Dance To The Piper by Agnes de Mille (NYRB Classics, £11.99)

Cecil B. de Mille’s niece was inspired by Anna Pavlova to become a ballet dancer. She recalls with much wit here the torture of training and of auditions (‘The Boys’, or casting agents, called her “irrevocably non-commercial”). She also choreographed dances for films Oklahoma! and Carousel. This sparky, engaging memoir tells of a literally rattlesnake-ridden Hollywood.

Mobile Library by David Whitehouse (Picador, £7.99)

Whitehouse’s debut was a memorable story about the brother of a boy too obese to leave his bed. This follow-up gives us twelve-year-old Bobby, seemingly abandoned by his mother, finding solace in books and in Val, who works in a mobile library. A sympathetic and appealing tale of a boy structuring his world like a story, to make sense of it.

The Confidence Game: The Psychology of the Con and Why We Fall for It Every Time by Maria Konnikova (Canongate, £12.99)

“Human beings don’t like to exist in a state of uncertainty or ambiguity,” writes Konnikova in an irresistibly fascinating account of the some of the most audacious cons, an account that also seeks to understand why we so readily believe in strangers, and why people con others – simply to be loved, is one solution about the latter.

This Living and Immortal Thing by Austin Duffy (Granta, £12.99)

Perhaps it’s because this story of an Irish oncologist based in New York looking for a breakthrough in cancer, is written by an Irish oncologist based in Washington, that this debut novel, whilst well-written and authoritative, if a little too downplayed in tone, so often feels more like memoir than fiction.