THE CONFIDENCE MAN – HERMAN MELVILLE         DALKEY ARCHIVE

Herman Melville was born in New York, the son of a merchant, and was largely self-educated. He started writing after having first sailed to Liverpool in 1839, where he joined a whaler bound for the Pacific Ocean. Deserting the ship the following year in the Marquesas, he made his way to Tahiti and Honolulu, returning as an ordinary seaman to Boston, where he was discharged in October 1844. Books based on these adventures, including Moby Dick, won him immediate success but literary attention faded as his prose became more ambitious, culminating in his final, strangest and arguably greatest novel, The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade, published in 1857. Melville died virtually unknown in 1891 and it was not until the 1920s that he received recognition as a key figure in American literature. The Confidence-Man is a scathing, razor-sharp satire set on a New Orleans-bound riverboat, exposing the fraudulent optimism of such American idols and idealists as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau and P. T. Barnum, and drawing a dark vision of a country being swallowed by its illusions of progress. The story begins with a mute boarding a Mississippi boat and ends without a conclusion: ‘Something further may follow of this Masquerade’. In between, the confidence man, so well disguised as to avoid clear identification even by the reader, meets and tricks a boatful of unusual characters. The culmination of Herman Melville’s brilliant career as a novelist, and the introduction of a particularly American brand of satire that is as caustic as it is funny, The Confidence Man creates an elaborate and beautiful masquerade that asks: who in this world is worth our confidence? This is a welcome new edition of the ‘first postmodern novel’ which offers a wry view that life may be just a cosmic con game. The book includes excellent annotations by H. Bruce Franklin, intended for both the general reader and the scholar. Highly recommended.

THE 39 STEPS – JOHN BUCHAN         PENGUIN  ISBN 9780141031262

John Buchan was a Unionist politician who served as Governor General of Canada but is best remembered as the author of thrillers and historical novels. His hundred books include about thirty novels and seven collections of short stories as well as biographies of Sir Walter Scott, Caesar Augustus and Oliver Cromwell. Buchan’s first success as an author came with Prester John in 1910, followed by a series of adventure thrillers, or ‘shockers’ as he called them, characterised by their authentical backgrounds, romantic characters, their atmosphere of expectancy and world-wide conspiracies, and the author’s own enthusiasm. The Thirty-nine Steps is the first of his five novels featuring Richard Hannay, an all-action hero with a stiff upper lip and a miraculous habit of getting himself out of sticky situations. Hannay has just returned to England after years in South Africa and is thoroughly bored with his life in London. But then a murder is committed in his flat, just days after a chance encounter with an American who had told him about an assassination plot which could have dire international consequences. An obvious suspect for the police and an easy target for the killers, he goes on the run in his native Scotland where he will need all his courage and ingenuity to stay one step ahead of his pursuers. The novel formed the basis for several film adaptations, most notably Alfred Hitchcock’s 1935 adaptation, but none quite matches the book’s perfect combination of fine writing and suspense-filled plot. This is one of a series of six exciting adventure classics from Penguin, all with wonderfully nostalgic covers and each one of them a cracking good read sure to appeal to red-blooded men everywhere. The other titles are The Riddle of the Sands by Erskine Childers; The Lost World by Arthur Conan Doyle; The Man Who Was Thursday by G.K. Chesterton; She by H. Rider Haggard; The Prisoner of Zenda by Anthony Hope.

THE GLASS BOOKS OF THE DREAM EATERS - G W DAHLQUIST VIKING ISBN 9780670916474

G W Dahlquist’s remarkable tale of violence, conspiracy and erotica first appeared in serial publication last year and is now published as a complete entity. This intoxicatingly compulsive gothic adventure story is set in a fictitious Victorian city, with a host of wicked and outlandish characters who include Miss Celestial Temple, a feisty heiress; Cardinal Chang, a deadly assassin and Dr Svenson, guardian to a louche and syphilitic prince. When Miss Temple finds her engagement broken off without suitable explanation by her fiancé Roger Bascombe, she is given a choice: turn away from polite society or turn adventuress and discover the reason for her rejection. Deciding to secretly follow her former lover, Miss Temple finds herself a trespasser at a masked ball. There, strange and unspeakable acts involving electricity and books of glass (not to mention a murder) take place and Miss Temple almost loses both her virtue and her life. Joined in her adventures by a foreign surgeon and an assassin, Miss Temple seeks to uncover the conspiracy that lies at the heart of the glass books, and learns just how disrespectable - and life threatening - adventuring can be. G W Dahlquist claims that The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters came to him in his dreams after he fell asleep when trapped by a snowstorm. His two previous claims to fame are for bringing a private prosecution against NASA for allegedly faking material brought back from the moon, and for inspiring the 1978 film Capricorn One. This first rip-roaring novel with its heady blend of adventure and eroticism is a classic in the making.

PRIDE AND PREJUDICE - JANE AUSTEN         DOVER ISBN 0486440915

Pride and Prejudice, originally entitled First Impressions, was first published in 1813. Perhaps the most popular of Jane Austen’s novels, she described it as ‘rather too light and bright, and sparkling’, needing some ‘solemn specious nonsense’ for contrast. It tells the sory of Elizabeth Bennet’s, who is one of five Bennet daughters, second in age only to the beautiful Jane. The Bennet estate is entailed on a male cousin, and although the girls are comfortable enough as long as their father lives, their long-term financial survival depends on their marrying. Elizabeth Bennet forms a continuing dislike of Fitzwilliam Darcy after he refuses to dance with her at a ball, although he is increasingly attracted to her. Elizabeth’s dislike is shared by the rake Wickham. Darcy eventually proposes but Elizabeth rudely rejects him. Wickham elopes with Lydia, the youngest Bennet sister, and Darcy’s help in finding them convinces Elizabeth that he is the man for her. This handsome new edition of the book features more than 150 delightful illustrations by the Victorian artist Hugh Thomson that make Austen’s clever comedy of manners even more enjoyable.

THE UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS OF BEING IN ABERYSTWYTH - MALCOLM PRYCE BLOOMSBURY  0747577129

Malcolm Pryce was born in Shrewsbury, brought up in Aberystwyth and now lives in Bangkok. His first novel, Aberystwyth Mon Amour, was mostly written on a cargo ship bound for South America. His third and latest wonderfully imaginative book, The Unbearable Lightness of Being in Aberystwyth, again features Louie Knight, the only private dick in Aberystwyth. There was nothing unusual about the barrel-organ man who walked into Louie’s office. Apart from the fact that he had lost his memory. And his monkey was a former astronaut on the Welsh Space Programme. And he carried a suitcase that he was too terrified to open. And he wanted a murder investigated. The only thing unusual about that was that it took place a hundred years ago. And he needed it solved by the following week. Louie was too smart to take a case like that but also too broke to turn it down. Soon he is lost in a labyrinth of intrigue and terror, tormented at every turn by a gallery of mad nuns, gangsters and waifs - haunted by the loss of his girlfriend, Myfanwy, who disappeared one day after being fed drugged raspberry ripple. This hilarious and sometimes disturbing  Welsh noir world is inhabited by people with names such as Rimbaud, Frankie Mephisto and Mrs prestatyn. You half expect a giant Monty Python foot to descend on Pryce’s unique vision of Aber. ‘One of the most inventively comic crime novels of recent years’ - Sunday Times.

WAR AND PEACE - LEO TOLSTOY       PENGUIN CLASSICS ISBN 0713998334

Leo Tolstoy’s epic novel of Russian history and society, War and Peace, was first published between 1865 and 1869 and tells the story of Russia during the Napoleonic era. This wide-ranging study of early 19th Century Russia contains much realistic detail as well as profound psychological analysis, making it indisputably one of the world’s great novels. A huge number of characters are involved in a plot that lives up to the book’s grand title and the novel sets out a theory of history, concluding that free choice is minimal and that life is ruled by an inexorable historical determinism. These profundities underlie a melodramatic story that is part soap opera and part passionate historical romance. Emotional lives are lived against a background of global warfare and uncertainty, and these stories and feelings are just as relevant today as they were two hundred years ago. If you have ever been daunted by the size and reputation of War and Peace, then Asa Briggs’ excellent new translation, even at 1,358 pages, should seduce you into reaching the end. The translator smoothes out previous anachronisms and reveals the amazingly contemporaneity of this wonderful book.

A SUNDAY AT THE POOL IN KIGALI - GIL COURTEMANCHE   CANONGATE ISBN 1841955256

Canadian journalist turned novelist, Gil Courtemanche, based A Sunday at the Pool in Kigali on his experiences during the genocide in Rwanda of 1994, in which an estimated 800,000 people died. His fiction features several real life characters and a sequence of events leading to the carnage, silently witnessed by an international community unable to respond in time to stop the killings. The swimming pool of the Mille-Collines hotel is a magnet for a privileged group of Kigali residents: aid-workers, the Rwandan elite, soldiers, prostitutes and several expatriates. The waitress Gentille, a beautiful Hutu often mistaken for a Tutsi, begins a love affair with Valcourt, a Canadian journalist and film-maker, as civil unrest in the country makes its insidious, inevitable progress towards anarchy. This is a powerful, harrowing and cathartic denunciation of poverty, ignorance, global apathy and media blindness, as well as a poignant love story and a stirring hymn to humanity. A Sunday at the Pool in Kigali has been translated into more than 15 languages and won the 2001 Prix des Libraires for outstanding book of the year. Reminiscent at times of Albert Camus and Graham Greene, this is a moving and brilliantly-written novel that deals with horror and death by celebrating compassion. ‘Do not expect it to leave you untouched’ - Jonathan Kaplan.

THE UNCOLLECTED HENRY JAMES     DUCKWORTH  ISBN 0715633325

The American Floyd R. Horowitz has spent almost thirty years investigating 19th century periodicals such as the Newport Mercury, the Knickerbocker and Arthur’s Home Magazine in a quest to identify and resurrect short stories he wishes to attribute to Henry James. Professor Horowitz maintains that the young James used the pseudonym ‘Leslie Walter’ in order to get his stories published and produced many more anonymously. A certain amount of calculated guesswork, if not downright wishful thinking, has been used by Horowitz but he has also tested his hunches for Jamesian style and vocabulary using computing expertise. He eventually identified no less than 72 works that he claims are definitely by James and another 12 that are ‘probably’ by him. ‘The Pair of Slippers’ is the earliest of the 25 ascribed stories included here, written in 1852 when James would have been a mere nine years old. The last story, ‘A Hasty Marriage’, dates from 1869. It seems impossible now to be certain that any of them were actually written by the same hand that wrote The Portrait of a Lady and The Golden Bowl (although the Horowitz explains his rigorous methods of attribution in an appendix). This intriguing collection should nevertheless interest both scholar and general reader, as there are flashes of Jamesian quality in some stories, and even the mediocre or plain sentimental ones help establish the great author in his cultural and social context.

BROTHER & SISTER - JOANNA TROLLOPE     BLOOMSBURY ISBN 0747570434

We all need to know where we come from, where we belong. But for David and Nathalie, this need to know is more urgent than for most people, because they are adopted. Brought up by the same parents, but born to different mothers, they have grown up, fiercely loyal to one another, as brother and sister. Their decision, in their late thirties, to embark upon the journey to find their birth mothers is no straightforward matter. It affects, acutely and often painfully, their partners, the people they work with and, most poignantly, the two women who gave them up for adoption all those years ago, and who have since then made other lives, even borne other children. Exploring her subject with imagination and humanity, Joanna Trollope creates a rich narritive, at once gritty and graceful, exposing the extraordinary challenges that arise at the heart of ordinary lives. ‘She can be as subtle as Austen, as sharp as Bronte. Trollope’s brilliant’ - Fay Weldon. Brother & Sister is also available as a three-CD audio book (ISBN 074757216X), with the abridged text skilfully and intelligently read by Samantha Bond.

DR MUKTI & OTHER TALES OF WOE - WILL SELF  BLOOMSBURY ISBN 0747565317

This new novella and four short stories make up Will Self’s first collection of stories in five years, and mark a stylish return to the rich ground of his earliest fiction. Shiva Mukti is a hardworking and conscientious psychiatrist, but when he encounters Zack Busner, a more successful and established colleague, it is his thwarted ambition that draws him into a bizarre duel. On the twenty-first storey of a half-abandoned tower block two men are forced into a peculiar and claustrophobic flat share. A premonitory dream solders together a family sundered apart ... or does it? In this and the other stories here Will Self writes with his usual sharp, satirical wit and imagination, making the tales both eminently enjoyable and elegantly disturbing. ‘Will Self is one of those rare writers whose imaginations change for ever the way we see the world’ - JG Ballard.

THE HEAVEN OF MERCURY - BRAD WATSON   CANONGATE ISBN 1841954470

Newspaper journalist Finus Bates has loved chatty, elegant Birdie Wells ever since he saw her cartwheel naked through the woods near the backwater town of Mercury, Mississippi in 1917. This evocative and beautifully written debut novel chronicles Finus’s steadfast devotion against a background of Mercury’s evolution from a sleepy backwater to a small city. By focusing on this small community, Brad Watson tells a story of friendships, betrayals, tragedies and loves, suggesting that human nature, essentially, is beyond change. The writing is always compelling and the book has all the essential elements for a modern Southern Gothic novel. ‘This novel is graceful, patient, insightful and hilarious’ - USA Today.

DEATH IN PRACTICE - HAZEL HOLT     ALLISON & BUSBY ISBN 0749006447

In this latest adventure into amateur detection in Taviscombe, the Somerset seaside town’s veterinary practice is facing closure unless they can find a new partner to invest money in the business. Enter Malcolm Hardy; tall, good looking and rich enough to save the surgery. But soon he has offended most of the town, accusing a colleague of malpractice and installing his girlfriend as a veterinary assistant. As far as middle-aged academic Sheila Malory is concerned, there is nothing to like about the new vet. But despite his unpopularity it is still a shock when Hardy collapses and dies at the surgery. When the post-mortem reveals unnatural death, suspicion falls on his former colleagues. Could somebody at the practice be a killer? Or might Hardy have other enemies with murder in mind? Hazel Holt writes satisfying whodunits in the traditional style of Dorothy L. Sayers, with a cast of characters that grow as her entertaining series of books progress. ‘Hazel Holt understands the criminal mind’- Sunday Times.