DEBUT author Jenni Fagan has been shortlisted alongside Salman Rushdie and Alan Warner for the UK’s oldest book awards, further propelling the Scottish writer towards her position as the nation’s brightest young literary star.

ONE of the first characters to appear in Inferno is a spiky-haired, malevolent biker chick dressed in black leather.

IF AN aged, once-eminent author, close to the end, ekes out one almost-­certainly-last­ novel, and it’s of an indifferent standard, or worse, should it be ­published out of respect for his or her more glorious past?

A PUNCH cartoon, two dukes at a party, one whispering into the other’s ear: “Don’t you think it must be just terrible being an earl?”

OVER the years, Melvyn Bragg’s writing has attracted a degree of (jealous?) teasing, but the dissenting voices compete with a louder chorus of praise in which he is favourably compared with DH Lawrence and Thomas Hardy.

The Italian ‘dream place’ and its famous hotel popularised by John Steinbeck 60 years ago still casts its spell over celebrity and 
non-celebrity guests alike, writes Stephen McGinty

If there was a prize for poem titles, Chrissy Williams’ collection Flying Into the Bear (HappenStance, £4) would surely win it.

Jay Griffiths’ last book was called Wild. It was an extraordinary, freewheeling, and ecstatic roam across the planet in search of wilderness and the people and creatures that inhabit it.

Eighteen thirty-two used to be a well-known date in British history. It was the year of the Great Reform Bill, when an outdated political system gave way to a wider franchise allowing a number of middle-class men to vote for the first time. Antonia Fraser’s latest book is a spirited attempt to bring the controversy and passion of the era to a new audience.

SILA’S FORTUNE

A roundup of the latest book releases

Quickly described, Clever Girl, the new novel from Tessa Hadley, is the story of a woman’s life, from childhood to middle age. Like that John Lewis advert of a few years ago, it moves briskly through 50 years, touching down on experiences that will be very familiar to white, first-world women born during the second half of the 20th century.

As Canongate set about reprinting his classics, William McIlvanney tells Susan Mansfield that we may not have heard the last of DI Laidlaw

In 1954, aged 14, Amos Klausner changed his name to Amos Oz, leaving behind him his home and father, exchanging city life for the relative privations of the desert, cutting his teeth (and his new identity) on life in an Israeli kibbutz.

With The Lion Rampant and its vivid, imaginative and blood-curdling account of Bannockburn, Robert Low, one assumes, has concluded in splendid bravura style, his sequence of novels on the Wars of Independence.

Next year’s UIlapool Book Festival will be the tenth, and so clearly all the stops will have to be pulled out to make it the best one yet. All of which must be a bit of a headache for the organisers, given that the ninth, which ended on Sunday, was such a resounding success.

To my mind, China Miéville is one of the most interesting literary writers currently working in Britain, an accolade undiminished, though perhaps sometimes obscured, by his wholehearted commitment to genre.

SIR Walter Scott was penning songs when he should have been recording details of court cases in his job as a clerk of court, it has been revealed.

BESTSELLING author Dan Brown unleashed his latest page-turner yesterday, as eager fans made Inferno an instant chart-topper.

A 13-strong shortlist of authors from across the globe has been chosen to compete for this year’s prestigious Dundee International Book Prize.