Another classic from Russell Hoban and Quentin Blake, featuring a jam-powered frog and an eccentric headmistress ... as nutty and compulsive as ever.Fooling around as he loves to do, Tom invents a jam-powered frog, and he and his Aunt Bundlejoy Cosysweet take it out for a spin. When Captain Najork sees them hopping past his window, he and his hired sportsmen jump into their pedal-powered snake and set off in hot pursuit - bent on revenge after their earlier defeat at womble, muck and sneedball. Events, adventure and sheer craziness conspire to bring Tom and the Captain together at the local girls' boarding school, where Aunt Fidget Wonkham-Strong Najork is in the middle of a best-of-three arm-wrestling contest against the Headmistress ... and the Captain is finally reduced to eating swede-and-mutton slump after a very narrow escape indeed.

An inexplicable message flashed onto the screen of his Apple II computer at 3 a.m. heralds the beginning of a startling quest for frustrated author Herman Orff. Taking up the offer of a cure for writer's block leads him 'to those places in your head that you can't get to on your own' - and plunges him into a semi-dreamland inhabited by a bizarre combination of characters from myth and reality: the talking head of Orpheus; a lost love; the young girl of Vermeer's famous portrait - and a frequency of Medusas.

On a day like any other, Kleinzeit gets fired. Hours later he finds himself in hospital with a pair of adventurous pyjamas and a recurring geometrical pain. Here he falls instantly in love with a beautiful night nurse called Sister. And together they are pitched headlong into a wild and flickering world of mystery ... Kleinzeit. In German that means 'hero'. Or 'smalltime'. It depends on whom you ask. 'Russell Hoban is our Ur-novelist, a maverick voice that is like no other' SUNDAY TELEGRAPH

While delivering the news to the other field mice, Charlie Meadows, who loves dancing with his shadow in the moonlight, narrowly escapes being eaten by the owl.

In Ariosto's epic 16th-century poem Orlando Furioso, the beautiful Angelica, chained, naked, to a rock and menaced by a sea monster is rescued by the valiant Ruggiero, riding a 'hippogriff', the offspring of a griffin and a mare - an entirely imaginary winged creature (as readers of Harry Potter know). Volatore, as this hippogriff calls himself, has escaped the poem in which he has been confined for centuries and is determined to find his Angelica, even if it takes him to the 21st century and involves some shape-shifting. He lands in contemporary San Francisco and the first person he sets eyes on is Angelica Greenberg, the Jewish owner of a San Franciscan art gallery, who has just dumped her fiance. Volatore rises to her window and they hit it off big-time. But no sooner have they met and fallen in love than events conspire to separate the two so that Volatore must not only seek Angelica but also find the perfect form in which to consummate his undying love. The first is too masculine, the second not enough so, but will the third be just right, and how will Angelica reconcile the imaginary and the real in the perfect lover?

Elias Newman is a diabetologist who meets Christabel at a Royal Academy of Arts exhibition. Fascinated, he's keen to know her better. She's attracted to him but afraid of what might happen if she lets herself fall in love.

Phil Ockerman has fallen hard for Bertha Strunk after meeting her at a tango lesson held in a church crypt. Phil and Bertha are each recently separated, and both their Suns are squared by Neptune. Bertha also bears a strong resemblance to the 17th-century Venetian singer and composer Barbara Strozzi—with whom Phil happens to be obsessed—to the point where Phil is no longer sure where Barbara stops and Bertha begins. On their first serious date, Phil and Barbara watch The Rainmaker , a tale of a battered wife and the murder of an ex-husband. Phil begins to suspect as to whether Barbara's choice of film is entirely innocent, however, when afterwards he finds himself carrying around a potential murder weapon. Navigating several subway lines and considerable planetary activity, this intriguing romance tangos its way through a world of infidelity, artificial eyeballs, baseball bats, and music without missing a daring, seductive step.