Vicky Halls deals with a variety of feline problems, all of which she has experienced in her professional life. Although, as a cat counsellor, she admits that hers is a "bizarre way to earn a living", there is no doubt that she is in demand. Aggressive cats, dependent cats, antisocial cats, scaredy cats: all are dealt with here, but not all the tales have happy endings.

Some of the beasties [...]

Ree Dolly does not have the easiest of lives. Looking after her two younger brothers and her mute mother would be hard enough, but when her father disappears, the family stand to have their home repossessed unless he shows up in court. Poor Ree, Daniel Woodrell's 16-year-old heroine, has to traipse around the unforgiving, snow-covered Ozark Hills in Missouri, questioning all manner of distant blood relatives in the region whose [...]

While it is true that the world has not exactly been crying out for a detailed dissection of the Tintin books by the Belgian comic artist Hergé , the intrepid reporter is enjoying a comeback. Tom McCarthy's analysis precedes a big-budget motion picture directed by none other than Steven Spielberg, which coincides with Hergé's centenary in 2007.

But this is no ordinary analysis. McCarthy's book deals with the most profound [...]

When a novel opens with a giraffe describing its birth, you know you are in for something different. J M Ledgard's debut, based on real events, describes the capture, transportation and brutal massacre of the largest captive herd of giraffes in the world.

The book's two human narrators are Emil, a haemodynamicist, and Amina, a somnambulist factory worker. Emil has been chosen to accompany the herd as it is transported [...]

Music for girls to dance to. That was the aim of the art-rock band Franz Ferdinand when it formed at the end of 2001, according to its front man and guitarist, Alex Kapranos. The Glaswegian foursome were staging their own mini-rebellion against "that post-rock thing that seemed to be doing its damned hardest to avoid any bloody tune". They seemed to have the right idea. Their eponymous debut, released at [...]

Having perfected its own brand of inoffensive pop music over ten albums, the Beautiful South has finally decided to do something new: cover versions. Lots of them. Golddiggas, Head-nodders and Pholk Songs, an album of the most incompatible tracks since the London Underground, might seem a foolish undertaking. Who on earth is going to buy a compilation featuring Willy Nelson, the Heppelbaums and S Club 7? But Paul Heaton and [...]

William Sutcliffe's latest novel shows how easily innocence can be corrupted by external forces. Like Mark Haddon, in his own prizewinning Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, Sutcliffe simply and realistically records the confusions of a troubled world of childhood.

Ben is a bright, gregarious lad living in a north London suburb with his parents and two elder siblings. The most important things in his life are Olly, [...]

New York's failure to produce a band of any real significance during the 1990s is one of that decade's musical anomalies. Seattle, on the west coast, was home to grunge acts such as Nirvana and Pearl Jam. In the UK, Manchester practically bled influential musicians throughout this period. Even Oxford can lay claim to Radiohead. Yet while the rest of the western world rocked, the coolest city of all remained [...]

Jake Arnott is celebrated as the author who invented mid-1990s gangster chic long before that mockney upstart Guy Ritchie made Vinnie Jones a film star. This book, the third in a trilogy full of dodgy geezers, bent coppers and hooky deals, addresses our fascination with the seedy activities of the criminal underworld, made fashionable in Ritchie's films and, indeed, in Arnott's own novels.

Tony Meehan, the murderous journalist from Arnott's [...]

Ethan Hawke, a regular guy from New York, married with two children and one of the lucky few to have their second novel published. Except that he's not really a regular guy at all; he is the Oscar-nominated Ethan Hawke, the trendy actor with the even trendier name.

We are introduced to Jimmy Heartsock, driving his "kick-ass car" while high on crystal meth. He's an army man, reluctantly following in [...]