Massive, funny, moving, exhaustingly gripping: a melodrama, a revenge drama and, literally, bodice-ripping

There was nobody quicker than Dumas. There were few better. Dumas stands proudly in the pantheon of 19th-century greats. He deserves to be regarded alongside Dickens and Tolstoy as an influential, enduring writer

Dumas's novels are shameless word-guzzlers, big and plush and almost sinfully comfortable… If Dumas was a hack, he was a hack with genius. His storytelling never seems the least bit mechanical: no assembly line, then or now, could ever turn out a narrative as joyful, as eccentric, as maddeningly human as The Three Musketeers

[Dumas's books] are fast-moving page-turners; vivid, bombastic and irresistible, with their unforgettable characters and flamboyant splatter of French history

The most popular man of the century... More than French...European; more than European...universal

Dumas does dialogue like a scriptwriter on nitrous oxide

[The Descent] …will blow readers away with its creativity, nuance, and multilayered story. Book series tend to taper off for readers in terms of depth of story and the ability to surprise, but Katsu’s Taker series has transcended levels with each installment… Peers behind the veil between the human and spiritual world… A stunning end to a brilliant trilogy.

It’s always difficult to come to the end of a series, especially one that was so good… This is certainly one of the more interesting series to come along in quite a while.

Did you ever pick up a book that changed the way you looked at a certain genre? That's how I felt when I read Alma Katsu's The Taker. Her vivid, imaginative storytelling, and the most unique worldbuilding ever…

THE DESCENT is enchantingly magical with unanticipated surprises and fascinating characters…an unforgettable roller-coaster ride, where emotions run the gamut from deep fear to highest elation. THE DESCENT is part of an extraordinary series, where supernatural adventures are memorable while the cast of characters are notably original.

Intense, unflinching lucidity

[Williams] has produced something timeless and great’ ‘Butcher’s Crossing, written in 1960 and Williams’s first mature novel, is far removed from the time and place of Stoner. It may also be the better novel

Had me on the edge of my seat... If you do not read another book all year, read this one. At the end, I was quite gasping for breath

It is a novel of great beauty and power, and it deserves the same belated recognition accorded Stoner

From the author of Stoner, a western full of the same psychological intensity

supremely well-written and built to last

Readers of Stoner will hopefully come to Butcher’s Crossing to get more of what Williams can provide: thoughtfulness, strong writing, powerful characterisation, involving drama and images and details that remain in the reader’s mind long after reading

The evocation of landscape is unforgettable

Williams's intense semi-skimmed prose – so different from [Herman] Melville's full-fat variety – has the same power to mesmerize... Likely to become a favourite of 2014

The tale of men struggling to survive in a brutal landscape is told in language so sparse that whole passages are made up of monosyllabic vocabulary that is powerfully immersive. You can only guess at the influence Williams may have had on Cormac McCarthy

Williams is a versatile writer: the story of Will Andrews couldn't be more different to the tale of William Stoner – and his depiction of the behaviour of men in extreme situations is masterful

A meditative cowboy yarn with a putative ecological message, it could not be more different from Williams’s [Stoner]; it is just as good

It is a sort of Dances with Buffaloes, and one of the most tense, gripping, tragic novels I have ever read

Stoner...is a fine book but his western novel Butcher's Crossing is even better... Visceral, violent and chilling.

A novel that turns upside down the expectations of the genre—and goes to war with a century of American triumphalism, a century of regeneration through violence, a century of senseless slaughter.