Fiction

Played in a minor key

Barbara Kingsolver’s Partita

The Tyranny of Family Life

Andrea Bajani’s The Anniversary

The name’s Smiley

An affectionate return to le Carré’s best-loved character

The spies who came back rather old

Chance discrepancies and omissions in a world where details matter

Pinned to the Wall

The letters of William Gaddis

What we have

John Lanchester’s Capital

In a hall of mirrors

David Foster Wallace’s posthumous unfinished novel

The Paris Enigma

Viennese whirls

Frank Tallis’s Darkness Rising

Death Dyed Blonde

Hard Choices

Darkness at Noone

Armistead Maupin’s The Night Listener

Dead or deadly

Will Self’s How the Dead Live

Time for something sweet

Helen Dunmore’s Ice Cream

Mission to destroy the Garden of Eden

Matthew Kneale’s English Passengers

They’ll do anything to get you into bed

David Foster Wallace’s Brief Interviews with Hideous Men

Things you like to do

Stacey Richter’s My Date with Satan

Beyond self-help

Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason

Froth on top of bitterness

Sue Townsend’s The Cappuccino Years

Creating those creature comforts

Iain Banks’s The Business

Polymorphous perversities

Jonathan Ames’s The Extra Man

Scream!

Horror as a genre