Alan Judd

The reissue by McBooks Press (Amazon, £7.43) of John Biggins's Otto Prohaska tetralogy, beginning with A Sailor of Austria, is more than welcome. Set in the AustroHungarian......

Simon Baker

My favourite novel of 2007, which was omitted from an oddly undistinguished Booker longlist, was The Pesthouse by Jim Crace (Picador, £12.99), a dystopian image of a future,......

Lloyd Evans

Christmas looms and loyalties divide. Should I go for the Shameless Plug or the more high-minded Service to Literature? Luckily I'm able to unite these objectives by announcing......

Roger Lewis

Light the candles and draw the thick velvet curtains, take a deep draught of purple wine and lift Jonathan Black's The Secret History of the World (Quercus, £25) on to the brass......

Charlotte Moore

Three fine and subtle novels, all concerned in different ways with the emotional aftermath of the second world war, were Thomas Keneally's The Widow And Her Hero (Sceptre,......

D. J. Taylor

Jane Stevenson's Edward Bun-a: TwentiethCentury Eye (Cape, £30) was one of the best biographies I have read in years. Not only does Stevenson get to grips with the complexities......

Cressida Connolly

Annie Freud's poetry collection, The Best Man That Ever There Was (Picador, £8.99), has been a highlight of 2007. It's hard to believe that these troubling, hilarious, totally......