A novel about a bloodthirsty cowgirl with hallucinogenic toadsucking properties, this is the story of Justine Trimble — a 1950s movie star — who is brought back to life in modern-day Soho. Problem is, she has a lust for blood, and when people...
An inexplicable message flashed onto the screen of his Apple II computer at 3am heralds the beginning of a startling quest for frustrated author Herman Orff. Taking up the offer of a cure for writer's block plunges him into a semi-dreamland...
Phil Ockerman falls for Bertha Strunk at a tango lesson in a church crypt in Clerkenwell. Each recently separated, both their Suns are squared by Neptune. Bertha also bears a strong resemblance to the 17th century Venetian singer and composer,...
Kleinzeit, Russell Hoban's second novel, is probably the funniest of his books. It's a stylized, completely unpredictable story about a man in search of reality, armed only with a Glockenspiel and a copy of Thucydides' The Peloponnesian War. The...
In Ariosto's epic 16th-century poem Orlando Furioso, the beautiful Angelica, chained, naked, to a rock and menaced by a sea monster is rescued by the valiant Ruggiero, riding a 'hippogriff', the offspring of a griffin and a mare — an entirely...
"There is a strangeness about Christabel Alderton. Elias Newman can see it right away, as well he might.
"When Christabel was 13 she was walking by the River Lea and some people in a cabin cruiser waved to her. The scene before her...
Ephram Jennings has never forgotten the beautiful girl with the long braids running through the piney woods of Liberty, their small East Texas town. Young Ruby Bell, “the kind of pretty it hurt to look at,” has suffered beyond imagining, so as...
A poignant, bitingly funny Indian satire and love story set in a scientific institute and in Mumbai’s humid tenements.
Ayyan Mani, one of the thousands of dalit (untouchable caste) men trapped in Mumbai’s slums, works in the Institute...
A soldier with the ability to predict the future finds himself blackmailed by an insurgent into the ultimate act of terror…
A deviser of crosswords survives a car-bomb attack, only to discover he is now haunted by one of its...
In a large apartment house in central Rome, two crimes are committed within a matter of days: a burglary, in which a good deal of money and precious jewels are taken, and a murder, as a young woman whose husband is out of town is found with her...