Koji Suzuki's supernatural shocker Ring (HarperCollins, £10) makes its long-awaited UK debut this month - 13 years after it was first printed in his native Japan.

An astonishing 2.8 million copies have been sold worldwide and the novel has inspired the cult Japanese film of the same name and the Hollywood version, The Ring.

Suzuki, who has been dubbed the Japanese Stephen King, has produced one of the most original and scary stories of all time.

On the whole the translation into English works well, but there are times, especially in the dialogue, when it reads like a badly dubbed spaghetti western, but even that gives it a quirky edge.

The plot revolves around journalist Asakawa, who stumbles on the story of the century.

The workaholic reporter does not take much notice when his wife's 17-year-old niece dies suddenly, apparently of natural causes - until a chance conversation reveals that another healthy teenager died at exactly the same time in chillingly similar circumstances.

Asakawa begins to investigate and discovers that this strange simultaneous sudden-death syndrome also affected another two teenagers.

Exactly one week before their mysterious deaths, the four teenagers all spent the night at a leisure resort in the same log cabin.

When Asakawa visits the resort, the mystery only deepens. A comment made in the guest book by one of the teenagers leads him to a particular videotape.

When he watches it he finds an odd collection of images with this message at the end: "Those who have viewed these images are fated to die at this exact hour one week from now. If you do not wish to die you must follow these instructions exactly..."

Unfortunately, the "charm" has been erased from the tape, and Asakawa finds himself with only seven days to save his life.

Greg Bear's bizarre new thriller Dead Lines (HarperCollins, £17.99) continues with the supernatural theme. Former erotic film maker Peter Russell - now a Mr Fixit for a Hollywood millionaire - is asked to test out a new phone, The Trans.

It's the best on the market, say the makers. What they don't say, and what is not in the instructions, is that you can use it to contact the dead.

The Trans accesses hidden channels used by the dead and they are not happy.

At first Russell is haunted by his dead daughter, who was murdered by a serial killer, but as soon as sales of the Trans take off, more malevolent ghosts, come out of the closet, so to speak.

But to stop the carnage - and save the world - Russell must first find the killer of his daughter.

Great title, great plot and strong characters.

Continuing with a paranormal theme is Francis Cotton's Slapton Sands (Simon & Schuster, £12.99), a rather disappointing novel which focuses on a true event which happened on the south Devon coast in April 1944.

American student Alice Bourne arrives at Kent University in 1976 to study history.

The chosen subject for her thesis is an event which took place 32 years earlier at Slapton Sands, a beach used by the Americans during the Second World War to prepare for D-Day. The rehearsal went disastrously wrong and more than 1,000 troops lost their lives.

Exactly what happened on that day has never been uncovered and Bourne is determined to expose the truth.

But someone - not of this world - is making Alice feel unwelcome, and strange things happen to her as she continues her investigation.

Unfortunately these strange occurrences are not enough to save a pretty bland read.

That, however, cannot be said of Lindsay Clarke's compelling retelling of Homer's story of the siege of Troy.

The War Of Troy (HarperCollins, £17.99) - published to coincide with the Hollywood epic starring Brad Pitt and Orlando Bloom - is a heady mix of revenge, passion and death.

All the characters from Homer's Iliad are there - Paris and Helen, Agamemnon and Clytaemnestra, Achilles, Odysseus and Hector, as well as the Gods Zeus, Aphrodite and Hera.

In a nutshell, the Gods are bored and have decide to have a bit of fun with the mortals.

Aphrodite visits Paris, tells him he is the son of the King of Troy and that his destiny lies with Helen, the queen of Sparta, the most beautiful woman in the world.

The only problem is that she is married to Menelaus, brother of the warmonger Agamemnon. But there's no stopping Paris, who whisks Helen away to Troy.

Hot on their trail is Menelaus, Agamemnon and a host of princes and followers from the land of Argo - and the war to end all wars begins.

The War Of Troy is a powerful, invigorating retelling of the Greek legend, and much easier to understand.

Back to death and destruction in the 21st century and crime writer Michael Connelly's summer blockbuster The Narrows (Orion, £14.99), in which not only do we see the return of Harry Bosch, but also Connelly's most ruthless killer, The Poet.

After leaving the police force, Bosch is adjusting to life as a private investigator when he hears from the widow of a friend, who recently died of a heart attack.

Terry McCaleb, hero of Blood Work (recently made into a film starring Clint Eastwood), worked on the case tracking The Poet. Elements of his death appear suspicious and Terry's widow wants Harry to dig around.

Harry discovers that his old friend was reworking old cases before he died and he had a lead on The Poet.

Believing that The Poet has murdered his old pal, Harry follows various clues which lead him to the Nevada desert.

Here, he finds the FBI has beaten him to it. The bodies of a number of men have been discovered, buried in makeshift graves. The murders bear all the hallmarks of The Poet.

New out in paperback, and well worth a read, are: James Herbert's Nobody True (Pan, £6.99) - a bizarre tale about an advertising man who is murdered while having an out-of-body experience; Caedmon's Song by Peter Robinson (Pan, £6.99) - a psychological thriller set in Whitby; and Peter Straub's chilling Lost Boy Lost Girl (HarperCollins, £6.99) about a madman on the loose.

Updated: 08:36 Wednesday, June 23, 2004