 | Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the World by Haruki Murakami
Buy new: £6.26 / Used from: £3.72 My first Murakami and a wonderful novel. Part science fiction, part fantasy, wholly unique.
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 | A Telling of Stars by Caitlin Sweet
Buy used from: £0.51 Lyrical, moving and deeply personal fantasy from a new Canadian talent. One to watch.
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 | Swordspoint: A Melodrama of Manners by Ellen Kushner
Buy new: £4.30 / Used from: £0.49 A great melodrama of manners; fantasy without magic and with a lot of character.
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 | The Wood Beyond the World (Wildside Fantasy) by William Morris
Buy new: £8.99 / Used from: £3.37 One of the forefathers of modern fantasy? I think so. A mediavalesque faery-tale that lulls you into another time.
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 | The Book Of The New Sun: Volume 1: Shadow and Claw: Shadow and Claw Vol 1 (Fantasy Masterworks) by Gene Wolfe
Buy new: £6.62 / Used from: £2.94 A true mythical odyssey. One of the most exciting fantasy creations I've ever come across. Can't wait to read volume 2. :-)
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 | Daughters of the House by Michele Roberts
Buy new: £5.49 / Used from: £0.01 A thought-provoking creative piece about the relation between place, character and the past. My first non-genre read of the summer
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 | Quicksilver: The Baroque Cycle (Baroque Cycle 1) by Neal Stephenson
Buy new: £6.99 / Used from: £1.71 A mind bending acheivement bringing together history, science and unforgettable personalities. A tour de force of writing of any kind.
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 | Perdido Street Station by China Mieville
Buy new: £4.83 / Used from: £0.91 It seems to have been a summer of science fiction/fantasy treats and this was top amongst them. Mieville's writing is stylish and encyclopaedic.
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 | The Mammoth Cheese by Sheri Holman
Buy new: £7.99 / Used from: £0.01 Looks a little incongruous here, but a thoroughly enjoyable insight into the conflicts of personal/public politics, adolescence, the American news media...and cheese...
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 | The Second Sex (Vintage classics) by Simone de Beauvoir
Buy new: £7.66 / Used from: £5.40 The first of the feminist books I meant to read this summer...in the end I only read one other. Dense, sometimes difficult, often tedious but undeniable seminal.
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 | The Feminine Mystique (Penguin Women's Studies) by Betty Friedan
Buy new: £8.08 / Used from: £5.98 A fascinating and damning expose on the impact of advertising, peer pressure and social expectation on women's lives. Still very relevant IMO.
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 | Sailing to Sarantium (The Sarantium Mosaic) by Guy Gavriel Kay
Buy used from: £1.48 First in the Sarantine Duology and read with relish. GGK is one of the great masters of alternate history. Also read the sequel Lord of Emperors.
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 | The Miniaturist by Kunal Basu
Buy new: £7.19 / Used from: £0.01 A serious departure from the themes and genres of the summer, so took me a while to adjust. Very languid and poetic tale of art and obsession at the Moghul Court.
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 | Stranger Things Happen: Stories by Kelly Link
Buy new: £6.85 / Used from: £4.71 Love, love, love Kelly Link! Her short fiction is wicked and hilarious, macarbre and sensual, weird and wonderful. Yum.
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 | The Anvil of the World by Kage Baker
Buy used from: £14.15 Generally disappointing environmental fantasy polemic; some interesting trope subversion/characterisation but too little too late.
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 | The Leper's Companions by Julia Blackburn
Buy new: £5.48 / Used from: £0.01 A ghostly-dream narrative steeped in loss and lepers. I picked it up for the lepers and didn't get enough of them. Still pleasantly mournful.
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 | Trash Sex Magic by Jennifer Stevenson
Buy used from: £5.10 Sex with anthropomorphic trees anyone? Stevenson is a wonderful domestic fantasist/magical realist. Shocking, sexy and oh so arboreally subversive ;-)
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 | The Confusion: The Baroque Cycle 2 by Neal Stephenson
Buy new: £6.97 / Used from: £2.89 The second in Stephenson's gargantuan Baroque Cycle. As good as the first (see above) except with more pirates (yay!) and less Daniel Waterhouse (boo!). Can't wait for Book 3.
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 | Tolkien and the Great War: The Threshold of Middle-earth by John Garth
Buy new: £7.19 / Used from: £2.99 A compelling but flawed focused-biography of the Great Man. Much insight into the TCBS four and Tolkien's war, not enough on its impact on his fictional work.
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 | Middlemarch (Penguin Classics) by George Eliot
Buy new: £5.94 / Used from: £1.99 My first Eliot experience, but certainly not the last. I loved the microcosm/macrocosm of Eliot's social drama and the loving detail and drama.
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 | Another World is Possible If by Susan George
Buy new: £9.00 / Used from: £5.14 Insightful introduction to the anti-capitalism movement and its aims, though with some controversial conclusions regarding ethical shopping etc. Not sure.
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