Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow creeps in this petty pace from day to day to the last syllable of recorded time

Macbeth -- William Shakespeare

Shakespeare had something completely different in mind when he wrote the above, but it nicely fits the feeling of readers when their favourite author's new book is delayed. I found myself wondering, last night, just who it is that suffers the most when a book doesn't arrive as expected.

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Shelagh writes:

I have read and enjoyed the following titles:

Tiny Dancer, The Swallows of Kabul, The Memory Keeper's Daughter, Veronika Decides to Die, Into the Wild, The Alchemist, Sleeping with Schubert, The Time Traveler's Wife, A Blade of Grass, River of the Brokenhearted, A Complicated Kindness, The Birth House, The Kite Runner, A Thousand Splendid Suns, and P.S. I Love You.

What would you recommend?

Chris Hall, who looks after our fiction and literature section, has the following recommendations....

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Defining Diana$19.95 add to cart

Defining Diana begins with a classic locked room puzzle. A beautiful young woman is found alone, and in perfect health -- except, of course, that she is dead.

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Robert J. Sawyer is best known for his award-winning hard sci-fi novels, and rightly so. Sawyer has won every major prize in the field for his long-form work. However, his short fiction chops should not be ignored. Both Iterations and Other Stories and the just-released Identity Theft and Other Stories bring together a career-spanning collection of stellar short stories.

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The Best of the Booker is a special award that will celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Booker Prize.

The six shortlisted books were chosen from a list of 41 Booker Prize and Man Booker Prize winners.

• Pat Barker, The Ghost Road
• Peter Carey, Oscar and Lucinda
• J.M. Coetzee, Disgrace
• J.G. Farrell, The Siege of Krishnapur
• Nadine Gordimer, The Conservationist
• Salman Rushdie, Midnight's Children

The winner will be announced July 10.

The Wolfman$26.95 add to cart

Marlowe Higgins is a werewolf. But not the kind of werewolf that has been popularized in recent urban fantasy and pop horror novels. Marlowe can't control his transformation, nor can he control the beast that lives within him. He knows that once a month, whether he wants to or not, someone will die.

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The Arthur Ellis Awards, named for Canada's former official hangman, are awarded to works within the crime genre published for the first time in the previous year. The respective authors must be either living in Canada, or Canadians writing from abroad.

The Arthur Ellis Awards have also recently begun awarding their "Unhanged Arthur" for best unpublished crime novel, designed to launch the careers of the next generation of Canadian crime writers.

Congratulations to Winnipeg's Anita Daher, who has two novels nominated in the juvenile category.

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House Of The Scorpion$11.50 add to cart

Does the idea of human clones raise the hair on the back of your neck? What would they be used for? How would they feel? Or would they even have feelings?

The House of the Scorpion by Nancy Farmer takes a prescient look at some of these questions. The story follows the clone of a powerful drug lord from his cultivation to his escape and beyond.

The book is packed with unputdownable action, as well as thoughtful responses to cruelty. Farmer also takes a complex look at the future of the drug empires that shift between the U.S. and Mexico.

Set in the near future, this book has won many awards and any teenager will love it.

Black Man$24.95 add to cart

This year's winner is Richard Morgan's Black Man, a tale about a genetically engineered assassin.

In knocking off its mainstream literary competition, Morgan's novel has returned the Arthur C. Clarke Award to its pure science fiction roots.

Clarke established the prize in 1987. The inaugural winner was Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale. Other winners include Geoff Ryman, China Miéville, Amitav Ghosh, M. John Harrison for last year's Nova Swing.