In 1952, travelling steerage, Malachy McCourt left a childhood of poverty in Limerick, Ireland, heading for the promise of New York. This is the story of what he brought with him, and what he thought he'd left behind. Armed with savage humour and a gift for story telling, fueled by rage and the desire never to go hunfry again, he ran from the memories of a drunken, vanished father and the humiliations of Angela, his mother.

At once humorous and dramatic, Three Dollars is about Eddie, an honest, compassionate man who finds himself, at age thirty-eight, with a wife, a child and three dollars. How did he get that way? And who is Amanda? He cared about people; he was, Amanda notwithstanding, a good husband, father and son. At any other time the world would have smiled on him. But this was the nineties and the world valued other things.

From the white heat of Miami, to the implants of LA, the glittering waters of the Caribbean to the deserts of Arabia, Olivia Joules pits herself against the forces of terror, armed with a hatpin, razor-sharp wits and a very special underwired bra. How could a girl not be drawn to the alluring, powerful Pierre Ferramo - he of the hooded eyes, impeccable taste, unimaginable wealth, exotic international homes and dubious French accent?

Maddy's first day out with her newborn takes a Kafkaesque turn when she's arrested in Harrods for shoplifting. If this is a miscarriage of justice, then detaining her in Holloway Prison's Mother and Baby Unit is the DandC. The only person she can turn to is her hot-to-trot ex-lover Alex, who proves himself as useful as a solar powered vibrator on a rainy day. When will he realise that a paternity suit is not the latest look in men's leisurewear?

Nick Shay and Klara Sax knew each other once, intimately, and they meet again in the American desert. He is trying to outdistance the crucial events of his early life, haunted by the hard logic of loss and by the echo of a gunshot in a basement room. She is an artist who has made a blood struggle for independence. Don DeLillo's mesmerizing novel opens with a legendary baseball game played in New York in 1951. The glorious outcome -- the home run that wins the game is called the Shot Heard Round the World -- shades into the grim news that the Soviet Union has just tested an atomic bomb. The baseball itself, fought over and scuffed, generates the narrative that follows. It takes the reader deep into the lives of Nick and Klara and into modern memory and the soul of American culture -- from Bronx tenements to grand ballrooms to a B-52 bombing raid over Vietnam.