First published well, in 1973 actually, this book spawned the Rob Reiner-directed cult film of the same name. It's a tongue-in-cheek fairytale of love, life, action, death and life again. Featuring the obligatory handsome Prince and supremely beautiful princess, it also boasts a Spanish sword wizard, the Zoo of Death, a chocolate-coated resurrection pill and lots of villains, who span the spectrum from evil, through even more evil to (gasp) most evil. And then there's Fezzik, the gentle giant addicted to rhyming.

William Goldman—who—who's won two Oscars for his screenwriting (Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and All the President's Men), and has endeared himself to dentists and their patients planetwide through his novel Marathon Man—has always claimed he merely abridged this text, extracting the "good parts" from an inventive yet wordy classic by Florinese literary superstar, S Morgenstern.

It has, however, been whispered in certain circles that Morgenstern himself is a figment of Goldman's ultra-fertile imagination. Read Goldman's original and special Anniversary introductions and make up your own mind. Oh—and don't forget his explanation as to why he's only "abridged" the first chapter of the sequel Buttercup's Baby—which appears here for the first time—and why it took him so long to get round to it.

Completely delightful, suitable for cynics and romantics alike. Suspension of disbelief optional. — Lisa Gee

Kathleen Ann Goonan's first novel is an impressive sci-fi debut, combining the themes of post-holocaust America and rampant nanotechnology. This imagined technology of molecule-sized machines and computers has excited many science fiction writers with its possibilities for total control of matter, atom by atom—including human flesh and DNA. In Goonan's future America, cities brought to life with nanotechnology or "nan" have mutated in strange, threatening ways. Rural areas, meanwhile, were devastated by nan-based plagues. Our heroine Verity, raised by a rustic Shaker community that rejects most technology, feels a mysterious compulsion towards learning machines and the closest transformed city. This is Cincinnati, whose skyscrapers have blossomed into exotic nan flowers between which huge artificial bees carry pollinating information. Verity's adventures there are complex, flickering between real-life action, virtual reality and chemically induced all-senses hallucinations. Eventually—the old, old sci-fi story—Verity realises that she herself was created to redeem the malfunctioning city. Its inhabitants are trapped in pleasant but futile cycles of dreams and play-acting (living the roles of Hemingway, Gertrude Stein and others): Verity must somehow free them. Well written and colourfully imagined, the story requires close attention to thread its maze of realities and unrealities. —David Langford

The award-winning Are You Dave Gorman? is the oddly touching story of how Perrier Award nominee Dave Gorman went in search of all the world's other Dave Gormans.

Fans of the TV version of this travelogue-cum-Arthurian-quest will know how it all began: one minute Dave and his flatmate Danny Wallace (himself a talented producer and writer) were kicking their heels in suburban London, the next they were on the night-train to Scotland to see assistant manager of East Fife Football Club David Gorman, so Dave Gorman could prove to Danny Wallace there were other Dave Gormans—and thereby win a drinker's bet. Such was the buzz Dave Gorman got from meeting Dave Gorman, he then went on a half year schlep around the world seeking out yet more Dave Gormans: in Ireland, Israel, Norway, America, with a sarcastically derisive Danny Wallace in constant and niggling attendance.

Things that work on TV—or start as drunken bets—don—don't always make the most successful of books and there are times when Are You Dave Gorman? seems a little contrived, not to say fatuously pointless. But such is the charm, candour, and wit of the two writers' alternating voices, any qualms come to seem churlish, if not thick-headed: it's the very frivolousness and absurdity of Are You Dave Gorman? that makes it so boyishly likeable. —Sean Thomas