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Buenas Noches, Buenos Aries by Gilbert Adair When Gideon leaves England to start work at the Berlitz language school in Paris, he's a shy and introverted young man with little experience, who has only just managed to come out to himself. So the male staff room at the school, where he finds...

The Gospel According to Jesus Christ by José Saramago, translated by Giovanni Pontiero It might seem an unlikely subject for a communist and atheist to tackle, but Portuguese Nobel laureate José Saramago's Gospel According to Jesus Christ is an extraordinary novel of great power and beauty...

Novelist Linda Grant doesn’t claim to be a stylist or even a fashion buff. What she enjoys, she explains, are good clothes. And shoes. And handbags. So what she has set out to do in her new book is to explore why clothes are important – and why making an effort to think about how we dress is...

Inspiration comes from all sorts of sources. There was I, watching the final of University Challenge last night, when poet Wendy Cope walked out to hand over the trophy. 'Ah,' I thought. 'I'm sure I've got one of her books on the shelf. It's about time I read it.' A few hours later, I...

Alexandra, Jane and Sukie are the witches of Eastwick, all of whom acquired their powers after leaving or being left by their husbands. When stranger Darryl van Horne arrives in town and buys an old mansion, they find their cosy existences shaken up, as scandal surrounds them. After van...

The rather sleepy village of Midwich finds itself becoming even sleepier when all those in it – and nearby, within a precise circular boundary – fall suddenly into a state of unconciousness that lasts for over 24 hours. In that time, aerial reconnaissance and photographs reveal not only that...

The 25th Discworld novel sees the arrival of moveable type to Ankh-Morpork, inspiring William de Worde to found the Discworld's first newspaper, with Sacarissa Cripslock as his fellow reporter and Otto Chriek, a vampire who has forsworn human blood, as iconographer (photographer) and the press...

Quite by accident – as these things are wont to happen – British secret agent James Bond, having concluded one mission, finds himself caught up helping an old acquaintance who is being cheated at canasta by the mysterious Auric Goldfinger. Later, he is sent to investigate the same...

My Life as a Fake by Peter Carey Sarah Wode-Douglass, the editor of a serious but struggling literary magazine, is persuaded to visit Kuala Lumpur with a famous poet and old family friend, John Slater, half in hope of finding out the truth about her mother’s death, for which she has...

Sexing the Cherry by Jeanette Winterson When The Dog Woman finds a tiny child abandoned in the Thames mud in 17th century London, she adopts him and names him Jordan to always remember his watery origins. And in the coming years, giantess and boy play their parts in history, from the English...

Story of the Eye by Georges Bataille, translated by Joachim Neugroschel George Bataille's Story of the Eye is a short piece from 1928, which details the adventures of the male narrator and his two female accomplices, Simone and Marcelle, from their early sexual explorations to a murderous...

Venus in Furs by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch Translated by Joachim Neugroschel When young nobleman Severin von Kusiemski meets the beautiful young widow Wanda von Dunajew at a Carpathian resort, he believes he's found his perfect woman – a veritable Venus, particularly when draped in her...

Myra Breckinridge by Gore Vidal "I'm Myra Breckinridge whom no man will ever possess." So declares Gore Vidal's eponymous heroine – as bright a star as ever hung in the firmament; a goddess in the true Hollywood tradition, with a feisty determination to bringing down the old ideas of the...

Kiss of the Spiderwoman by Manuel Puig, translated by Thomas Colchie Manuel Puig's 1976 novel tells the story of Valentin and Molina, two vastly different prisoners who are confined to a cell together. Valentin is a political prisoner, while Molina has been jailed for "corruption of a...

The Blackwater Lightship by Colm Tóibín As the summer holidays approach, Helen, a successful school principle in Dublin, contemplates her relationship with her husband and her two young sons. They're preparing to leave for a family holiday and Helen will join them in a few days, after...

Cat and Mouse by Günter Grass Translated by Ralph Manheim It's Danzig (Gdansk) during the early part of WWII. During the summer, a group of schoolboys swim out to a Polish Navy minesweeper that has been sunk and almost (but not quite) submerged off the coast. There, Joachim Mahlke – a...

The Hive by Camilo José Cela The Hive (La Colmena) is 1989 Nobel laureate Camilo José Cela's most famous work. Published first in 1951, it's set over three days in 1943, and uses 215 vignettes to describe picture more than 300 characters in Madrid, as their lives interweave and their paths...

Belle de Jour by Joseph Kessel Séverine Serizy is a beautiful and naïve young woman, happily married to Jean. But she doesn't enjoy sex – she dutifully allows Jean his conjugal contact, but her own enjoyment is non-existent. However, when she hears from a friend that a mutual...

Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov Poet John Shade has been murdered, 999 lines into a 1,000-line poem in four cantos – the Pale Shade of the title. So what we have here is Shade's unfinished final work, sandwiched between a foreword and extensive commentary from his editor and friend, Charles...

The Snapper by Roddy Doyle The second volume in Roddy Doyle's Barrytown Trilogy, this again features working-class Dublin family the Rabbittes, and opens with daughter Sharon announcing to her parents that she's pregnant. But as she refuses to reveal the identity of the father, Doyle gradually...