Peter Goulding's fourth, or maybe fifth, (who's counting?) book of comic verse again delves the murky depths of the poet's imagination. There are still plenty of poems about murdering his wife and disposing of her body but there are darker poems too - the proliferation of tomatoes on Jupiter, the birth of Princess Charlotte and his critiques of the counties of Tipperary and Offaly, to name but four. His mind, which, to be frank, would be put to much better use, learning a trade or simply vegetating, is again employed solving many of the world's problems in rhyming couplets, villanelles and other fiendish weapons of mass destruction. Comes with a cultural health warning.

The Encyclopedia of the Novel is the first reference book that focuses on the development of the novel throughout the world. Entries on individual writers assess the place of that writer within the development of the novel form, explaining why and in exactly what ways that writer is importnant. Similarly, an entry on an individual novel discusses the importance of that novel not only form, analyzing the particular innovations that novel has introduced and the ways in which it has influenced the subsequent course of the genre. A wide range of topic entries explore the history, criticism, theory, production, dissemination and reception of the novel. A very important component of the Encyclopedia of the Novel is its long surveys of development of the novel in various regions of the world.