A novel that British readers love, and American readers love to hate...the American scenes are among the most powerful things Dickens ever did in fiction

One of my favourite characters in English literature is the redoubtable Mark Tapley - a curious hybrid of Jeeves and Pollyanna who inhabits the pages of Dickens's great novel, Martin Chuzzlewit.

After leaving school, I sought refuge from the perils of office life by reading under my desk or on park benches during the lunch hour. Dickens was my preferred means of escape

Dickens' funniest novel

Extremely funny and sharply observed... Seizes the noble tradition of the Journalism Novel and rings some delightful changes on it

Tightly written and pacy. The central characters are believable, the setting exact, and one would defy the reader not to feel contained, held, by the professionalism and dexterity of the author

Richly comic and entertaining

Highly entertaining

Spritely satire

A clever satire, set in 1997, about the last days of Fleet Street... Darkly entertaining

A wide-ranging, energetic satire on what used to be called Fleet Street

When high meets lowbrow, comedy ensues, but McAfee's novel is not without serious intent. She deftly peels away her characters' pretensions, forcing readers to examine their own prejudices.

Sparky tragicomedy

McAfee is a superlative writer and plotter...McAfee has produced a locus classicus of Fleet Street

Darkly funny but also a very timely read

[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