Paperbacks

The central mystery to Wark's debut is why an elderly woman, Elizabeth, left her house to someone she barely knew. That needs to be explained, which is partly why the parallel narratives of Elizabeth and Martha, the daughter of the woman who inherits the house, feel so often like explanation rather than telling. Gentle and genteel.

The Road To Middlemarch by Rebecca Mead (Granta, £9.99)

Mead's lovely history of her relationship with George Eliot's Middlemarch and the impact that reading this book over the years has had on her life, is an insightful, smart and fond account both of Eliot and her characters. But it's also about how books worm their way into our consciousness and why they matter so much to us.

Malice by Keigo Higashino (Little Brown, £12.99)

Higashino's thriller moves with pace and intelligence, after a rather nasty novelist who killed a neighbour's cat is found dead by his friend, also a novelist although a much less successful one. The book plays on writers' particular paranoia very well, and although it can be a little predictable in places, it's a satisfying enough outcome.

Dangerous Women Part II edited by George RR Martin and Gardner Dozois (Harper Voyager, £8.99)

The editors have gathered seven stories from a variety of well-published sci-fi, fantasy and popular historical fiction writers on the theme of women with the capacity to cause harm. The genres can be a bit of a barrier, like the zombie or New Age stories, but the wider themes of old age and fragility will resonate with most.