What a haunting book. It makes you angry, sad and revolted all at the same time. If you can stomach the language, the sex and the violence it is a must read book - yet surprisingly even in this awful world there is a desperate humour.

We done sex ed at school now and everything we dooz is normal so I don't know why it's naughty look, but I knows it is naughty cos our Ma walked in one morning and found me wanking im off (that's what Jason calls it) and she nearly ad a ead fit even though we was only little and it was before e could squirt or nothing. If grown ups dooz it why can't kids, answer me that.

A multitude of dark characters make brief appearances in this violent and complicated novel set in what was the German city of Breslau. In a sweltering 1930’s summer, corruption, blackmail and violence abound as Nazi power grows. Although the methods of the police, Mock and Anwaldt, vary little from those of the Gestapo you develop an empathy for them and the dangers they face as the tension rises. In the end, I had to stay up to finish this.

Mock woke with a stifled cry. The duvet pressed down on his chest as if it weighed a hundred kilograms. His nightshirt, soaked in sweat, was twisted around his limbs. He threw the duvet violently aside, got up, went to his study, lit the lamp with a green shade on his desk and set out his chess set. In vain, he wanted to chase away the nightmare of his bad conscience. The dream he'd had a moment ago re-appeared before his eyes .... She sat down, hitched her dress up high and spread her legs. From her thighs and stomach grew syphilitic cauliflowers.

Not so much a stream of consciousness as a stream of disquiet. It's dark, confusing and disturbing, yet strangely hypnotic. No matter how closely you read it it tells you very little, but leaves you with a sense of so much more.

While driving, women make mistakes out of carelessness, absent-mindedness or incompetence, and already the country policeman has them by the skirt and doesn't let go again, if they're to his taste and he has got hold of their address. How quickly they consent and more as soon as he has unpacked them. It was the handy packaging, with the thread, pull here, which opens even the most buttoned-up. He stirs up a fire in them. The bodies can be thrown away, the heads one would keep, so that one can make sure that they don't talk incessantly, the women. They're real gold mines.

If you're easily offended or have a weak stomach, forget it. This book does its level best to live up to its title in every way. However, if you can cope with the strong language, get to grips with the Scottish dialect, and ride the very violent prologue, you will meet a quite unforgettable and messed-up person, who may not be quite what he seems.

The job. It holds you. It's all around you; a constant, enclosing absorbing gel. And when you're in the job, you look out at life through that distorted lens. Sometimes, aye, you get your wee zones of relative freedom to retreat into, those light, delicate spaces where new things, different, better things can be perceived of as possibles. Then it stops. Suddenly you can see that those zones aren't there anymore. They were getting smaller, you knew that. You knew that some day you'd have to get round to doing something about it. The zones got smaller and smaller until they didn't exist, and all that's left behind is the residue. That's the games.

This is a story of obsession, lust and despair, made especially shocking by its focus on a young teenager adrift in an adult world. The violence and sex scenes are graphic. What kept me reading was the matter-of -fact way in which Sarah describes her situation, that some characters do seem to genuinely love each other and the wish to believe that all might turn out well in the end.

Sarah nearly lost the six glasses of moselle she'd drunk. Jamie was such a soppy pain in the arse sometimes. But though his sentimentality made her sick, his eyes made her sad and she couldn't be cruel or sarcastic.
'Come here.' She caught him around the waist and pulled him to her. 'Have I told you how good you look in that suit?' She kissed his throat above his collar.
'No Sarah, I have to go back-'
'In a minute.' Sarah unzipped his pants. 'I want you.'
'How can you be so fucking insensitive? I can't do this on, oh, Sarah, don't.'

The third book in the Red Riding quartet. The language and the content are extremely graphic, violent and shocking. Fact and fiction about the Yorkshire Ripper are entwined into a novel that is definitely not bedtime reading.

He pushes me back and leaves me reaching out again in the dark room, there across the bottles and the cans, the rags and the newspapers, the chipboard walls, the rusting cans and the broken bottles, the rotting rags and the soiled papers, the splattered chipboard walls, me reaching out, grabbing him, dancing in the dark room, here among the bottles and the cans, the rags and the newspapers ... dancing in the dark room, dancing until -

1930’s Germany, characterised by its economic and social unrest. Here the naivety of youth collides with the harsh reality of a rapist and serial killer on the loose. The brutal tale unfolds through the testimonies of witnesses, victims and the killer himself. The atmosphere of menace grows as the horror that lurks around the corner is revealed in chilling and graphic detail. This one packs a punch that lingers.

He looked at his dirty, bloodstained hands. Bent down, washed them in the cold water. Felt how much good the water did his hands. How much good it did him. He undressed, jumped into the canal, dived down under the water, black in the night. Felt how cool it was all around him. Felt himself slowly calming down in the dark water, felt how pleased he was with himself, how happy he was.

Read the newspapers or watch TV reports to see the problems that Africa faces. Read these short stories and you will experience, along with children, some of the dilemmas and conditions which confront them. This is a journey that will take you well out of your comfort zone - these stories will make your skin prickle.

I woke up with a start that night to the sound of a bike riding into our compound. Another one rode in and stopped, and there were brisk footsteps that got louder as they came around the house, toward the back. Slowly I stood up and looked into the darkness, then went and put my ear to the window. My breath quickened as I imagined them surrounding the house. I thought they were going to ship us to Gabon that night, and I resigned myself to my fate.....I bit my lip when I recognised his voice, knowing we were in for it. I didn't want to meet him again in this life, but there he was, so close to me. It was as if he were already in the room with me, hiding under the bed or sheets, waiting for the right time to hurt us.

A difficult and disturbing read – in content rather than style. It’s the story of a vulnerable young woman who is repeatedly abused by those around her. Be warned, it contains explicit descriptions of sexual violence, and the fact that these are recounted in a calm, conversational narrative voice makes it all the more chilling. For all this, the book is strangely compelling. Like staring at a road accident, you just can’t help yourself.

For the longest time I didn't call it turning tricks. When I'd leave work, cross the street to the train station and, if some guy, a man, I guess really you'd call him, had come off the train, was on his way home, I'd take his money.
We'd do it in his car. I'd work maybe twenty minutes. Get maybe twenty dollars, which was good compared to what I made at my job across the street. Besides, it's hard to get more in a car. At least I told myself this. Though I guess how much depends on what you'll do for it.

A read which will take you into the hidden world of suburban swinging parties where nothing is forbidden. Although this book is almost entirely about sex and includes a lot of graphic description it is not remotely titillating. Instead, it's a serious study of obsession - Morrison treats his damaged characters with compassion and understanding.

' "Swinging". It's like four couples swap partners. Not like "Wife Swap" - the American family version, which is basically just mommy swap. I mean really swap. Like you get these four houses together, and there's surveillance in every room and every week the couples have to swap partners, and I mean like, totally, sleeping with each other and everything. It's like 'Big Brother' meets key parties meets I dunno, the 60s.'

At first I didn't like Ami or her self-distructive life and I found this short novel hard going. But by the time I was half way I just had to know how it turned out for her and desperately wanted her to escape from her despair.

I always end up in Shibuya when I feel that way. Formed by people's hidden longing for solace, Shibuya is a palace of ice floating painfully pale in a pool of thick silver blood that the million gashes sliced into the moon pour out. In the light it glistens like a beautiful rainbow but is itself only a cold, hollow shell.
It accepts no one from the heart. If you try to embrace it you're shoved away with freezing hands.
Just like me.

Loaded with blood, vomit, violence and bad sex this second person narrative introduces us to the alcoholic bartender of a tatty Hollywood bar. Detailed character studies catalogue the idiosyncracies of a series of misfits who frequent the bar while shedding light on the personal problems of bartender too. This purposefully ugly story dives into the world and mind of an addict, laying out all the horrors with unflinching honesty and grim humour.

You are a trained silent vomiter. You do not sigh, you do not moan, you do not breathe heavily, you vomit on the porcelain of the toilet rather than in the toilet water, and as far as your wife knows you have never once vomited in all your time together. This skill was not developed overnight and you are annoyed that you will never be able to share it with others, and you wonder if you wouldn't benefit from having a best friend. But wouldn't he then want to share his talents with you? And is this perhaps all that best friends do? Sit around discussing their talents? You are not interested in the talents of others and you decide you must be cautious about whom you let into your life.

Set in Japan, this novel begins really differently from others I have read. I have piercings myself but the beginning of the book made me squirm with distaste. Witness the life of Lui - for one so young, she seems hell bent on destroying her life with lurid sex, tattoos, piercings and alcohol. Bad things happen – but it’s not a bad book. Stay with it to the end you'll know what I mean. The final revelation is quite shocking.

Ama responded by crushing his fist into the oncoming face and then straddled Versace who was still flat out on the ground. Ama punched him in the temple, then again, then again, then again. And when the blood started to flow, Ama still didn't stop. The guy was out cold, but Ama kept on, relentless. Maki saw the blood and started to scream. That was the exact same moment I remembered Ama was wearing thick rings on the middle and forefingers of his right hand. The sickening rhythm of metal on bone sent a chill through my body.

This reads as fast as she lives. Millie seeks oblivion through bingeing on drink, drugs and sex: lesbian sex, predatory sex, degrading sex - but always explicit sex. A graphic romp through the bowels of youth culture with a lurking unrequited romance. Laced with street philosophy and fresh metaphor; a brilliant if at times disturbing, though never gratuitous, read. Will do for Liverpool what Trainspotting did for Edinburgh.

... when I see a mother and toddler in the street the first thought that flips through my head is how much easier my fist will slide in now that she's been stretched by childbirth.

This first novel by Nik Jones is violent, vicious, nasty and utterly bleak. However, despite all this, the absolute brilliance of the writing makes it an enjoyable, exciting and even amusing read! The picture of the unnamed, unloved hero going quietly mad among his DVDs will linger long in the mind. Will you ever risk entering a DVD rental shop again?

She is wearing a crumpled blue blouse, which the blood seeps through heavy and dark, in long straight lines running diagonally down her back. She spots a gap in the crowd and is carried away, not a single customer pays her any attention. The shop vomits the two of them out and they go, ambling away past the windows and into the night while I sit in the rectum and stare at the customer in front of me. The blood from the girl has rubbed off on his shirt, second-hand stains printed diagonally across his stomach. I point and he shrugs.