Ride with the Devil by Daniel Woodrell. (No Exit Press, £6.99 in UK).

Woodrell has been very much in fashion recently, the film of this volume having done no harm to its publicity and sales. When I first read it, it was called `Woe To Live On', and it had a powerful effect on me then. Set in the border states of Kansas and Missouri during the American Civil War, it tells the tale of a gang of young men who operate in no-man's land between North and South, striving to protect their families and their property. As they step further and further into violence and destruction, many of them become brutalised by the savagery around them, but there is a kind of Old Testament resolution as the war draws to a close. Written in a biblical kind of prose that at times reaches fine heights of lyricism, the book is a cathartic, if not easy, read.