Five Minute Fiction

It's not how you're thinking or as you've imagined, we live in the shade of beliefs that were fashioned to leave you insane and then drain out your soul, but what can I do when there's so many liars who crawl through your brain like millions of spiders and seek out their victims and who is the wiser?

Here's a treat: an entire short story for you, about cats. What could actually be nicer? I honestly don't know. It's taken from Helen Ellis' collection American Housewife, which you can find any day now in paperback.  

Rebecca Winterhill and Maddy are exploring the luxury star-liner Demeter, thoughts full of impudent cocktails and blissfully unaware that up on the higher decks, the alarms are already ringing because something very, very terrible has made its way on board...

It's finally here. 25 years after the greatest TV show if its day was rudely axed, we return to the Pacific North West to delve into the origins and mysteries of this small town, and its rich and varied inhabitants. What is this dossier? Who is the mysterious "Archivist" who compiled it? Does it answer any questions about the mysterious fate of FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper? And who really did kill Laura Palmer?

Non-fiction this week as we go into....spaaaaaaaaace!

We look at the brand-new novel from Ian McEwan, generally regarded as one of the very finest British writers. Nutshell imagines the world from the point of view of an as-yet unborn foetus who becomes suddenly aware that a murder is being planned. To paraphrase the Guardian review - it's WELL good.

I'm about 5'10, with blonde hair, I like reading and running and TV. I'm a good cook and I'm into BDSM - Oh, hang on, you mean "description" of the podcast, don't you?   Ahem.

Harry Potter and The Cursed Child Spoilers, a review of some horrible psychological tale, and a look forward to one of the Autumn's most eagerly-awaited by me books... 

Please visit cornishamy.wordpress.com or facebook.com/hopeforhhukbookauctions And for those of you who like David Bowie there's a review of Paul Morley's new work The Age of Bowie. Oh, and the Booker longlist...

If you're among the 48% of Britons who voted to remain a member of the EU, there's a chance you might read books. If so, here are some suggestions of especially good ones which you might wish to fly to a beach.

Show 52. Wow. Happy birthday to me. And to 5MF, of course, which this week looks at a new crime novel from Andrew Cartmel, called Written in Dead Wax. As a big fan of his previous, SF-themed works, I was interested to see how he would operate in the sphere of waxy urban noir.  

It's show 51, and what could be more appropriate than a book review!? Right?  Right!? :)   LOLZ.

This week we're going Bond-mental so join us to see if TV scriptwriter-turned YA action powerhouse Anthony Horowitz can possibly take a seat at the table with Faulks, Deaver, Boyd and Fleming.

Revisiting my favourite book from Douglas Adams (and John Lloyd). Place names are given hilarious definitions. You know the one. The little black one that lives in the downstairs toilet at your in-laws' house.

In an unbelievably sweary episode we fondly recall the arrival of Charlton Brooker with a humour book which destroyed TV forever and led to me being physically removed from a bookshop. WARNING: LANGUAGE. And: Poo.

A weird, sprawling, drunken meander through the alchorridors of a madman's brain-pan. And some stuff about American Literary Heavyweight Don DeLillo. Whither death? Find out in the new novel from DeLillo. It's an austere, delicate, fragile beauty.  

"It's like sex and it takes time" - David Lynch. Was he talking about Five Minute Fiction? No. But he could have been.  He could have been.

This week we hop lightly over the fence that divides the genres, landing with both feet in the rich, green grass of the science fiction field - watch our for that android cow-pat. We're here to look at a debut from the Quebecois writer Sylvain Neuvel, entitled Sleeping Giants. It's a bit X-Files, a bit Kubrick, but a lot entertaining.   No celebrities died in the recording of this podcast (checks BBC.co.uk) but I see that someone called Pearl Mackie has become the new Doctor Who companion. That's nice.Er. Where was I?   Oh yes: one more thing....

Swearing. Murder. Yorkshire. Moderate pretension. You have been warned.

He's not read anything. Here's a feeble attempt to paper over this particular crack. I don't know. Tut. I'd ask for your money back if I was you.**But don't. I've already spent it.