-scenes expose of an ambitious celebrity journalist's attempt to nail the scoop of her life

This is the paperback edition. The hardback appeared before the News Corporation bosses were dragged into the Commons. McAfee was either very prescient or close to the action, holding her fictional hacks to account for printing false stories gleaned from disreputable sources

This fictionalised version of HG Wells dramatises the author's life, which was full of politics, writing and women

David Lodge's HG Wells was both a visionary and a chancer; as arrogant as he was insecure; with as many noble goals as base instincts; a mass of very human contradictions; as Lodge has it, a man of parts