The Irish Times reviews a selection of paperbacks
Bad Men John Connolly Coronet, £6.99
Blood has never been in short supply in John Connolly's novels, and it flows freely in his fourth, set on an island off the Maine coast. It is a landscape which Connolly has made his own: and he ranges across thriller territory, too, with the confidence of a writer at the top of his form. A multi-layered tale of revenge which sets a present-day killing spree against the background of a 17th -century massacre, Bad Men is thoughtful, dark and absolutely addictive. I could have lived without its flirtation with forest-dwelling vampires, but the humans, even the awful ones (a baddie reads up on abnormal psychology to prepare for the murderous freaks he meets every day), are terrific. This is no forensic cut-and-dried view of humanity: here we are, in all our glorious messiness, in a book which may drive you to despair and will certainly keep you up all night. - Arminta Wallace
Beasts Joyce Carol Oates Orion, £5.99
No one understands the black desperation of sexual uncertainty and self-humiliation quite as astutely as Joyce Carol Oates. This characteristically unsettling novella, set in New England, features Gillian, once a bright, edgy graduate student, now a calmer, older woman, looking back on her fraught early life. She recalls the intense young girl obsessed with her college professor, a self- indulgent creep wed to a dangerous French artist. Gillian's terse narrative evokes her own inner turmoil and the claustrophobia of an all-female college in which the students are distracted by a series of mystery fires. Oates, ever the victim of her incredible productivity, is an urgent, emphatic storyteller capable of mesmerising emotional force. Yet again she treads dark territory and, even if the comedy is unintentional, this black fairytale possesses a bizarre morality. - Eileen Battersby
Seek: Reports from the Edges of America and Beyond Denis Johnson Methuen, £6.99
Denis Johnson is one of those rare reporters who can place himself in mortal danger, be petrified, yet persist and later provide an honest and nuanced account ungilded by heroic retrospection. On the outskirts of the murderously disputed Liberian capital, Monrovia, he is shown a videotape taken by his host, Prince Johnson, of the torture of former president Samuel Doe. Later on, mingling with thousands of old and new hippies up a mountain in Washington State, he amusingly details their spaced-out spirituality. Though some sympathetic encounters with anti-government hillbillies unsettle - and the UK boxer was not Nigel Bend (sic) - he's good with the homies chewing the khat in Somalia, and in a long final sketch back in west Africa where he eventually manages to meet another Liberian warlord, Charles Taylor, who in a surreal encounter refers to him worryingly as "my dear". - John Moran
Notes on a Scandal Zóë Heller Penguin £6.99
There are shades of Evelyn Waugh in Heller's creepy tale of two North London schoolteachers, one of whom is having an illicit affair with one of her teenage pupils. Beautiful, upper-class Sheba, with her husband, family and big house appears to her lonely, older colleague Barbara to have an idyllic life. But when Sheba begins her liaison with an underage student, things change, including, as Barbara reveals in her narrative account, brilliantly imagined by Heller, their friendship. Heller has been able to transfer the razor-sharp observation of her journalism to fiction, and in writing the story in Barbara's voice she pulls off a tricky coup, for the most part keeping the sinister ripples just below the surface and the tone just right. Extremely readable and gripping, it is subtle, unsettling and dotted with pellets of coal-black humour. - Cathy Dillon
The State Of Grace Catherine Donnelly Tivoli, 9.99
Once a high flyer in an advertising agency in Dublin Grace is fired because she's the wrong side of 40. Then Olga, a mysterious Russian who may or may not be her ex-husband's girlfriend, arrives on her doorstep, and Grace is drawn into high octane adventures ranging from driving stolen cars to taking a younger lover. Ex- advertising copywriter Catherine Donnelly has written a funny, savvy, feel-good first novel and she has an easy gift for dialogue and for creating a large cast of smartly drawn, recognisable characters. At the centre of it all there's just enough soul searching about her relationship with her ageing parents and her adult children to anchor the story and lend an emotional depth. Donnelly's style is so witty and pacey that it carries her smoothly over any plot weaknesses to deliver a highly enjoyable read. - Bernice Harrison
The Crisis of Islam: Holy War and Unholy Terror Bernard Lewis Phoenix Books, £6.99
Bernard Lewis is regarded as one of the most authoritative voices on the history of the Middle East and the Arab world and brings all his authority to bear on the main question of this text, i.e. whether Islam is a religion of peace or a terrorist faith. Lewis succeeds in making the distinction between Islam and Islamism in a succinct and concise manner in simple and accessible language and with a rational and intellectual sensitivity. A brief definition of Islam is followed by a history of the evolution of Islamic thought and deed, from the time of the Crusades to the 20th century, with interesting insights into the diverging mindsets of Islam on the one hand and Western civilisation on the other. The most interesting passages of the book involve the last 100 years and the relationship between the Islamic world and the US. - Mark McGrath