There's a general rule in Young Adult fiction that applies often enough to stick: if a story is about a boy with deep-seated character flaws, the characters around must adapt to accommodate him; if it is about a similar girl, she will have to undergo some growth and change so that the people in her life don't give up on her forever. Hot Dog Girl, possibly one of the best cover and title combos on the YA market this year, definitely falls into this mould.

Elouise May Parker is a piece of work, and no one in her book understands her cockamamie scheme.

Some books can never hope to live up to their covers. Roadwork is one such novel. Richard Bachman goes introspective, shifting his focus to the family. The first Bachman book about adults is dark and nihilistic, with none of the optimism that characterises many King novels that run along similar lines. There is a certain distress involved in reading Roadwork, a crushing inevitability that perhaps can't be helped. It's a theme that King will return to as himself in Pet Sematary, but with no supernatural interference, Roadwork hits hard.

Can anyone truly know the law? So many crime novels are predicated on police ignoring conflicts of interest that you'd think they'd never heard of recusing themselves. The Scholar, Dervla McTiernan's second Cormac Reilly outing, appears to take the procedure out of the procedural, but it's not a bad novel for that.

Time is a harsh mistress. At the time of On Writing's publication, Stephen King was 26 years into his career, and a year out from his near fatal car accident. Nearly twenty years and approximately 29 books later, it is hard to conceive that On Writing almost didn't happen, and that King was going to retire. Perhaps it was the cry of Constant Readers who thought that they would never know what would become of Roland and his Ka-tet; perhaps King himself could not resist the call of the Beam. On Writing heralded the return of the King, and Constant Readers remain grateful to this day.

Karen M. McManus' second novel is an evolution of her craft. One Of Us Is Lying was a hooky little high school mystery that couldn't quite grasp the concept of unreliable narrators, but Two Can Keep A Secret is a small town extravaganza that ticks a lot of boxes. If you tick the right boxes in the right ways, it doesn't matter if they're clichés. This is a genre based around the right material done well.

You don't have to always follow your heroes through the gates of Hell. If Indiana Jones asks you to step into the Temple of Doom with him, you say "no thank you, Mister Jones. Call me when you're looking for the cup of a carpenter, I want something a bit less imperialist.” This is a laboured metaphor already, but it turns out that Danse Macabre, Stephen King's first non-fiction effort,is full of them. And "heh heh” asides. And blatant errors — Peter Pan and the "Wild Boys”, "Anarchy for the U.K.” — that have not been corrected in thirty years of reprints.

It's not a case of don't meet your heroes, but rather a case of "the past is a different country, you weren't born yet, and nothing in this book means anything to you”. Danse Macabre does not hold up to a modern reader, dealing as it does with works that have largely been obscured by time, none of which have endured like the output of its author. Scrappy, and written with a giant chip on its shoulder, Danse Macabre is a curio.

Who amongst us has not been burned by a DC Extended Universe movie? Since Man of Steel, it’s been a bit of a bust. They haven’t all been bad, but it’s rare that you can recommend a DC movie without reservation.

Shazam! is that movie. Finally returning to the superhero wellspring of found families (even Bruce Wayne has an entire menagerie of Batkids and Batcousins, a fact that most movies forget), Shazam! is family friendly, it’s funny, and it has Mark Strong in it, and as we all know, Mark Strong is game for anything.

Read the full review of Shazam! at Trespass.