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Present Danger, By Stella Rimington

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 00:00:01 GMT

Dame Stella Rimington isn't the author to go to for a psychological critique of secret-service operatives, but for a pacy page-turner, she's a safe bet. Present Danger is the fifth of her "insider" novels to feature Liz Carlyle, a thirtysomething MI5 officer whose career success has – surprise, surprise – come at a cost to her personal life.

Seasonal Suicide Notes, By Roger Lewis

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 00:00:01 GMT

At first sight, the splenetic author of this gloriously funny book would seem to be an unlikely admirer of St Ailred of Rievaulx. Roger Lewis describes the abbot's two immortal Latin texts as "riveting". They are indeed riveting studies in tolerance and true compassion, written in the 12th century by a man who inspired love in everyone he met.

Roads Ahead, Edited by Catherine O'Flynn

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 00:00:01 GMT

The Birmingham-based publisher Tindal Street Press was founded 10 years ago and has built a reputation as a discoverer of new talent. Some of its writers had been turned down by mainstream publishers, others are home-grown, for the most part specialising in a tough, gritty style dealing with modern urban life. In conventional publishing terms, Tindal Street has compounded the error of investing in new writers by championing the short story.

The Lie, By Petra Hammesfahr

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 00:00:01 GMT

From time to time a crime writer embarks on the Doppelganger story, where one character sets about impersonating another. Josephine Tey's Brat Farrar is probably the classic but this sub-genre is rarely successful, chiefly because of the difficulty in convincing the reader that one human being can sufficiently resemble another to be accepted by the closest of friends and family.

The Lacuna, By Barbara Kingsolver

Sun, 01 Nov 2009 00:00:01 GMT

Every few years, you read a book that makes everything else in life seem unimportant. The Lacuna is the first book in a long time that made me swap my bike for public transport, just so I could keep reading.

Last Night in Twisted River, By John Irving

Sun, 01 Nov 2009 00:00:01 GMT

Repetition, repetition, repetition: there are those critics who have long implied that John Irving – with his recurring themes, locations, motifs and misadventures – has been writing the same book since his breakthrough, The World According to Garp, in 1978. Last Night in Twisted River does not need such readers. While it is (partially) set in New England, contains deadly accidents, single-parent families, bears and young boys sexually awakened by older women, it is also the most poetic and powerful of Irving's work to date.

Players, by Tim Harris

Sun, 01 Nov 2009 00:00:01 GMT

Tim Harris doesn't do short books. After his huge, and hugely impressive, 'Sport: Almost Everything You Ever Wanted To Know', comes another doorstopper, 628 pages featuring mini-biographies of 250 men, women and animals who transformed sport. He divides these into three categories: the 'Rulers', who achieved new levels of skill; the 'Rogues', scammers and dopers who looked for ways to circumvent rules; and the 'Revolutionaries', who devised new tactics or techniques.

Get Her Off the Pitch!, By Lynne Truss

Sun, 01 Nov 2009 00:00:01 GMT

Lynne Truss is best known as the nation's punctuation tsar thanks to Eats, Shoots and Leaves, but before she set out in search of crackpot commas, she spent four years writing about sport for The Times, starting with Euro '96. That's football, by the way, for those who, like Truss before she began her stint, hear the word "Gascoigne" and think only of University Challenge; later, when the fever had her truly in its grip, she saw the peace-process headline "Adams in talks" and assumed it referred to Tony, the Arsenal captain.

The Virago Book of Food: The Joy of Eating, ed Jill Foulston

Sun, 01 Nov 2009 00:00:01 GMT

This mouthwatering anthology caters for every taste: the greedy, the curious, the lonely, the in love... Food spreads itself into many areas of life, and topics covered here in bite-size form are as diverse as kitchen cooking and food as a form of art. "The place I like best in this world is the kitchen," writes Banana Yoshimoto, while Angela Carter's protagonist seeks succour in the "domestic geography" of a new house – identity hinges on a slice of currant cake.

Tony's Ten Years, By Adam Boulton

Sun, 01 Nov 2009 00:00:01 GMT

Adam Boulton insists that he wrote this book neither to praise Tony Blair nor to dismantle him, but to bear witness to the epoch we lived through. Boulton began working as a political journalist 25 years ago, and here draws on the experience gleaned from his "front-row seat". (In 2006, Blair attended Boulton's wedding to Anji Hunter, Blair's closest friend and long-serving amanuensis, though she is largely absent from these pages.)

The Uses of Literacy: Aspects of Working-Class Life, By Richard Hoggart

Sun, 01 Nov 2009 00:00:01 GMT

Richard Hoggart was once described as "today's Ruskin" and is given to quoting Ruskin's maxim that "the greatest thing a human soul ever does in this world is to see something and tell what it saw in a plain way". It is this unadorned style that makes this work so gripping, holding a window up to working-class life while also asking, "What is the working class?"

Invisible, By Paul Auster

Sun, 01 Nov 2009 00:00:01 GMT

After a run of books with increasingly decrepit protagonists, Paul Auster's 13th novel returns to a highly recognisable "young Auster" cipher and some metafictional gamesmanship.

What the Dog Saw, By Malcolm Gladwell

Sun, 01 Nov 2009 00:00:01 GMT

The first "adventure" in What the Dog Saw, a selection of Malcolm Gladwell's articles and essays from his 13 years as a staff writer on The New Yorker, is that of Ron Popeil. Popeil is a renowned TV salesman, or "pitchman": the creator and vendor of a series of hugely popular cookery appliances, chief among them the Showtime Rotisserie and BBQ. His television infomercials are familiar to viewers across the US and, as Gladwell watches him perform live from the production booth in a QVC studio, the pitchman racks up sales worth $1m in a single hour.

Dracula: The Un-Dead, By Dacre Stoker and Ian Holt

Sun, 01 Nov 2009 00:00:01 GMT

History is repeating itself in many ways. For one, this is the "official" Dracula sequel, the book's blurb claims in blood-red font, written by a direct descendant of Stoker himself, and a well-known historian. Thematically, too, history is repeating itself, for Quincey Harker, the son of Jonathan and Mina, is prompted to explore his parents' dark secrets after coming across the troubled production of Dracula at the Lyceum, directed by Bram Stoker himself.

Lyttelton's Britain, By Iain Pattinson

Sun, 01 Nov 2009 00:00:01 GMT

It was at a restaurant in Upper Street, Islington, that Tony Blair met Gordon Brown to debate which would be prime minister first. Brown lost, and had to pay for lunch too – although he refused to pay the 15 per cent service charge. Such nuggets make up Iain Pattinson's amusing collection – subtitled "A User's Guide to the British Isles as heard on BBC Radio's I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue". The book ranges across Britain, shedding light on little-known as well as renowned places, with a blend of wit, history and invention.

Audio book: The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest, By Stieg Larsson, read by Martin Wenner

Sun, 01 Nov 2009 00:00:01 GMT

The brilliant young maverick investigator Lisbeth Salander spends half of this book immobile in a hospital bed. Shot three times, once in the head, and buried in a shallow grave, she has somehow emerged and found enough strength to bash in her wicked father's head with an axe. He, the old Russian defector Zalachenko, has also survived and lies, similarly bandaged, in the next room. One seems certain to kill the other.

Hetty Feather, By Jacqueline Wilson

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 00:00:01 GMT

Thomas Coram's legendary London Foundling Hospital "for the education and maintenance of exposed and deserted young children" has now been blessed with its second excellent children's novel. But nothing could be more different from Jamila Gavin's 2000 Whitbread award-winning Coram Boy than Jacqueline Wilson's first excursion into historical fiction, Hetty Feather. Gavin's somewhat gothic teen novel brought in every issue under the sun abuse of women, double standards, a lost heir, slavery, even George Frederic Handel. Wilson, writing for the 8 to 12 age group and setting her story a century later when the hospital was much more mercifully run, sticks to simpler muttons: the inner world of one penniless orphan girl.

Book Of A Lifetime: The Great Gatsby, By F Scott Fitzgerald

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 00:00:01 GMT

I was 17 years old, faintly spotty and in love with Rupert Brooke. I had just been removed from my Home Counties boarding school, slap in the middle of the A-level course. My parents had become disillusioned with the academic goals of the institution after discovering that the entire school had been awarded a day's picnic to celebrate one girl's successful application to university. Instead, I was sent to a serious-minded London crammer. My EngLit tutor lived at the end of the Northern Line and twice a week I made the hour-long Tube journey to see her, using the anonymity of the carriage to refine my awkward attempts at presenting myself as an experienced smoker.

The Penguin History of Modern Russia, By Robert Service

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 00:00:01 GMT

For the greatest drama of the 20th century, no country comes close to Russia. Oxford's Professor of Russian History tells this epic story with clarity and objectivity. He starts by toppling the revolution's protagonists. "Lenin believed that overkilling was better... than being overthrown."

British Prints from the Machine Age, Edited by Clifford Ackley

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 00:00:01 GMT

BBC 4's programmes on the inter-war years stressed the era's passion for speed and modernity. From an American exhibition that sadly will not be crossing the Atlantic, dynamic prints by British artists between 1914 and 1936 demonstrate the pervasive nature of these themes.

Gentleman's Relish, By Patrick Gale

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 00:00:01 GMT

This is Patrick Gale's 16th book of fiction, and second collection of stories, following Dangerous Pleasures in 1996. For his long-standing fan base, as well as recent converts through the Richard and Judy-featured novel Notes from an Exhibition and this year's The Whole Day Through, it provides further evidence of Gale's stylistic deftness, insight and wonderfully eclectic range of interests.

For Richer, For Poorer, By Victoria Coren

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 00:00:01 GMT

To begin with a government-style health warning: gambling can seriously damage your finances. Don't try it at home, kids. That said, Victoria Coren, the kid who did try it at home, losing her pocket-money to her older brother's mates, is now on a winning streak with this funny and enthralling saga of her career as one of the few female high-flyers in the world of poker. Since her schooldays she has gained two decades and a million pounds. With a day job as a successful journalist, by night she is Poker Woman.

Story of the Scene, By Roger Clarke

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 00:00:01 GMT

If many purchasers of this enjoyable collection of 80 "famous moments in film" from the Independent column will put it in the smallest room, they may find Clarke's page on Raiders of the Lost Ark apposite.

Best Seat in the House, By Frank Johnson Edited by Virginia Fraser

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 00:00:01 GMT

How, one wonders, would Frank Johnson have reviewed this book of his collected columns? His style is infectious, but very much his own, and other political satirists, essayists and commentators who have tried to imitate him over the past 30-odd years have never come close.

The Shadow of a Smile, By Kachi Ozumba

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 00:00:01 GMT

Zuba is a recent university graduate bearing a prominent scar "like a leech fastened to his head". He dreams of becoming an accomplished scientist. In his past lies a family tragedy the car accident that scarred him and killed his younger brother and mother. There is also his sister, Nonye (also a survivor of the crash), and their father, Professor Maduekwe, an erratic, domineering man for whom life "had been one long tale of joys nipped in the bud".