PUT this collection of short stories in a time capsule and, decades from now when the capsule is unearthed and read, readers will gasp at the sheer ferocity, hate, random violence presented to them by the Bard of Belfast, MacLaverty. There is a pulsequickening scene in which a bystander intervenes to rescue a man being savaged by paramilitary thugs. Away from the violence, a jewel of an offering tells of how the maiden aunt of two small children dies on their way home from a day out . . . one of the most poignant passages I have ever read. There is the Bard's humour and pitch-perfect ear: A resident in a retirement home complains "those peas they gave us at dinner last night were so hard you could have fired them at the Germans". Back to the fun . . . "the Roman Empire's decline was brought about by the lead in the drinking water". Marvellous collection.

The Beach Bar By Kate McCabe Poolbeg /8.99 388pps

WHEN we first meet up with Emma . . . McCabe's lead character in this multi-layered and highly entertaining read . . . she is sustained by a dream life more enticing than reality. She will be a model. No, an actress maybe. Circumstances focus the way forward. Her father dies. She inherits his business. This is at a time in our history when the Irish are buying up apartments and villas on the Costas.

The thing for Emma to do is go one better; sell the Irish business, buy a Spanish one and become a permanent fixture on the Costas. The action centres around a conglomerate of Irish characters of varying pedigrees: a man who tries to buy off his mother for a few euros, the less than heroic, woman-chasing Matthew. There are some wonderfully realised scene, as when Claire tells Matthew to take a hike. You can move to a sunnier place, but it's impossible to leave your troubles behind.

Beyond Words: How Language Reveals the Way We Live Now By John Humphrys Hodder �8.00 240pps

I'M NOT sure that language does reveal the way we live now. It may reveal the way we think. But the way we live? Personally, my earliest problems came with the apostrophe's. Ooops. Should that be apostrophies? Or the singular apostrophe? Damn the little tadpole, this schoolboy cried out. Whatever. There is some wonderful fun to be had here with Mr Humphrys. The cock-ups, the mangling of phrases, the tautologies. At the BBC, it was reported recently, a number of staff were fired from the company. Was it painful?

Shouldn't they have been fired by the company. A road sign: 'Slow Children Crossing' somehow sounds discriminatory. Closer to home, there is my own favourite example of tautology: Our Lady's Hospital for Sick Children. Enough to make anyone of any age sick.

The Road By Cormac McCarthy Picador /10.99 254pps

NOW here at last is a subject black, bleak and big enough for the mordant . . . but magnificent . . . McCarthy to mull over: The End of The World. As always with McCarthy, life, or what there is left of it on The Road, is cheap. A nuclear war has devastated the planet.

Across this "ashen scabland" a man and a boy trek south away from their perma-winter. Their sun is a grey smudge as if seen by a man with glaucoma. Tinned food is fought over. Here everyone is the enemy. This blasted world's population has reverted to Conradian murder and cannibalism. The man has a gun with one bullet. It is for the boy. Will the man be able to use it if called on? What if it jams? It is unlikely McCarthy will ever do better.

A Blow to The Heart By Marcel Theroux Faber �8.00 216pps

THE LAST time Londoner Daisy Polidoro saw her husband was when he slipped out for the morning paper. When she next sees him he is laid out in the morgue with a neat hole in is chest put there by a screwdrive-wielding junkie, Joel Heath. Heath is lifted by the cops, but a liberal-minded judge hands down a two-year sentence for manslaughter. A stress-filled Daisy miscarries a baby, recovers and plots the destruction of Heath. The backdrop to this is the boxing world and a nasty business it is.