Penelope Fitzgerald, The Knox Brothers (1977 - just republished). A delightful and compelling group biography of the author's father and brothers (and a certain amount about the rest of the family). Not only were they all, in some degree, eccentric, the forms of their eccentricity differed widely. The reader learns a good deal about naval cryptography in the First World War and the worlds of interwar Anglo-Catholic communities and Catholic converts, as well as the politics of Punch, which Fitzgerald's father wrote for and eventually edited. (My only complaint is that I would have liked a little more speculation about the emotional/sexual tendencies of this fascinating crew, and that G. B. Stern, a great friend of Fr Ronald Knox, and her writing about him - he was clearly a powerful influence in her own conversion - do not figure).

Angus McLaren, Sexual Blackmail: A Modern History (2002). The latest from the author of Prescription for Murder: The Victorian Serial Killings of Dr Neil Cream (1993), The Trials of Masculinity: Policing Sexual Boundaries, 1870-1930 (1997), and numerous others. Enough said.

Virginia Nicholson, Among the Bohemians: Experiments in Living 1900-1939 (2002).A very enjoyable read about this hard to pin down but definitely significant socially grouping/mindset. Although some of the contextual material could be better, and it would have been nice to have had some attention paid to political affiliations and activities(e.g. what could possibly have been the attraction of Fascism to certain bohemians? and the intriguing way Naomi Mitchison split herself into 2 sister-characters, a politician's wife and a bohemian artist, in We Have Been Warned (1935)), still worth reading.

Lisa Z Sigel, Governing Pleasures: pornography and social change in England, 1815-1914. This is a wonderful study which pays close attention to the questions of the production, distribution and consumption of pornography, as well as what constituted 'pornography' in nineteenth and early twentieth century England. One of a number of studies which are demonstrating how specifically constructed within particular periods in time definitions and representations of the 'obscene' are. See also, for example, Linda Williams' classic work Hard Core: power, pleasure, and the "frenzy of the visible" (1989, expanded edition, 1999).

I can't imagine why I didn't put this one in earlier: A Susan Williams, Ladies of Influence (2000, paperback 2001). A wonderful study of seven women in interwar Britain who enjoyed the privileges and the influence available to the political and social elite (to which they belonged either by birth or by marriage). And they were all very different in their aims and impact, ranging from the Tory hostess Lady Londonderry who developed a tender friendship with Labour leader Ramsay Macdonald, to the radical anti-racist and patron of the arts Nancy Cunard. Extremely readable.

Rather off my usual track, as I am not terribly well-up in the history of early modern science, but this probably makes me the intended reader for John Henry's Knowledge is Power: How Magic, the Government and an Apocalyptic Vision inspired Francis Bacon to create Modern Science (2002). This is a short and very readable account of the rather murky origins of the 'Scientific Revolution' and a fascinating, if not entirely likeable, character.

Joy Dixon, Divine Feminine: Theosophy and Feminism in England (2001). A wonderful, dense, and enlightening book, not only for its helpful account of the internal politics of the Theosophical Society and its offshoots, but by demonstrating how important this alternative spiritual system was in late C19th and early C20th Britain. She makes a strong case that far from being (as it is often perceived) a haunt of right-wingers and even fascist sympathisers, at least in the earlier (Besant) years it had a strong appeal to socialists, feminists and 'progressives' and that there were in fact various forms of social action emerging from it. Also suggests that the ideas associated with theosophy had a broad appeal well beyond those formally affiliated.

Lucy Bland, Banishing the Beast: Feminism, Sex and Morality. This classic work is now back in print from Tauris Parke, London, 2002. Review (of original 1995 Penguin edition, with slightly different title, but nothing else changed).

Jane Jordan, Josephine Butler, John Murray, 2001. At last a modern biography of this hugely important nineteenth century woman. As with any biography, sometimes there are things and aspects one would like more of, but this is a remarkable picture of a complex woman and her family.

June Hannam and Karen Hunt, Socialist Women: Britain, 1880s-1920s, Routledge, 2002. An excellent and important study which gets beyond the previous marginalisation of these women in both histories of labour and socialism and histories of feminism and the suffrage movement. Subtle and nuanced, it avoids the simplistic telling of the already well-known stories of a relatively few women within this group, while using the stories and experiences of individual women involved in socialism to illuminate the problems experienced. Makes it clear that putting women into the history of socialism is not a question of adding a chapter on 'women' or dropping a few names, but of thinking more closely about the gendering of politics and the sex-role assumptions even of political groups which consciously set out to recruit both men and women and to promote an egalitarian agenda.

Dianne Purkiss, Troublesome Things: A History of Fairies and Fairy Stories, Penguin 2001. An extraordinary and compelling read. Must look out for more of her work.

Sarah Bakewell, The Smart: the Story of Margaret Caroline Rudd and the Unfortunate Perreau Brothers, Chatto, 2001: a study of a notorious web of sexuality and conspiracy in C18th London by a former colleague of mine at the Wellcome Library which has been very well received by reviewers.

Elizabeth Reis (ed), American Sexual Histories, Blackwell, 2000. A useful anthology of primary and secondary source material from the colonial period to the present.

Alison Oram and Annmarie Turnbull, The Lesbian History Sourcebook: Love and sex between women in Britain from 1780 to 1970, Routledge, 2001. Covers an immense range of material from medical treatises, legal proceedings, oral history, and fiction. A massive task of selection - there is a lot more material out there, but this moves what's generally available well on from the usual suspects.

Lara Marks, Sexual Chemistry: The Story of the Contraceptive Pill , Yale University Press, 2001. A solidly and extensively researched book which demonstrates the truly international (rather than simply North American) story of the Pill. Also reinstates female agency, from the significant roles of Katherine McCormick and Margaret Sanger in its early developmental stages to the women who demanded it. Another example of her ability (cf Metropolitan Maternity, which is apparently, shock, horror, out of print already) to collate a range of information in an enlightening fashion.

Owen Davies, Witchcraft, Magic and Culture 1736-1951, Manchester University Press (1999). A fascinating study from the Witchcraft Statute of 1736 (which removed the penalties for being a witch and penalised 'pretenses to such arts and powers', to its repeal in 1951 (and concurrent modification of the Vagrancy Law as applied to fortune-tellers). A useful complement to Hutton's Triumph of the Moon.

Laura Doan, Fashioning Sapphism: The origins of a modern English lesbian culture, Columbia University Press, 2001. A splendidly nuanced study of a range of issues around perceptions of female-female relationships and self-presentations in the early decades of the twentieth century, and their relations to wider questions of modernity and modernism. Redeems sexology and the sexologists from the unfair stigma they have often received and demonstrates the creative and dynamic ways women could work with their ideas to fashion identities. Explores the intricacies of the reception of Radclyffe Hall's The Well of Loneliness and its prosecution, to undermine the assumptions of a monolithic homophobic reaction.

Heather Creaton, Victorian Diaries, Mitchell Beazley, 2001. 'A collection of ordinary diary entries from a cross section of classes and lifestyles showing the essentials of the Victorians' daily reality: their family concerns, medical conditions and education. Included in the book are entries from an actor, a schoolboy, a Countess and an engraver.' From the author of the equally recommended Sources for the History of London, 1939-45, British Records Association, 1998.

Peter Gordon and David Doughan, Dictionary of British Women's Organisations, 1825-1960, Frank Cass Woburn Publishing, 2001. Covers a vast range of the diverse ways in which women have come together for a variety of purposes, philanthropic, social, sporting, political... and more. One of those reference books it's hard to stop browsing in.

Katharine Cockin, Women and Theatre in the Age of Suffrage: The Pioneer Players, Palgrave, 2001. 'An interdisciplinary approach to women's involvement in theatre during the British women's suffrage movement.... tests the claim that the Pioneer Players was a women's theatre and investigates... the Pioneer Players' relationship to the women's suffrage movement, to feminism and to women's writing.'

Chandak Sengoopta, Otto Weininger, University of Chicago Press, 2000. Don't know why I didn't mention this earlier. Weininger, who committed suicide aged 23 after publishing the enormously influential Sex and Character in 1903, is an often neglected figure in studies of ideas around sex and gender at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth century, yet at the time his ideas were probably more widely discussed than those of Freud. A solidly contextualised study of this controversial figure.

Ellen Jordan, The Women's Movement and Women's Employment in Nineteenth Century Britain, Routledge (Routledge Research in Gender and History), 2000. A great study of the entry of middle class women into forms of employment other than teaching (usually as a governess) or needlework during the Victorian era. Jordan demonstrates that it was not (as often argued) a case of the demands of the economy inevitably sucking women out of the domestic sphere and into clerical posts, the Post Office, newly professionalised teaching and nursing, medicine, librarianship, and a range of other 'professions for women'. In fact it was the result of pressure and campaigning by the Society for Promoting the Employment of Women which brought about an ideological change and encouraged employers in a variety of sectors to take a chance on employing 'ladies'. Jordan's terrific articles on women pharmacists and the lady-clerks at the Prudential Insurance Co were a foretaste of this extensively researched and theoretically sophisticated monograph.

Roger Davidson, Dangerous Liaisons: A Social History of Venereal Disease in Twentieth-Century Scotland, Rodopi, 2000. Highly recommended. A meticulous study of disease in its social context, and of interest generally (i.e. not just to Scottish or medical historians). Illuminates wider questions about attitudes towards disease and deviance and on VD control in C20th Britain.

Paula Bartley, Prostitution: Prevention and Reform in Britain, 1860-1914 , Routledge, 1999. Gets away from the usual concentration on the Contagious Diseases Acts to consider the broader strategies taken against the 'Great Social Evil'.

Shani D'Cruze, Crimes of Outrage: Sex, violence and Victorian working women, UCL Press, 1998. A richly researched and excitingly theorised study.

Patrica Hollis, Jennie Lee: A Life, Oxford University Press, 1997. Deeply researched and well-written biography of a woman committed to socialism but by no means a feminist - does not gloss over the contradictions and the complexities of a woman who had a notable political career, in fact, several, both independent and being wife to Nye Bevan.

Ronald Hutton, The Triumph of the Moon: A History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft, Oxford University Press, 1999. A wide-ranging, dense, rich, extremely scholarly account of the complex and tangled roots of Wicca. An engrossing read.

Louise A. Jackson, Child Sexual Abuse in Victorian England , Routledge, 2000. A sensitive and historically nuanced account of a complex and difficult subject.

Cheryl Law, Suffrage and Power, IB Tauris, 1998: strongly and convincingly contests the thesis that feminism withered after the grant of the limited suffrage in 1918, showing that not only was the campaign to extend the vote to all women over 21 kept up, the energies which had gone into the suffrage movement were directed to a myriad different causes of benefit to women.

John Lucas, The Radical Twenties: Writing, Politics and Culture, Five Leaves Publications, 1997. Though Lucas sometimes relies rather uncritically on Graves and Hodges, The Long Weekend (which, though good on the ambience of the time, is decidedly cavalier with checkable facts such as dates) this is a very attractive re-reading of the 1920s, putting back the radical trends. A valuable reminder of the serious commitment to causes of figures such as Nancy Cunard, whose literary avatars tend to appear as depoliticised sirens.

Sue Morgan, A Passion for Purity, University of Bristol, Department of Theology & Religious Studies, 1999. A wonderfully subtle study of late Victorian social purity reformer Ellice Hopkins.

Bonnie Kime Scott, Refiguring Modernism: The Women of 1928 and Refiguring Modernism : Postmodern Feminist Readings of Woolf, West, and Barnes, Indian University Press, 1995. Dense and exciting re-insertion of women into the narratives of modernism. As a long-time Rebecca West fan I particularly liked her placing of West (and lesser-known figures of her circle) within this story.

Marion Shaw, The Clear Stream: A life of Winifred Holtby, Virago, 1999, rescues this important figure from her role as supporting character to Vera Brittain. While the thematic, rather than chronological, arrangement perhaps fails to convey the way that the strands of Holtby's life must have been interwoven and constantly impinging upon one another in her day to day existence, this is a valuable study.

Selected Letters of Rebecca West Bonnie Kime Scott (Editor): apart from some quibble with the footnoting (occasionally these seem to annotate unnecessarily, or else don't explain things one would like elucidated) my only complaint about this is that it is not much longer!

***

Fiction (mostly)

Sherwood Smith and Dave Trowbridge, The Exordium 1-5 - The Phoenix in Flight (1993), Ruler of Naught (1993), A Prison Unsought (1994), The Rifter's Covenant (1995), The Thrones of Kronos (1996). A big fat far-future space-opera - perhaps a shade too much far-future-futtock-shroudery of space-battles and hairsbreadth escapes for my personal tastes, and a complex multistrand narrative with some strands that engage less than others. But I thought it had a lot going for it in terms of having a future in which whiteness is a rare and rather bizarre atavism among the human populations, strong characters of both genders, complex conformations of sex and relationships, etc, and some wonderful worldbuilding and alien races, depictions of contrasting social arrangements, weight given to the importance of diplomacy and the deployment of influence and networking. It also ended on a note of everything not being neatly wound up.

Elizabeth Bear, Dust (2007). This had all the density of worldbuilding and complexity of agendas and interactions that one has come to anticipate: would repay a second less urgent reading, though probably worth waiting until further volumes in this world are out.

Samuel R Delany, Dark Reflections (2007). Beautifully written, and very unlike the last Delanys I read: the story of the life of a shy and retiring black poet living a marginalised existence in New York on the borderland of poverty.

May Sinclair, The Combined Maze(1913). Brilliant if depressing, and not dissimilar in many ways from Jude the Obscure, except without the hopeless intellectual aspirations and 'dun becos we are too menny'. But about the awful constraints on love and freedom and idealism placed by economic circumstance and conventions of respectability and sheer bad luck (and the expense and trouble of the existing Divorce Law), among the South London lower middle classes.

Charlotte Yonge, The Castle Builders or the deferred confirmation (1854), which I had been looking for for years. An early Yonge and she got a great deal better at showing not telling and dramatising the problems and spiritual crises of her characters.

Margery Sharp, Cluny Brown (1944): Sharp's great strength is about gently unsettling assumptions and foregrounding the eccentric and the quirky. It's decades since I last read this, and it holds up very well indeed.

Latest in series by Margaret Maron, Winter's Child (Knott) (2007), Marcia Muller, Vanishing Point (McCone) (2006), J A Jance Dead Wrong (Joanna Brady) (2006): all of which good and up to standard.

Annette Meyers, Hedging (2006). A return to her Smith and Wetzon mysteries set in the New York financial world with some digressions into the theatre. Giving one's series protag amnesia + someone trying to kill her does sound a bit like desperate kick-starting, but once that's been swallowed, it had all the strengths of this series, which I like a lot.

Jo Walton, Ha'penny (2007). Possibly even better than Farthing. Still spot on for period and milieu. Absolutely wonderful, the sense of how people were reacting and changing in different ways in response to the political situation, the complex dynamics of personal relationships (the Larkin sisters, Carmichael and Jack, Viola and her theatrical associates).

Sarah Monette and Elizabeth Bear, A Companion to Wolves (2007). There have been comments on the fresh and gritty take on the animal-companion-bonding trope (and the male-male sex), but it's doing broader interesting things with questions about gender and power and contrasting models of social organisation. Also, I liked that the real threat was not that the trolls were Eeeevil in themselves, but climate change. All of this forms a solid substructure to an absolutely compelling story.

Ursula Le Guin, Powers (2007). This was very good, set in the same world as Gifts and Voices but taking it from yet another angle. Not readily boiled down to any kind of simple message, I felt that there was a contrast being set up between Gavir's unreliable and problematic power of seeing into the future and the stronger and less ambiguous power of story-telling and words.

Kage Baker, Sons of Heaven (2007). This has been such a long complex series that one wondered how it was ever going to be drawn to a conclusion, but this did it rather well, if with less gosh-bang-wow than might have been anticipated. All the threads were compelling in themselves, the outcome was - unexpected, and even immortals shown as capable of change.

Barbara Hambly, Patriot Hearts: A Novel of the Founding Mothers (2007). Very much about the invisible but vital labour of women, about marrying into a job, about the conflicting duties that had to be negotiated and the sacrifices made, and the bonds between women even when there were other sources of conflict and hostility (symbolised perhaps by the mirror given by Marie Antoinette to Martha Washington). Hambly is always good on not making historical characters anachronistically modern in their outlook and assumptions.

Robin McKinley, Dragonhaven (2007). There have been rather mixed opinions about this, but I enjoyed it. Perhaps not my all-time top McKinley, but still pretty good: doing that thing which she does so well, which is actually describe a process in a way that makes it just as exciting as more obvious slash-and-bash action.

Naomi Novik, Empire of Ivory (2007). O the sheer thrill of discovering this in an otherwise uninspired bookshop! This took some very unexpected directions (insofar as I had expectactions). As with previous volumes, leaves one longing for more.

Sarah Monette, The Bone Key (2007).A linked series in the 'creepy tales of the supernatural genre', done with absolutely spot-on voice and general tone, and, what one doesn't usually get with this sort of thing, the narrator (I don't think one can exactly call him a protag) does develop over the course of the episodes, is affected by them, is not just a recording device.

Catherynne M. Valente, The Orphan's Tales 2: In the Cities of Coin and Spice (2007). This was lovely: lush, intertwining stories folding in and out of one another, spiralling rather than linear, echoing rather than reiterating a range of world-wide folktales. Now want to find the time to read both volumes together and pick up even more on the connections and resonances.

Making my way through the novels of E H Young: firstly William (1925), which was indeed a splendid example of the domestic realistic mode in its depiction of the complex interactions within a single family, then The Misses Mallett (1922), Miss Mole (1930), Chatterton Square (1947), Jenny Wren (1932) and its sequel The Curate's Wife (1934). Young is always good, but I think I prefer her works which are more about the problems of women later on in life, although her account of the first months after marriage in The Curate's Wife is very well done.

Marilynne Robinson's Gilead (2005): very little in the way of dramatic action going on (at least, in the present of the book rather than the past on which the narrator reflects, and even then it's less his personal past than that of his forebears), but an absolutely wonderful and compelling read.

Elizabeth Bear, Whiskey and Water (2007) Each individual scene was good and gripping, but possibly a second reading would enable a better sense of the bigger picture of which they were a part. But far preferable to something where the overall arc is quite clear but the narrative path taken to get there thin.

Elizabeth Bear, New Amsterdam (2007). A gripping series of linked tales in an AU late nineteenth/early twentieth century. I am picky about the use of alternative history (though having an AU in which sorcery, wampyrs and so forth exist perhaps might provide some degree of pass) but this didn't ever have me grinding my teeth and enquiring 'if x changed at [particular point], how is that y is still the case at [point at which book is set]'. Dense, complex, allusive. Excellent.

Vera Nazarian, Dreams of the Compass Rose (2004). Lovely non-European trope fantasy: not just the setting, but the narrative, suggests entirely different traditions.

Jo-Ann Goodwin, Sweet Gum (2006). This was a compelling if rather odd literary thriller, set in parts of London adjacent to where I live. Partly it's in an (excellent) realist-thriller mode, but keeps veering off into gothic grue. I feel it would have helped to have known Spenser's The Faerie Queen better than I do, since presumably the use of passages as epigraphs, and some character name echoes, was meant to have some resonance.

Jane Haddam, Glass Houses (2007). As good as ever, and starts resolving a situation that has been hanging over the last few volumes. The usual complex gallery of characters.

Susan Palwick, Shelter (2007). This was rather long and I kept picking it up and putting it down but eventually got dragged into it, in spite of the fact that neither of the main viewpoint characters is particularly sympathetic. And in spite of the fact that fairly near future vaguely dystopic society setting is far from being one of my favourites.

Elizabeth Bear, Undertow (2007). Good, engaging, yet somehow not, for me, quite as effective as some of Bear's other work. Which is still leaves it pretty good and above the average.

Emma Bull, Territory (2007). Long-awaited, and did not disappoint. A brilliant essay at producing an American mythic fantasy, embedded in a well-researched and convincing historical reconstruction of how the Old West of the cowboy movies actually was: i.e. including women, Chinese, etc, usually absent or vague scene-setting figures lacking stories of their own. My only cavil is that it's clearly not a self-contained novel but leading to further developments. However, I can live with that, providing I don't have to wait quite so long for the next installment.

Sarah Monette, The Mirador (2007). This was absolutely wonderful. To some extent it's filling in various bits of back story from previous volumes, it also does some great stuff in complexifying some of the characters from earlier episodes, The problems due to characters not communicating are for obvios and plausible reasons, rather than being an otherwise inexplicable necessity to keep the plot going.

Sherwood Smith, The Fox (2007). There are a lot of things that she's doing here that I really love, which said, I enjoyed this slightly less than Inda. I would have liked more about the apparently quieter yet still important things various characters not involved in maritime derring-do were up to, which was such a strong point in Inda. But I am really looking forward to what happens next.

Sharon Shinn. The Thirteenth House (2006). As with Mystic and Rider (2005) at the outset I was thinking "bog-standard generic fantasy, and not even hints of ambiguity" and then found it absolutely rivetting and hard to put down, because of the well-drawn characters and the realistic conflicts of motivation they experience. Dark Moon Defender (2007) kept up the standard.

Currently working through the novels of May Sinclair, as and when I can get hold of them, so far The Divine Fire(1904), The Helpmate, (1908), The Romantic (1920) and Anne Severn and the Fieldings (1922). Sing hey for cheapish POD editions of this hard to find author. Most recently: The Belfry (aka Tasker Jevons) (1916). What a compelling writer Sinclair can be: picks one up and grabs one and makes one keep reading. This addresses a number of issues that crop up in her work - cross-class relationships, competition and envy between writers, courage and cowardice. Gripping. Also read, The Judgement of Eve (1907)

George Washington Cable, The Grandissimes: A Story of Creole Life (1880). Cable was recommended by Dame Rebecca West in her Paris Review interview as an unjustly forgotten writer. In spite of the phonetically rendered dialect, and long expository chunks of backstory narration, this novel of New Orleans life just after the Louisiana Purchase held up pretty well.

Grace Aguilar, Women's Friendship: A Tale of Domestic Life (1850). Not bad, and surprisingly readable in spite of some deeply unrealistic emotional dialogue and some rather melodramatic happenings for a proclaimed novel of domestic life.

Jill Paton Walsh, The Bad Quarto (2007). A vast improvement after the falling-off in her previous Imogen Quy mystery (Debts of Dishonour), sticking more closely to Cambridge and its idiosyncrasies and traditions (e.g. climbing architectural features).

Elizabeth Bear, The Chains That You Refuse (2006). I am sometimes a bit iffy about short stories, but these were gripping, and likely to be gone back to and savoured.

Edward St Aubyn, Mother's Milk (2006). This was very good indeed. It was a little hard to get into at first, as the first section is from the viewpoint of a prenaturally thoughtful and analytic five-year-old, but once in this really grabbed. It's the continuing story of Patrick from Some Hope, now married and with children but finding that although he has managed not to replicate his own father's appalling defects as husband and parent, he's still in a state of misery, anger and near-alcoholism, as well as facing serious issues with his dying mother. It gains from having read the preceding volumes, but I think it would also stand on its own.

Elizabeth Bear, Carnival (2006). Rivetting, compelling, and unpredictable. Great worldbuilding, characters and tension of situation. Relationships that centre on unresolved emotional issues and conflicting agendas. It might held to have a feel for some of the genre motifs it's riffing off, but that's not really necessary to enjoy it.

Karen Traviss, Matriarch (2006). Highly recommended, but as it is mid-series would not suggest starting here. But it just keeps the action and tension and the unexpected coming. Her Star Wars: Legacy of the Force: Bloodlines (2006), even though it is working within what I suspect are fairly stringently drawn lines of character and longer plot arcs, was still a surprisingly good read, the characters were not cardboard, and the sliding of one character towards the Dark Side was plausible and not all about 'whee! I'm villainous and evil, me!'

Catherynne Valente, The Orphan's Tales: In the Night Garden (2006). Wow, this is one that demands more than one reading, it's dense, allusive internally and extra-textually, exquisitely written, folding and unfolding from story to story.

L Timmel Duchamp, Tsunami (2007) (Book 3 of the Marq'ssan Cycle). I wasn't sure how or where this could go on after the shocking yet inevitable ending of Renegade, but it just picked me up and compelled me from the outset. Outcomes remain unpredictable.

P C Hodgell, To Ride a Rathorn (2006). Another one which is not the place to start, but keeps up the fascination of this series.

Lemony Snicket, The End (2006). An ending to the series which actually worked, neither completely at odds with what had gone before, nor unbearably bleak.

Caroline Stevermer and Patricia Wrede, The Mislaid Magician (2006). Magic and railways, what's not to like? Along with the further development of the characters from the earlier books.

Edward St Aubyn, On the Edge (1998). Scintillatingly brilliant, a novel about people in the 'Human Potential Movement'. Most fictional works which have ventured into this area have gone either for some blend of satire and farce, or for the sinister creepy cult angle. St Aubyn strikes the difficult balance between vivid awareness of the absurdities, and a recognition that there are, at least for some individuals, surprising moments of illumination and transcendance, and that the various gurus and anti-gurus can combine genuine insights with utter nonsense. His A Clue to the Exit (2000) was also streets ahead of most contemporary writing, but not quite in the same class as On the Edge or the trilogy Some Hope (see below).

Kage Baker, The Machine's Child (2006) Left hanging over a cliff again at the end, wondering how on earth she is going to wind up all the threads in the grand finale. Panting for more.

Delia Sherman, Changeling (2006). There may be common themes, but Sherman is not a writer who is writing the same book over and over again. Changeling seems entirely different from Through a Brazen Mirror (1988) or The Porcelain Dove (1993). This is an intriguing meta-take on fairy-tale motifs set in present-day New York.

Diana Wynne Jones, The Pinhoe Egg (2006). Utterly delightful, and although there is probably no such thing as a bad Wynne Jones, among the stronger works - it has much more going for it than Conrad's Fate (2005), set in the same universe (the Chrestomanci series).

Sherwood Smith, Inda (2006). This was a smashing read, I long for the next episode. Subtlety and diplomacy and not just hacking one's way through the opposition are depicted as good (and difficult) things, female characters are shown as strong and having agency without having to 'drag up', plus admirable complexity of the characters and their responses to the general demands of the culture and the situations in which they find themselves.

Jo Walton, Farthing (2006). A very well-worked out combination of a traditional English countryhouse murder mystery and an alternate-history in which the Nazis didn't win, but a peace was successfully negotiated with the UK so that Hitler could turn his attention undivided to the Soviet Union. The period tone and feel are very well done indeed, as are the voices of the two narrative strands. There are certain hints that there are other differences in this particular version of British and European history than just the peace settlement and the persistence of US isolationist policies: but these are far from intrusive.

Margaret Drabble, The Sea Lady (2006). A curious and complex book and I'm pretty sure that the first reading has missed things. It returns to one of Drabble's recurrent themes, in which a character feels stuck in a dead-end from which they have been, in some sense, shaken loose by the end of the novel.

Edward St Aubyn, Some Hope (omnibus edition of the 'Patrick Melrose trilogy', Never Mind 1992, Bad News 1994, Some Hope 1998). This was stunning. St Aubyn deals with some supremely nasty characters - Patrick's father is the nastiest, not just in terms of the other noxious characters in these particular novels, but one of the nastiest pieces of work in fiction - and unpleasant situations, and nonetheless has glimmers of decency and kindness and possibilities of some kind of redemption. The three novels each take short concentrated spans of time in Patrick Melrose's life, into which other characters' lives and viewpoints are interwoven. Characters come and go and recur, sometimes very unexpectedly. Some are stuck in the same posture, and others manage to change. Brilliant.

Jacqueline Carey, Kushiel's Scion (2006). More luscious self-indulgence.

Sarah Monette, The Virtu (2006). I liked this rather more than Melusine - partly because there were not the extended periods of Felix being out of his mind. Longing for next installment.

Ellen Kushner, The Privilege of the Sword (2006). This was wonderful, and I need to go back and reread Swordspoint and The Fall of the Kings to pick up all the connections.

L Timmel Duchamp, Renegade: Book Two of the Marq'ssan Cycle (2006). Intense, rivetting, shocking. I am relieved to see that next book is out in a few months, I'm not sure I can wait another whole year.

Elizabeth Bear, Blood and Iron (2006). Another intense gripping read, full of complex strands and relationships and difficult choices. Stunning depiction of the two realms.

Sylvia Townsend Warner, Summer Will Show (1936). Very, very good. Intense friendship between women! Revolution of 1848! Communism! etc. The period detail feels spot-on without being heavy. Though would an efficient manager of her own affairs and estate like Sophia really not know if her husband was legally able to cut off her access to her own money and property?

Ursula Le Guin, Voices(2006) liked this rather better than Gifts (2005) to which it is a sequel: Le Guin seems to be working on a delicate border between the archetypal and the stereotyped, but on the whole, keeping the balance at the right point.

Sheila Kaye-Smith, Joanna Godden (1921): suppressing one's Cold Comfort Farm-induced qualms about intense novels of life in rural Sussex. Not bad, actually. Story of a woman who inherits her father's farm on Romney Marsh and sets out to farm it herself (rather than either marrying someone who will take this on or hiring a man to manage it). Less about 'timeless rurality' than I'd imagined, much more located in a specific time as well as place. Susan Spray (1931) was erhaps a bit more sukebindy, but still a good read, and again, not about timeless rhythms of rural life, very much about a period when even in remote agricultural hamlets life was changing.

May Sinclair, The Rector of Wyck(1925). That strange thing, a compelling read about good people and disappointed lives. I was surprisingly gripped by this story of the young woman who is a non-believer and then falls in love with and marries a clergyman, and their lives together in a small rural parish. Must read more Sinclair.

Lettice Cooper, The New House (1936, recently republished by Persephone Press). A delightful but far from lightweight book, set in the mid-1930s in a Northern provincial city. Takes one day in the life of a family, when the mother (and unmarried daughter-at-home) move out of the old family home into a smaller house. It's a lovely study in generations (in particular generations of women in the same family) and in the relationships/similarities/differences between different family members: the mother, her maiden-aunt sister, the two daughters and their married brother (and his wife and much-loved infant daughter). Also recommended National Provincial (1938), a panoramic study of a city similar to, if not, Leeds in the late 1930s at a time of economic and political upheaval and uncertainty.

Megan Whalen Turner, The Thief (1996), The Queen of Attolia (2001), The King of Attolia (2006). A series of 3 excellent, compelling, fantasies, marketed as YA but with a good deal of sophistication, subtlety and complexity. Highly recommended, though saying too much about plot details is difficult without spoilers.

Kate O'Brien, As Music and Splendour (1958): the story of two young girls, Rose and Clare, who are sent from Ireland to a convent in Paris to study singing, in the late 1880s or so, and then bundled off to Rome to more advanced studies. They both become opera divas, although Clare is more interested in singing non-operatic, church, music: but they are intended for opera, where the money to pay back their patrons in Ireland, the convent in Paris, etc, comes from. It's very good, and seems convincing, about the music world, especially the operatic world, of Italy at that period. It also has, and I think this is remarkable for 1958 and a woman of 61 writing: female friendship - Rose and Clare are and remain friends, not hairpulling screeching rivals; a non-pathologised lesbian relationship - while this is not altogether happy, it's shown as something that is good for Clare; Rose cool-mindedly choosing her first lover, even if she gets carried away into emotional depths she doesn't want with the second. Sophisticated and mature relationships between various of the other characters. Maybe not the Greatest Novel Ever Written, but it is a very worthwhile and engaging read. Also recommended by O'Brien, The Ante-Room (1934), set around the same period in an upper middle class Irish family household over a few days, with the mother dying of cancer.

Joolz Denby, Borrowed Light (2006): her usual compelling narrative voice, plot tension, etc, in the context of a Cornish seaside village of various potentially mutually antagonistic groups.

Andrew Taylor, The American Boy: compelling in a rather different register to the Lydmouth mysteries, though I suspect I may have missed some of the Poe allusions.

Justine Larbalestier, Magic or Madness (2005). Enjoyed this. I liked the solidity of the different settings, and I really liked the ambiguity at the end. It could have been one of those simple 'reversal of everything protag initially believed' plot twists, but this was setting up something much more ambivalent in its effect. Looking forward to the sequel. Magic Lessons (2006) keeps up the tension and the ambiguity about people's motives and intentions, adds yet more questions into the mix, and leaves the reader longing for the next volume.

Naomi Novik, Temeraire (2005). Awwwww, bless! This is a book I want to pick up and cuddle, it's delightful. As were sequels Throne of Jade (2006) and Black Powder War (2006)

Gwyneth Jones, Life (2004). This was very good, very plausibly worked out, very well-written, lots of interesting ideas and questions, the characters were well-drawn and had depth and complexity. Yet somehow I prefer the continuing sequence of which the latest installment is Band of Gypsys.

Penelope Fitzgerald, The Bookshop (1978) and Offshore (1979) and Human Voices (1980). Fitzgerald is now definitely on my 'get hold of everything she's written and read it' list. These three short novels are wonderful - economical and precise. I like the sense that she's focussing on marginal lives.

Karen Joy Fowler, Sister Noon (2001): I found this much more interesting and original than The Jane Austen Book Club, which I thought rather slight. The magic-realist note works, I think, rather effectively for a very specific historical and geographical location in which numerous different worlds were colliding.

Karen Traviss, The World Before (2005): definitely keeping up the standard and the tension and showing characters changing and developing in response to circumstance.

Alison Lurie, Truth and Consequences (2005). I have been panting for this ever since I heard it was in the offing, because I am a longtime Lurie fan. I loved it, I experienced a pang when I realised I was over halfway through and the end could not be far off. I am also strongly tempted to go back and reread The Last Resort (1998) and The Truth about Lorin Jones (1988).

Tanith Lee writing as Esther Garber, Thirty Four (2004). Metafictional games, lesbian eroticism, Lee's style... what's not to like?

Sarah Monette, Melusine (2005). This was a book that demanded a second reading, following a mad gallop through just to find out what happened. It was a wonderful read and I'm longing for the sequel. Things I particularly liked: the naming, wonderfully strange and evocative. The light touch with world-building and the non-standard world that was built. The fact that although the central characters are male, there's a sense of women having agency, being individuals, and generally present in the society as depicted.

Sara Paretsky, Fire Sale (2005). Think I prefer this to the previous one, though generally she seems well back on form. I liked in this one the fact that she meets another woman who manages to make her feel like Ms SafetyFirst-Riskaverse, and the fact that there were fundamentalist Christian characters who weren't baddies and were three-dimensional.

Barbara Hambly, Circle of the Moon (2005). Okay, not the new Sun Wolf and Starhawk that I wish she'd write, but is there such thing as a bad Hambly? (okay, there have been a few massively depressing books, but the only really unreadable one I've come across was a co-authored thing in some kind of franchised series).

Andrew Taylor, Call the Dying (2004). The latest volume in the Lydmouth sequence, which I can't believe I haven't mentioned before. Wonderful feeling for the chilly dreary repression of the early 50s in provincial England, and the predicaments of the well-drawn characters. Complex mysteries going on under the complacent surface of small-town life.

Marie Jakober, Only Call Us Faithful (2002). This was wonderful. The American Civil War is a subject I tend to avoid in literature, but this story of a Southern Union sympathiser and secret agent was terrific. It's marginally fantasy - use of revenants reflecting on the events of the book, especially the obliteration of certain things from historical memory and the creation of myths. Jakober touches on the issue of people rewriting history to imply that the impersonal forces of progress would have achieved things that were, in fact, due to human struggles (in this case the abolition of slavery). An excellent work.

Naomi Kritzer, Freedom's Apprentice (2005): sequel to Freedom's Gate (2004), and I thought rather better - that was a rather stock (if well-done) 'learning better' narrative and this was about what happens after a character sees the light. Fulfilling the promise of her earlier duology, Fires of the Faithful (2002) and Turning the Storm (2003)

Elizabeth Bear, Scardown (2005) The much-anticipated sequel to Hammered and similarly edge of the seat fast-moving sf; and similarly cliff-hanging ending. Looking forward to the next volume.

Alanya to Alanya (Marq'ssan Cycle, Book 1) by L. Timmel Duchamp (2005), has the tension and pace of a good thriller, plus a well-worked-out extrapolated future - the outcome of gradual cumulative changes that seem quite plausible. One of the strengths of the book is the way that information is only gradually revealed during the course of the story, that there are no expository dumps but the build-up of people's assumptions and reactions and carefully dropped clues and foreshadowing until the advent of revelations that make absolute sense of things that have seemed bothering. There's also a sense that Duchamp has much more in reserve: for example, there are certainly things the reader has not yet discovered about the Marq'ssan by the end of Alanya to Alanya. Without that feeling that one sometimes gets that information is being withheld just to create mystery. Also to be recommended, her collection of shorter pieces, Love's Body: Dancing in Time (2004)

Two volumes of short stories by Ethel Colburn Mayne, Things that no-one tells (1910) and The Inner Circle (1925). Interesting - very much dealing with marginality and liminality and things that don't happen or can't easily be articulated, transient moments of insight or connection or misunderstanding.

Barbara Hambly, Dead Water (2004). If this is, as widely rumoured, the last of the Benjamin January series, it is a fitting culmination, which makes one want to go back and re-read from the beginning in the light of the arc suggested by the decision January makes here: that they were episodes in a personal journey. It's an extraordinarily satisfactory ending without at all compromising the reality of the historical situation or what has gone before.

Lorna Freeman, Covenants: A Borderlands Novel (2004). Looks like bog-standard generic fantasy, but worth reading. It has brio, it has humour, it has interesting interactions between individualised characters. I look forward to seeing more by her.

Marcia Muller, The Dangerous Hour (2004): a new Sharon McCone, and very good - I prefer these to her standalones.

Joolz Denby, Billie Morgan (2004). A tremendous followup to her two earlier novels. Salt and bitter and good. Compelling narrative voice, vivid characters, complex and realistic relationships, grittily real setting.

Candas Jane Dorsey, A Paradigm of Earth (2003). Much more linear and less obviously strange than Black Wine (1997), but still a sense of mystery and the unknowable remains. I liked the complexity of the characters' interactions.

Kage Baker, The Graveyard Game (2004). Perhaps suffice it to say that having finished this I immediately ordered a copy of the next volume. The suspense is building. However, it's building slowly, and what I found with this and the Dorsey was a tremendous enjoyment of reading them and involvement in what was going on, a desire to keep reading, which was not about slam-bang action and what happens next. Her The Anvil of the World (2003) (not part of this sequence) was also worth reading: interesting subversion of some bog-standard fantasy tropes.

Sara Maitland, On Becoming a Fairy Godmother (2003). Her latest volume of short stories, which I appear to have missed until just recently. As usual, there's a resonant use of fairytale and mythic tropes and rewritings of familiar narratives. One or two of these seem familiar (a version of the Jael/Deborah story featured, as I recall, in her first novel Daughter of Jerusalem). Very much to the fore, however, is a new concern with questions of ageing in women's lives, and becoming the older generation.

Two Tanith Lees: Mortal Suns (2004). It was only after finishing that I thought that I might have preferred the story after the story actually told, the process by which the narrator became the visionary and poetess who tells the tale of her earlier life. But that's a quibble. What was there was pretty good. And Metallic Love (2005). Sequel to The Silver Metal Lover (1985), which I must re-read (in fact I feel that at some point I may go on a Tanith Lee re-reading binge...) Rather a non-ending, perhaps.

Diana Wynne-Jones, Conrad's Fate (2005). I'm not sure I like the Chrestomanci sequence as much as some of her other work, but I'm not sure there's such a thing as a bad Wynne-Jones, just some that are better than others.

Sharon Lee and Steve Miller, Balance of Trade (2004): set in the Liaden Universe of their other books, but at an earlier period and with different characters. Very enjoyable.

Barbara Hambly, Days of the Dead (2003) more Benjamin January, this time away from New Orleans to early C19th Mexico. Another gripping read. John Maddox Roberts, The River God's Revenge (2004), another enjoyable mystery in the SPQR series, and he makes defective public works the effective centre of the plot, a nice unusual twist.

Two excellent new science-fiction authors: Karen Traviss, with City of Pearl (2004) and Crossing the Line (2004) - strong characters, intriguing setting, powerful plotting, subtle shadings and complexities, and currently cliff-hanging ending waiting for next volume. Elizabeth Bear, Hammered (2004), also gives strong female characters and dynamic plotting in a cyber-punkish near future: again, leaves one eagerly anticipating next volume.

Susan Stinson, Venus of Chalk (2004) a quietly compelling and delightful work.

Running out of Dawn Powells to read, but the short stories in Sunday Monday and Always (1999), if not providing the the pleasures of her novels, have the kick of a dry martini, and similarly, probably work most satisfactorily if you don't take too many at a time.

Gillian Bradshaw, Render unto Caesar (2003): although it doesn't quite come up to her The Beacon at Alexandria, this is still pretty good, with a hero who uses his brain to out-think and out-flank the opposition, rather than directly attacking it. Good complex subsidiary characters as well.

Rosemary Kirstein,The Language of Power (2004), and, as I don't seem to have mentioned it before, the preceding volume in the same series, The Lost Steersman (2003), the long-awaited continuation of the story begun in The Steerswoman (1989) and The Outskirter's Secret, recently republished in an omnibus edition as The Steerswoman's Road

Caroline Stevermer and Patricia C. Wrede, The Grand Tour (2004). At last, a sequel to Sorcery and Cecilia (now out in a new edition): not perhaps quite up to that, but still very, very, good.

Jo Walton, The Prize in the Game. Set in the same world as The King's Peace and The King's Name, very different, but just as good.

Finally finished Miklos Banffy's Transylvanian Trilogy, 'The Writing on the Wall': They Were Counted, They were Divided, They were found Wanting. The translation is workmanlike and readable, but one doesn't really get much sense of the original in the language. Nonetheless, it's a fascinating panorama of Hungary at the time, with a wide canvas, a critical attitude towards the inbred nature of national politics, vivid characters. Worth reading.

Patrick O'Brian, the Aubrey/Maturin novels, in one lengthy addicted gulp.

Jo Walton, Tooth and Claw (2003): a novel of manners about dragons. Remarkable.

Was very impressed indeed by Kij Johnson's stunning Fudoki (2003). I found The Fox Woman (2000), with which it shares a setting (Heian Japan), mythology and some characters, enjoyable, but Fudoki is on an entirely different level. It's not only another 'older woman, beyond the conventional romance plot, new direction' novel, but also about the function and process of narrative, among other things. Beautifully written evocation of an unfamiliar society and mythos.

A number of new works by old favourites. The latest Lois McMaster Bujold, Paladin of Souls (2003), set in the same universe and with characters from The Curse of Chalion, but I think it is superior. One of a number of 'older woman, beyond the conventional romance plot, new direction' novels, in both litfic and genrefic that I've been reading recently. A new direction for Robin McKinley, Sunshine (2003), a vampire novel with a difference, set in a world only subtly different from our own, rather than the revisionist fairy-tale/fantasy worlds of her young adult works. Diane Duane's 'Young Wizards' sequence kept up the standard with Wizard's Holiday (2003). Sara Paretsky, Blacklist (2003): not perhaps quite as compelling as Total Recall, but still pretty good, though I wish she could have found some way of showing the effects of post-9/11 anti-terrorist fears without directly invoking a suspected terrorist. What is presumably, alas, the final Kate Fansler mystery by Amanda Cross, The Edge of Doom (2002). For also read by the late Carolyn Heilbrun, under her own name, see above. Doris Lessing, The Grandmothers (2003), four novellas - a lot of familiar themes and situations, but nonetheless worth reading in their own right. A. S. Byatt, Little Black Book of Stories: five stories with notes of grue and the fantastical.

A relatively new author for me (I read some of her YA books a long time ago I think), Madeleine L'Engle's The Small Rain (1941) and A Severed Wasp (1982) tell the story of the same woman, a gifted pianist, at different ends of her life. The first deals with her girlhood to the point where she accepts her musician's vocation, and the second with her as an elderly woman coming to terms with her memories and finding new directions and meaning in her life. And also makes reparation for the character's (and perhaps the author's?) youthful intolerance.

Re-read (and not sure why these didn't go in before) Jo Walton's The King's Peace (2000) and The King's Name (2001), a tour-de-force of imagining an alternative Arthurian story in a different analogue world.

Last but one (I think) of unread novels by G B Stern, Twos and Threes (1916): includes a number of themes which resurface in her later works. A bit unfocussed, and I was disappointed that the female friendship strand of the plot more or less disappeared, but I'm glad to have read it.

Dawn Powell, The Story of a Country Boy. Impressive, a kind of transitional work between the Ohio and the New York novels: small-town farm boy becomes a businessman in the big city. Find it very hard, however, to imagine how anyone in the 1930s thought that this could be effectively filmed: only by losing all the strengths of Powell's character analysis and authorial comments.

A cluster of good things recently: Barbara Hambly's latest instalment in the Benjamin January series, Wet Grave (2002), which ends on a positively cheerful note - something actively good happens for the central characters, rather than just surviving the harsh life of free coloureds in early C19th New Orleans. And, Dragonstar, which, again, moves on from the bleakness of Knight of the Demon Queen to conclude the sequence. A new Jane Haddam, Conspiracy Theory (2003). The latest in the Thursday Next saga, The Well of Lost Plots (2003) from Jasper Fforde (and more to come...). Not fiction, Suzy McKee Charnas's My Father's Ghost: The Return of My Old Man and Other Second Chances (2002), a touching and honest memoir with all the almost tactile strength of style also found in her novels. After many years of searching, an early novel of G B Stern's, Debatable Ground (aka Children of No Man's Land) (1919), which explores issues which would appear in her later work of transitional national and generational identities.

S J Rozan, Winter and Night (2002). I don't know why I forget, in between Rozan's novels, what a good writer she is and how compelling this series of thrillers is.

Much rejoicing as Antonia Forest's long out-of-print, and only very occasionally advertised secondhand at enormous prices, Falconer's Lure, has been republished as a reasonably priced trade paperback, with a new introduction by Forest about her Marlowe (and other) novels. This was something I had long been wanting to get hold of to read for the first time for about 25 years, and completes my Forest collection.

From the Journals of MFK Fisher (1999): interesting read of her immediate, spontaneous, less-considered, reflections on her life, though she was not a dedicated journal keeper. I was, however, rather annoyed to discover that this volume includes the essays published as Last House: Reflections, Dreams, and Observations 1943-1991 (1995), which I already owned as a separate volume.

One more Dawn Powell down (very few left to go, unfortunately, and those include the ones that don't seem to have enjoyed a reprint), The Happy Island: another acerbic study of New York life.

I've also been enjoying several of the works being republished by Persephone: though some of their volumes are (at best) near-misses as far as I'm concerned the number of hits remains remarkable.

Rebecca West, The Sentinel; An Incomplete Early Novel (edited by Kathryn Laing, 2002). See above on my passion for R West.This apprentice work is never, I think, going to be a favourite in the class of The Fountain Overflows (and the protagonist is fairly maddening), but there are distinctive West-ian thoughts and touches throughout.

I am getting less and less ready to devote my time to big thick fantasy novels/trilogies/endless series. If I manage to finish Vol 1 I bog down in Vol 2. However, I make an exception for Jacqueline Carey's Kushiel's Dart (2001) and Kushiel's Chosen (2002). Not perhaps to everyone's taste (decadent, sensuous, perverse...), but well-written, compellingly plotted, and with an intriguing protagonist/narrator who is, shall we say, quite the antithesis of the mighty-thewed sword-wielding warrior. And who is, perhaps, also a riff on the anguished tortured hero - instead of getting tied up and brutalised by enemies, as seems to happen to so many, pleasurably engages in consensual SM. Also, the first-person narration, even on the wide canvas and with the complex social and mythic structures Carey sets up, maintains a continuity and onward movement that gets lost in certain other, multi-character many-stranded fantasy epics. The latest volume, Kushiel's Avatar (2003) keeps up the standard, and again, defies conventional plot expectations.

Also in the fantasy field. A new Diana Wynne Jones, The Merlin Conspiracy, (2003) always a cause for rejoicing. Ellen Kushner and Delia Sherman, The Fall of the Kings (2002): the long-awaited sequel to Swordspoint, by two writers who I wish would produce more, more frequently. Not perhaps quite reaching the high level of Swordspoint (1987) (possibly because it cannot strike the note of something new and unusual in the same way) but still very welcome, though I wish those realistic delvings of the archivally-minded historian had not met that rather outworn cliche, The Long-Lost Book of Power. Sharon Lee and Steve Miller's The Tomorrow Log is not part of the Liaden sequence, but has many of the same charms.

Quite a flurry of recent publications by Ursula Le Guin, in both the Earthsea and the Hainish universes: Tales from Earthsea (2002), The Other Wind (2002). The Birthday of the World (2002)

Always welcomed, a new Laurie King mystery, especially if it's a Mary Russell.