Poe's work as a whole is a series of haunting improvisations on themes from the macabre that are hard to categorise, dazzlingly original and posthumously influential on an extraordinary range of writers from Baudelaire and RL Stevenson to Yeats, Wilde and Borges

His work continues to enthral. His greatest tales (The Fall of the House of Usher, The Tell-Tale Heart, The Pit and the Pendulum) radiate a dark humour and mockery that strike an oddly modern note

If genius is an exceptional capacity for imaginative creation, Poe had it in spades

His reputation as a master of the grotesque and macabre has veiled the real cause of his fame: an astonishing mastery of language and literary technique which made Arthur Ransome, himself no mean story technician and a considerable literary critic, liken his stories to rare coloured goblets or fantastic metalwork

If you're looking for a distinctive and exciting new voice in crime fiction, then look no further than Craig Russell. This is gritty, authentic and disturbing stuff

Violently exciting - it had me hooked

A blood-curdlingly clever plot ... thoughtful and imaginative

'A gutsy saga about last-minute redemption... Stillriver spans the troubled waters between Harlan Coben and Anita Shreve.'

'Rosenheim eschews playing the plot simply for thrills, preferring to engage the reader's emotions, but nevertheless comes up with a real page-turner.'

S J Bolton's frission-generating Blood Harvest is a satisfyingly atmospheric 500-plus pages; a clever synthesis of two sure-fire strategies: the slow burning mystery...and the dark psychological crime narrative.

Ferocious...Cruelly funny and inventive...The book is fuelled by flights of nihilistic wit and by an exuberant contempt for criminals, the law, rednecks, the US healthcare system, the British, anti-Semites and anyone else who happens to be in the way...[Bazell] is clearly a writer, as very few in the field are

Hip, violent, and funny, Beat the Reaper is a very engaging and furiously fast read

Josh Bazell justifies the hype surrounding his debut novel to formulate a clever, imaginative piece tracking 24 hours in the life of the likeable Peter Brown...driven by fast -paced narrative and some neat plot twists that engage the reader's interest to the final page

A ferocious firecracker, ablaze with hilarious one-liners, plot switchbacks, gore, sex and even a James Bond-style tank full of sharks...Josh Bazell manages to make hitman/doctor hero Peter Brown a sympathetic, even lovable leading man of such intensity, he practically drags the reader along by the hair

It's the kind of stuff you should roll your eyes at, but it's too much fun to do anything but keep flipping pages to see where Bazell will take Peter next. And there are more pages yet to come, apparently; this is merely the first installment in a planned series, with a Leonardo DiCaprio-led movie also on the way. Read Beat the Reaper now, so you know what all the fuss is about later

Maybe not quite blown away so much as having my jaw drop to the floor on several occasions and having to endure the snap as it reconnected with the rest of my face. Beat the Reaper is like having a bucket of ice cold water poured over you - shocking, invigorating and certain to get your attention - but leaving you shivering and feeling a bit queasy after the initial assault on your senses is over

High octane thriller that moves along at a cracking pace

Fast, fun, furious, fierce...or better yet, stop reading the accolades for Beat the Reaper, open up to page one, and start reading. See you at the cash register

Outrageously funny ... This may be the most imaginative, albeit the most violent and profanity-laden, debuts of the new year ... If you don't like extreme gun violence, blow-by-blow descriptions of surgical procedures performed by doped-up, angry doctors, the lack of care administered by bitter nurses, misdiagnoses and a huge dose of vulgarity, this novel is not for you. If, however, you can take all of the above, you'll be treated to a story that gets at the heart of one man's immense loneliness and heartbreak. Be warned: One of the final scenes reaches new heights for gory. How then, you might ask, does this novel earn its comedic stripes? Bazell, a medical resident at the University of California, brings a Scrubs mind-set to his story and jacks it up to an outrageous level that will never be seen on network TV

An unusually talented writer...Genuinely entertaining...The story is so engaging that you don't want to be yanked out of it...Darkly comic...Bazell has a knack for breathing new life into the most timeworn genre conventions....The climax of Beat the Reaper finds Brown locked in a medical freezer waiting for his arch-nemesis to arrive and finish him off. The plan Brown concocts to save himself is the novel's most original flourish. It is also completely outrageous, so much so that I had to stop and think about whether I could really suspend my disbelief. In the end I decided that Bazell had more than earned my indulgence as a reader. If there's a better recommendation for a story than that, I don't know what it is

Suffering from Post-Holiday Stress Syndrome? Dr Josh Bazell has the prescription...he has written the first flat-out entertaining novel of 2009...It's an ingenious premise for a thriller, and Bazell pulls it off...Told with exquisite acerbic humour without sacrificing intrigue or tension...Beat the Reaper only gets better, turn by turn, page by page. Savvy and savagely diverting, it's a Tarantino movie made with Scorsese looking over his shoulder

[a] breakneck cross between a hospital drama, "The Godfather" and a Quentin Tarantino film

A propulsive, savvy read featuring characters both well shaded and shady, this debut thriller by a physician polymath with a BA in writing from Brown also offers the garnish du jour in the form of elaborate and funny footnotes (à la David Foster Wallace). You can prescribe this to fans of Carl Hiaasen and quirky abrasive fiction

[a] quirky and darkly humourous novel... Beat the Reaper is a wonderfully engaging novel that starts with a full-on beginning and doesn't let up until the end

This is the second funniest health care-based fiction to come out of the United States this year after the Republican Party's descriptions of the NHS