The Last Werewolf - Glen Duncan

"Sometimes the entire weight of her self-loathing was compressed into the angle at which she held a cigarette." Beautiful. The prose is like this throughout and the story is good and strong and fast-moving. The werewolf and vampire (yep, vampires too as an added bonus) lore is interesting and gets just the right amount of narrative attention, and there's a lot of philosophical jibber-jabber for smart-arses like me to get our teeth into. This is this guy's seventh book. I think I'm onto a winner.

'Salem's Lot - Stephen King

Just simply bloody brilliant. Beyond the characters, plot and effortless prose you expect from King, it has a bunch of passages scattered throughout that are simply beautiful, poetic works of art, and which approach social commentary (on one level 'Salem's Lot is very much about the Vietnam war) without threatening to push the vampires and the action into the background. This is a book to study and re-read, as an example of how to do novel-writing and of what it can be at its best.