Martin Amis
London Fields

Martin Amis' murder story for the end of the millennium. The narrator, Samson Young, enters the Black Cross, a thoroughly undesirable public house, and finds the main players of his drama assembled, just waiting to begin. It's a gift of a story from real life - all Samson has to do is to write it. The murderee is Nicola Six, a black hole of self-loathing intent on orchestrating her own extinction. The murderer may be Keith Talent, a violent lowlife whose only passions are pornography and darts. Or is the killer the rich, honorable, and dimly romantic Guy Clinch? Taking a small pocket of time and a richly diverse part of London, Martin Amis dissects the nature of a society as it hurtles towards the millennium.

Gyles Brandreth
Oscar Wilde and the Candlelight Murders

London, 1889. Oscar Wilde, celebrated poet, wit, playwright and raconteur, is the literary sensation of his age. All Europe lies at his feet. Yet when he chances across the naked corpse of sixteen-year-old Billy Wood,. posed by candlelight in a dark stifling attic room. he cannot ignore the brutal murder. With the help of fellow author Arthur Conan Doyle, he sets out to solve the crime - but it is Wilde's unparalleled access to all degrees of late Victorian life, from society drawing rooms to the underclass, that will prove the decisive factor in their investigation of what turns out to be a series of brutal killings.

Tim Ecott
Stealing Water

Tim Ecott's family swapped Northern Ireland for apartheid Johannesburg in the 1970s. But just six months after arriving, the family was bankrupt and evicted from their home. Whilst friends and relatives imagined they were living enviable lives in the sun, the reality was that the family was cast adrift. Forced to survive on their wits, they entered a twilight world where their true friends were prostitutes, thieves and renegades. Funny, witty and affecting, this is a very different African memoir about the true value of friendship and how the worst of times can become the most important and valuable period of a person's life.