US Edition Stalin’s Children By Owen Matthews. Bloomsbury, £8.99
The horrifying inhumanity of Stalin’s Russia is brought into extraordinarily sharp focus in this heart-rending love story. Owen Matthews’s mother, the daughter of a Ukrainian peasant and an apparatchik 'purged’ in 1937, grew up in an orphanage. Her relationship with her husband, a Welsh graduate student in Moscow, was cruelly severed after a few months by the Iron Curtain and for five years their relationship was conducted through desperate love letters. Matthews tells his parents’ story in powerful, image-rich prose. Katie Owen
Trick or Treatment? By Simon Singh and Edward Ernst. Corgi, £8.99
This is a clearly written, scrupulously scientific examination of the health claims of key areas of alternative medicine: acupuncture, homeopathy, chiropractic therapy and herbal medicine. The results are stark. In no case, apart from in some limited ways in herbal medicine, do any of these 'therapies’ work. On the contrary, they can be life-threatening. This is an important book. KO
In Defense of Food By Michael Pollan. Penguin, £8.99
A glass of red wine with a good meal taken at a leisurely pace in company: this is Michael Pollan’s prescription for health. In this no-nonsense, witty look at the damage done to our Western diet by the claims and counter-claims of nutritionists, he decries the development of 'edible foodlike substances’ packed with added nutrients, and warns consumers that if they see a health claim on a food product 'it’s a strong indication that it’s not really food’. KO
The Butt By Will Self. Bloomsbury, £7.99
You can always trust Will Self to take a mildly amusing conceit, blow it up to seemingly absurd proportions and produce something of lasting comic value. The Butt is pure Self, pushing satire to its limits and beyond. A man holidaying in an unnamed country flips the butt of his cigarette off the balcony of his apartment on to the head of another man, which is treated as assault, which carries draconian penalties, which?…?But why give away such a splendidly barmy plot? Just read it. Sally Cousins
A Fraction of the Whole By Steve Toltz. Penguin, £8.99
Jasper, in prison in Australia, has plenty of time to reflect on his life, and on his relationship with his larger-than-life father Martin. And reflect Jasper does, for 700 helter-skelter pages. Steve Toltz’s debut novel made it on to the Man Booker shortlist last year but somehow the writing doesn’t seem quite so clever now: there is promise, energy, but dismayingly little sense of structure; it is just a glittering string of anecdotes and one-liners. SC
Elizabeth in the Garden By Trea Martin. Faber, £9.99
A visit in 1572 from the Queen to her suitor, Robert Dudley, at Kenilworth Castle in Warwickshire, spurred the creation of an extravagant Renaissance garden, designed to seduce her. Trea Martyn entwines an account of Elizabeth’s complex love life with an authoritative description not just of Kenilworth but also of another garden created to impress her, by Dudley’s rival Robert Cecil, at Theobald’s Palace in Hertfordshire. KO
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