'Pratchett lures classical themes and popular mythologies into the dark corners of his imagination, gets them drunk and makes them do things you wouldn't dream of doing'

'Pratchett uses his other world to hold up a distorting mirror to our own . . . incredibly funny . . . compulsively readable'

'His spectacular inventiveness makes the Discworld series one of the perennial joys of modern fiction'

'The great Terry Pratchett, whose wit is metaphysical, who creates an energetic and lively secondary world, who has a multifarious genius for strong parody ... who deals with death with startling originality. Who writes amazing sentences'

'Very clever madcap satire which has universal appeal. If you haven't tried him, this is a fun one to start with'

Throughout the book Michelle de Krester's powerful imagination transmits an extraordinary energy to the narrative ... a remarkable achievement

Confident, meticulous plotting, her strong imagination and her precise, evocative prose. Like The Hamilton Case, The Lost Dog opens up rich vistas with its central idea and introduces the reader to a world beyond its fictional frontiers

The Lost Dog is a haunted work, it's characters uneasy ... de Kretser's characterisations are beautifully achieved, with even minor figures vividly realised

Clever, engrossing novel... beautifully shaded

The richness of her prose and the deceptive simplicity of her storytelling make this novel deserving of repeated readings

Scattered throughout are brief dramas or anecdotes, involving a variety of odd and often funny characters

she writes humorously and touchingly about the less portentous garish kitsch and personal clutter that they bring with them

Those childhood ghosts which linger into adulthood are sensitively conjured by Michelle de Kretser... This search for an animal becomes a ravishing search through the fears, hopes and attachments that make us human

Told with subtlety

Rose Tremain is an old-fashioned writer, in the best of ways: we care about her characters' sorrows and hope for their happiness

Tremain allows us to see our country's wonders and failings as if for the first time

The Wodehouse wit should be registered at Police HQ as a chemical weapon

Witty and effortlessly fluid. His books are laugh-out-loud funny

The funniest writer ever to put words to paper

The greatest comic writer ever

P.G. Wodehouse wrote the best English comic novels of the century

Sublime comic genius

You don't analyse such sunlit perfection, you just bask in its warmth and splendour