He who loves money never has enough

I used to imagine Hell as a Sisyphean search for friends in a packed, Covent Garden Piano & Pitcher bar on a Friday night. In The Ballad of a Small Player, Lawrence Osborne describes a different version of purgatory, that of the impossible task of making money in the garish interiors and themed decors of casinos. Anyone who has wandered through Las Vegas gaming palaces will recognize the oppressive setting of Osborne's story, where addicts are oblivious to the passing of time. He conjures up a seedy world where logic, reason and causality are replaced by a belief in coincidence and luck.

Inventing a universe is tough work

"Inventing a universe is tough work," confesses Ursula Le Guin in the Foreword to this collection of short stories. Reading about it can be quite tough too, as I found out the first time I started the book. I failed to get past page four, such was my inability to get to grips with Sov Thade Tage em Ereb's explanation about Sedern Geger, the Harges, and Argaven. The visual bombardment of strange words of unknown pronunciation put me off and served to increase my belief that sci-fi stories of weird planets, aliens and space ships were not for me.

But I like short stories and I enjoy speculative fiction, especially by female writers, so I tried again.

Being fine is not enough

Eleanor Oliphant is odd. People don't understand her and she finds it difficult to make friends. We very quickly learn that she's had at least one abusive experience, since she turned up for a job interview "with a black eye, a couple of missing teeth and a broken arm." But there are little clues in the text that lead us to suspect that Eleanor has suffered something much more dreadful, and this has probably influenced her behaviour and self-imposed loneliness. Things start to change when Eleanor finds the love of her life wearing "the bottom button of his waistcoat unfastened", and when she develops a friendship with the office IT guy, Raymond, who wears "a T-shirt showing a cartoon dog, lying on top of its kennel".

Bally foolishness

There were four of them --- George, and William Samuel Harris, and J., and Montmorency the dog. They were sitting in J.'s lodgings, comparing their ailments, and reached the conclusion that they needed rest, a "change of scene, and absence of the necessity for thought." Two weeks in a hired rowing boat on the River Thames was chosen as the best remedy, although Montmorency thought "the whole thing bally foolishness". The three friends packed their bags and set off to enjoy themselves.

The injustice of man's justice

"Do you believe in the way the country is organized?" asks Caroline Bury in It's a Battlefield. She's a woman who's connected, who "had chosen to exercise her passion for charity" in the territory of politics. The story follows Caroline and others as they try to prevent a London bus driver named Jim Drover from hanging.

Graham Greene described the book as his 'first overtly political novel'. It was published in 1934, when Britain was experiencing the effects of the Great Depression.

Bunkum and claptrap

I'd already made up my mind about Paolo Coelho's book by the end of the first chapter, well before we learn that "Veronika [-] finished her studies, went to university, got a good degree, but ended up working as a librarian." This is not the sort of thing that endears an ex-librarian to a narrator.

Veronika Decides To Die is about a young Slovenian woman who tries to commit suicide but fails. She wakes up in La Villete mental institution in Ljubljana, where the action is mainly set, and is told she has only a few days to live. The story then deals with how Veronika's prognosis affects her and the other inmates.

Strange noises and messages written on walls

On the surface, The Haunting of Hill House is a straightforward ghost story, where four strangers meet in an isolated gothic mansion and experience supernatural phenomena. Dr. Montague, an anthropologist, has rented the haunted house for three months. He hopes to make his fame and fortune "upon the publication of his definitive work on the causes and effects of psychic disturbances." His search for suitable assistants unearths Eleanor Vance, who had dutifully cared for her mother for eleven years, leading a life of "small guilts and small reproaches, constant weariness, and unending despair." Two others agree to join the Doctor, Theodora, for whom duty and conscience are "attributes which belonged properly to Girl Scouts", and Luke Sanderson, who will inherit Hill House, and who "was a liar" and "also a thief."

But nothing happens!

I imagine that many youths have developed a loathing for Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway because they have been forced to study it. The story begins with Clarissa Dalloway setting out to buy flowers for a party she is throwing later at her home in London. Its narrative weaves in and out of the minds of several characters, follows them as they wander through streets and parks, and accompanies them to appointments. "But nothing happens!" I can hear the teens cry. Having been exposed to Proust's reflections on tea and cake at school, I understand their anguish.

A proud mummy's boy

'I have always found that if a man does not give himself a good word, his friends will not do it for him.' Barry Lyndon is not shy of praising himself in the book that bears his name. The subject of Thackeray's The Memoirs of Barry Lyndon, Esq. is self-explanatory. Redmond Barry is brought up by his mother, who fills his head with heroic tales of his ancestry. He is a belligerent boy, proud and naive, and grows into a wild teenager, who, in one of my favourite episodes of the book, becomes involved in a duel for the love of a local Irish girl.

It's not just about revenge

Ruth Patchett has a good life, her husband Bobbo tells her so. Ruth is lucky to have such a good-looking husband, the neighbours often remark on it. With so little self confidence, it's no surprise that Ruth falls apart when Bobbo begins an affair with the romantic fiction writer Mary Fisher.

Fay Weldon's The Life and Loves of a She Devil follows Ruth Patchett's journey in the aftermath of her husband's desertion. It's Bobbo who calls Ruth a she devil, and her acceptance of his accusation sets her free from the downtrodden life she has led up to then. Ruth sets about transforming herself and her life, appropriating power, and in so doing, she exacts revenge on the lovers.

Ever feel like murdering somebody?

"Ever feel like murdering somebody?" Like many people I'm sure I've felt like it, but only in the heat of the moment, never in reality. But Charles Bruno in Patricia Highsmith's first novel, Strangers on a Train, isn't like most people. He's an alcoholic, desperately bored, rich man whose father keeps him short of money.

Whilst traveling by train to Santa Fe to spend time with his mother, Bruno meets Guy, an ambitious architect held back by his wife Miriam who refuses him a divorce. The two men get drunk and talk about their troubles, and Bruno comes up with a plan to murder Miriam in return for Guy murdering his father. In spite of his inebriation, Guy firmly rejects the idea.

Have you a stout heart?

"Have you a stout heart? Nerves fit for sliding panels and tapestry?" If so, then you'll enjoy Northanger Abbey, Jane Austen's gothic parody.

The story is about Catherine Morland, a naive, seventeen-year-old girl who longs to be the sort of heroine she has read about in the 1794 gothic novel by Ann Radcliffe, The Mysteries of Udolpho. Catherine joins family friends Mr and Mrs Allen when they spend a few weeks in Bath. There she meets Isabella and John Thorpe, and the mysterious Henry Tilney, with whom she falls head-over-heels in love. After being introduced to Henry's father and sister, Catherine is invited to spend some time at their home, Northanger Abbey. It is here that Catherine's overactive imagination leads her to invent farfetched mysteries and villainous situations.

Full of flawed characters and the stupid things they do

It can't have been a coincidence that Zadie Smith named one of the main characters of On Beauty, Howard. The book is inspired by the author's love of E.M. Forster, is a hommage to him, and a modern re-writing of his "Howard's End". Unfamiliarity with Forster's early 20th century work need not deter someone from reading Zadie Smith's tale, which follows the Belsey family and how they cope after their academic father Howard gets his "end" away.

Neither American nor Russian

The Russian Debutante's Handbook by Gary Shteyngart is about Vladimir Girshkin, born in Russia, whose parents emigrated to America when he was seven: "They had left their rarefied Petersburg friends, their few relatives, everyone they had ever known, traded it all in for a lifetime of solitary confinement in a Scarsdale mini-mansion." Now aged twenty-five, Vladimir lives in New York, has a boring job, has failed to live up to his mother's expectations, and is going nowhere. He had reached "the final destination of every immigrant's journey: a better home in which to be unhappy."

How terribly interesting little things are

EF Benson's book follows the life of the quiet village of Riseholme, where "nothing ever happens". Mrs Emmeline Lucas (Lucia) is self-appointed queen, ruling the villagers in matters of culture and entertainment.

Lucia is a snob. She professes to speak Italian, although in truth only a few words, her superior knowledge of music is accepted on the basis of her ability to play only the first movement of Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata, and she imposes her taste by disdaining the gramophone and new composers such as Debussy. With her right-hand-man Georgie she ensures that she is the leading light in the cultural and social life of the village. But revolution brews in Riseholme with the arrival of opera singer Olga Bracely.

Don't work too hard

JG Ballard's Super-Cannes is a crime story set near Cannes in the South of France. Most of the action takes place in and around the Eden-Olympia business park, a closed community where Jane, a paediatrician, has taken a short-term contract. Her husband Paul, who is convalescing after a flying accident, tells the story.

Prior to the couple's arrival the previous paediatrician had run amok and killed 10 people, and as Jane becomes more engrossed in her work, Paul becomes obsessed with finding out what had provoked the bloody massacre.

Magic, dragons and witches

A Wizard of Earthsea tells the story of Ged, a boy with a gift for magic. He lives in the fantasy world that Ursula Le Guin has created, with dragons and witches, and where residents rely on local mages to cast spells for mundane situations such as changing the weather or protecting boats.

The tale unfolds in the narrative style of an ancient saga, as Ged learns his craft and becomes a powerful wizard. His youthful arrogance unleashes an evil shadow which must be hunted down and destroyed. It's a quest that takes Ged on a journey of self discovery.

Ursula le Guin tells a great story, but I was perhaps a little too old to really be captivated by it. I wish I'd read it as a teenager, when I was entranced by The Hobbit, and The Once and Future King.

The future problems of debt

The Transition is set in Britain of the near future, when buying property has become too expensive for the majority, and rents are so high that even well paid professionals cannot afford them. Nonetheless married couple Karl and Genevieve are happy until Karl's debt spirals out of control and he's convicted of fraud.

Rather than prison, Karl signs himself and his wife up for a six-month project called "The Transition", which involves them living with and being mentored by Stu and Jenna, a successful, older couple.

Midsomer Murders with witches

Paul Cornell's Witches of Lychford is a novella set in a village in rural England. Residents are divided over a proposal to build a new supermarket, and one elderly woman called Judith knows that if the development goes ahead, dark forces will be unleashed.

The story's premise is appealing in that it brings fantasy into a modern, stereotypical village setting; a sort of Midsomer Murders with witches. Its three main characters are likeable: Judith the elderly witch, Lizzie the vicar, and her childhood friend Autumn who runs the local witchcraft shop.

The new gods of America

"[-] there are new gods growing in America, clinging to growing knots of belief: gods of credit-card and freeway, of internet and telephone [-]"

Neil Gaiman's American Gods imagines what it would mean to be a god in the modern world. Its premise is that the gods brought to America by successive waves of immigrants, are growing old and forgotten through lack of belief. Modern gods have been created out of media and technology; these are the things in which people now put their faith.