THE BEST PAPERBACKS

NON-FICTION The Invention Of Angela Carter Edmund Gordon Vintage €15

Angela Carter was only 51 at the time of her death from lung cancer in 1992, but the work she produced in her all-tooshort career guarantees her place in the literary first rank. This exemplary biography emphasises the originality and sheer audacity that characterised both her fiction and her life.

FICTION A Book Of American Martyrs Joyce Carol Oates 4th Estate €14

Commencing with the cold-blooded murder of an abortion doctor by an obsessed Christian evangelist, this powerful novel deals both with the devastation caused to the families of the victim and the killer, and the ever-expanding faultlines running through contemporary US society. It’s thought-provoking, gripping and disturbing.

NON-FICTION Arthur And Sherlock Michael Sims Bloomsbury €13.99

How did an Edinburghtrained doctor come to create the world’s most iconic fictional character? Arthur Conan Doyle said that Holmes was a child born of Poe’s Inspector Dupin and his old university teacher, Joseph Bell but, as Sims explains in this delightful book, there were many other influences as well.

NON-FICTION The Princess Diarist Carrie Fisher Black Swan €12.99

Carrie Fisher’s death last year shocked the movie world, and it’s not surprising that this posthumously published book has become a bestseller. The big revelation is her affair with Harrison Ford, but what lingers is the astuteness of her observations, her dry wit and lack of preciousness.