Reading is like a huge treasure hunt. Every book leads to another title. The Good Fiction Guide, which lists 5,000 different books by over 1,100 authors--from Achebe and Adams to Zelazny and Zola--provides useful extra sign posts. And because its subject is fiction--not literature- it ranges eclectically from Henry to Helen Fielding and from Anthony to Joanna Trollope. Thirty-four jargon-free essays by literary cognoscenti include Adele Geras writing entertainingly about teen novels, John Sutherland is informative on classics and Mike Harris thoughtful about war. Film adaptations, Western, and magic realism are among other topics covered. The alphabetical author listings give biographical details and an assessment of output followed by helpful cross-referencing. Below the John Creasey entry, for example, are listed Ed McBain, John Harvey and Colin Dexter to point the way through crime writing. If you like Dickens, try Thackeray, Dostoevsky, George Eliot and Peter Carey. Inevitably there are strange omissions. It"s curious that children"s author Philip Pullman is included but not Harry Potter"s creator JK Rowling. Odd, too, that there is no mention of Paul Scott"s The Jewel in the Crown or EM Forster"s A Passage to India in the India essay. "Each essayist"s "top twelve" is entirely his or her own choice," writes editor Jane Rogers. "I"ve rejoiced to find favourite books recommended, been outraged by the omission of equally good writers and been tempted into entirely new areas of fiction by the enthusiasm of essayists." --Susan Elkin