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Why not order a copy of a book* from your library today? All you need to do is pop in or call and ask for that book you always wanted. The library should be able to order it from the publisher, you get to read it for free, the author gets a few ...

"Imagine for a moment you're sitting at your kitchen table making bombs. Knowing that should you sweat too much, or make a sudden move, you will be terribly maimed or killed. Then, later, weaving through the happy crowd: seeing the faces of smiling children. Knowing that if you succeed in your terrible mission, your name will be cursed by millions; and when you are eventually killed (the brothers Tsarnaev may not have been suicide bomber...

They were still mopping up the mock riots when I reached

Hatton Garden, weaving between the Bridgets and Allys (and

Hermiones), with their one too many G&Ts at the office

Christmas party, their inadequate but well-dressed

Just after midnight I returned from some unspeakable

pub to find Herm sitting on my 12th floor doorstep, shivering

with what I assumed was the cold. As she heard me approach

she stood and I saw tears in her eyes; she wore a long white

"I left school in 1983, the same month Margaret Thatcher won her second election. In my Yorkshire hometown there was disbelief that once again the south had returned to power someone who had transformed the industrial heartlands in much the same way the US infantry transformed Baghdad..."

Hermione shrugged, and it was as if something cold had

taken her over. This was it, her get-out clause, her way of

saying goodbye: by making me hate her. She rose, her small

breasts still floating; did I really want to see them droop,

After much badgering, bluffing and blackmail, a housing

association for soaks had got me a flat in the backside of

Marylebone, but I hated it: too posh, all mink coats and

ermine accents. I knew I was being silly, but after all those

Just spoke on BBC Ulster about why the Beeb was wrong to "ban" the witch is dead, why I won't be celebrating or mourning on Wednesday and why "Kill the Poor" would have been far more appropriate. You can catch the show here...

“Can I ask you a question?” Mary shrugged warily.

“Who was my real dad?”

Mary looked scared.

“What?”

“My real father. Who was it? I have this memory of a

When Tony woke up we bought a bottle of Mekong and

wandered the streets, where we were propositioned halfheartedly

by beautiful girls with glossy hair and diminutive

bodies who worked on stalls selling short-term clothes, porn

Leaving the pub, where Tony attempted to console the

inconsolable, I bought a badge of blue from an offie, then

walked back up Amwell Street just as the rickshaw man came

freewheelin’ down, looking for fares and trying to act

By the time she was twenty months old Sarah was running

marathons round the flat and had a vocabulary of around fifty

words, some in approved dictionaries. Like all parents, we

convinced ourselves that she was not only special, but gifted