In essence, McCarthy writes to explore the human condition, and it is on this exploration that all his works turn. From Blood Meridian, through to the Border Trilogy, including his most recognised novel, All The Pretty Horses, McCarthy’s works are close to being unremittingly bleak. McCarthy writes of a world that is real for very many people, of a badlands existence where life is palpable but the human grasp on it is tenuous.

Dear readers, unless you have enjoyed the last 11 of Lemony Snicket’s books you should probably just stop reading now. As we are warned every time we pick up one of these sorry tales, there is no point getting started on them if you prefer your endings to be happy (your middles and beginnings, too). But if, like me, you are up to date with the activities of the Baudelaire orphans, I’m telling you now; read Book 12, The Penultimate Peril!

Winner of the 2005 Man Booker Award, The Sea is a beautifully crafted work, a pleasure to read and fulfilling to reflect upon.

Kurt Vonnegut said that there is only one story – man falls in hole, man gets out of hole. At the beginning of Umberto Eco’s new novel a man awakes in a fog, in hospital, not knowing his name, or even his own face, let alone his wife or children. This is a fascination hole to watch a man climb out of, and a daring scenario for a novelist to portray convincingly. Does Eco manage to pull it off?

Diego de la Vega, the boy who came to be known by his alter ego, Zorro, started wearing a mask to conceal the fact that he had big ears. This delicious detail from Isabel Allende’s retelling of the legend tells a lot about the story in which she, as narrator, is not afraid to laugh at the hero and he is not afraid to laugh at himself.

In the UK, British novelist Nick Hornby is the long-reigning “King of lad lit”. In their own way each of his novels uses an accessible pop-culture framework to examine domestic situations and everyday events. His previous books have guided thirty-something males through some important themes; love, friendship, parenting and social responsibility. In his latest offering, A Long Way Down, we are introduced to the biggest theme of all – death and humankind’s need to control our mortality.

The Lost Thoughts of Soldiers is a slender volume, more an elegy or a poem than a novel. It captures the essence of a soldier’s life in and around the battlefield, not on it, and does this well. It captures the mundanity and profanity of everyday soldier life, leavened with the deeper thinking that only a soldier’s sense of imminent mortality can bring. And yet, there is very little plot, only the remembrances of a former soldier, Frederick Benteen, composing correspondence.

The Harry Potter series has two enduring interests: the battle between good and evil, and the education of young Harry. What is going to happen, and what sort of person will Harry be at the end of it all? In the second-last book of the series, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, matters develop satisfyingly in both areas, and leave us ready and anxious for the final volume in which, it is assumed and had better be the case, All Will Be Revealed.

The coexistence of predestination and freewill is a difficult concept and finds little expression in fiction, yet intriguingly it forms a key part of the drama and the thematic concerns of the sixth JK Rowling novel, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (HBP).

Dreams are a fascinating and mysterious part of our lives. They can reveal prophecies and promises. They can cause us to wake in terror. In our sleeping state we experience stories and images that can frighten or delight. In our waking moments the memory of these nightly visions slips away from us. In Elizabeth Knox’s spellbinding novel, Dreamhunter, dreams are more than a physiological part of sleep they are a cultural phenomenon.

Is ‘true love’ real? Is there really a love that can be found between two people who were meant for each other and no one else? Most people want to answer “Yes” and author Cecelia Ahern knows it. Her novel Where Rainbows End is a reworking of the timeless story of two people who come irresistibly together despite many obstacles.

Like many, I’m a sucker for a good conspiracy theory and Michael Crichton’s latest novel, State of Fear, is a tantalising morsel to feed our natural suspicion. Unfortunately what might have been a tasty snack was seriously overcooked by the author. Instead of satisfying, it really just leaves us feeling bloated and repentant.

Grisham has been described as a writer of ‘good solid commercial fiction’ and his latest offering, ‘The Broker’ is no exception. Good, solid commercial fiction this may be; but how many times must we tread the path of political espionage, CIA conspiracy, government power plays and the guy caught in the middle running for his life?

Set over the course of a single day, Saturday begins in the early morning of February 15, 2003 as a sleepless neurosurgeon, Dr Henry Perowne, gazes out his bedroom window. From his secure vantage point he sees a plane whose fuselage appears to be alight.