These poems range in material from intimate narratives to social commentary. Boyle takes self-deception, mixed motives and honest misunderstandings as the norms of human behaviour, and delights in the comedy of errors that results.

Ajaiyi is a man born into poverty who is determined to improve his situation. In the hope of finding the money he needs, he travels through unfamiliar lands filled with strange creatures. He meets the Spirit of Fire with its huge feathered head and flaming body, and receives assistance from a wizard and a unicorn.

Includes six plays that are collected together in the box set.

With its politics, passions, corruption and vice, this quartet of novels is set in war-time Alexandria. The experimental form presents the narrative from different view points, allowing the story to unfold gradually.

In the "Poet to Poet" series, a contemporary poet advocates a poet of the past or present whom they have particularly admired. By their selection of verses and their critical reactions, the selectors offer intriguing insights into their own work. Here, Mick Imlah selects Tennyson.

A novel set in Dublin in the mid-1980s - a city in the grip of recession and a heroin epidemic. Narrated by Declan, the only boy of a tight-knit writing group at Trinity College, it tells of their fascination with the formidably talented but troubled writer Glynn, and the darkly exhilarating journey this leads them on.

Allen Ginsberg (1926-97) was born in Newark, New Jersey, to a poet-teacher father and Russian emigre mother. When "Howl and Other Poems" was impounded by San Francisco customs in 1956, the subsequent trial for obscenity catapulted Ginsberg and his publisher City Lights to national fame and helped to define the Beat Generation.

The 1970s then became Altman's decade, with a string of masterpieces: McCabe and Mrs Miller, The Long Goodbye, Thieves Like Us, Nashville... In the 1980s Altman struggled to fund his work, but he was restored to prominence in 1992 with The Player, an acerbic take on Hollywood.