Non-Fiction
Inside the Red Mansion
By Oliver August
This is the story of modern China's own Robin Hood - an illiterate fugitive called Lai Changxing who just happens to be the country's richest man, and who's currently in self-imposed exile in Vancouver. Since he traded a sixth of China's oil, was its biggest car importer and dealer in cigarettes, he is very rich indeed. Oliver August traces Lai's rise from survivor of Mao's Great Leap Forward to self-exiled billionaire with great verve. Lai's bewilderingly speedy ascent went hand in glove with his country's and both were accomplished by a liberal application of bribes and widespread corruption. It was this that finally turned the authorities against Lai, who's alleged to have had large chunks of the state bureaucracy in his pay. From his Canadian fastness he's been fighting moves to extradite him, while back home his generosity to the poor has made him a local hero. It's a fascinating tale - yet to be completed - that lays bare an unseen side to China's economic miracle.
John Murray, £20
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World War One
By Norman Stone
Norman Stone used to be a considerable figure - a pugnacious, iconoclastic historian never short of opinions, a David Starkey without the peacocking. Then he abandoned Oxford and took himself off to teach in Turkey and to oblivion, of a sort. What's he been doing over his coffee and kebabs? A weighty follow-up to his book on the Eastern Front during the First World War, perhaps. But no: instead, he's come up with a short history of the conflict that's just 200 pages long - not bad for a subject on which so much ink has been spilled. It's an extended lecture really; opinions and sparkling phrases are lobbed about like so much ordnance. What, naturally, isn't there is detail, so just as the Prof whets your appetite for more - on unfamiliar fronts such as Turkey or Russia, for example (where something of his unusual career trajectory is evident) - it's all over. Bite back the frustration, however, and this is as lively an introduction as you'll find.
Allen Lane, £16.99
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The Pyjama Game: A Journey into Judo
By Mark Law
Judo is not, it would appear, a sport which has obvious appeal to normal-thinking types - it's a sport in which it's permissible to throttle an opponent to the point of unconsciousness, and relative novices can find themselves facing top-notch fighters at their local dojo (club). It appealed to Mark Law though, so much so that he took it up at the age of 50, and here he illuminates the mystery and beauty of judo. His own practice plays a part too: while only too aware of the pain he has brought on himself, he's besotted enough to keep on going, working his way achingly through the belts towards the hallowed black. Along the way he finds himself up against, then under, Brian Jacks (Olympic bronze medallist) and Hirotaka Okada (world champion).
Aurum, £16.99
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Princess Margaret: A Life Unravelled
By Tim Heald
When Princess Margaret died a couple of years ago the public barely seemed to notice or care. So does one need a biography of her? Despite the best efforts of the Royal-botherer Tim Heald the answer is no. The image of her as a once dazzling woman who went rapidly to seed remains unchanged by Heald's book. The parties, the piano sing-songs, the whole Princess Margaret set, Mustique and Roddy Llewellyn - it's a tired, vacuous and rather tawdry litany. Heald has had access to many of those close to the Princess - family, ladies in waiting, private secretaries - as well as the Royal archives but the woman that emerges remains spoilt, petulant and not very bright. Heald could have been a more incisive questioner too, delving into the sex and drugs that permeated her life, but he's far too much of a gent, verging at times on Pooter. It's all pretty unedifying; unfortunately, it's pretty unentertaining too.
Weidenfeld & Nicolson, £20
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Fiction
Charlemagne and Roland
By Allan Massie
One wonders how Allan Massie sees his career as a novelist. He has found himself rather pigeonholed as a writer of historical fiction, and the books on which he honed his skills - contemporary literary fiction, rich in complex human interaction - have been forgotten. It was his novels of ancient Rome that gave him this profile, and he has subsequently moved on to the Europe away from the Roman hub. Charlemagne and Roland is the last part of his Dark Ages trilogy and explores the relationship between the greatest of all the Holy Roman Emperors and his nephew Roland, the white knight of Romance literature. It is fruitful territory: high politics and the building and consolidation of an empire mixing with the shifts and accommodations of two driven men. For every glittering set piece of court, coronation or battle there are equally deft double-headers played out away from the public gaze. Massie is a class act.
Weidenfeld & Nicolson, £12.99
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The Snake Stone
By Jason Goodwin
Jason Goodwin has turned himself from an historian of the Ottoman Turks to a writer of accomplished thrillers that draw on his expertise. His hero, Yasim, is unusual - he's a eunuch in the court of Sultan Mahmud II but when it comes to discovering whodunit he's a potent sleuth. In this book, a French archaeologist is the first heavily mutilated corpse, a succession of others quickly piles up and Yasim is the main suspect. There's a secret sect, too, bent on reviving the Byzantine Empire. What with one thing and another, it's a plot straight out of period thrillers' central casting. Goodwin, though, has the ability to bring the setting, if not the scenario, to life. His Istanbul reeks of spices and sewers and throbs with the sounds of a Babel of foreign tongues. The cat-and-mousery and plots and feints of Yasim and his adversaries are in the end almost incidental. The novel's real pleasures lie in its evocations.
Faber, £12.99
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Picture this
Street Play, by Martha Cooper
Thankfully, Martha Cooper's monochrome images of street urchins at play are not as saccharine as you might fear. This is 1970s New York, after all, in the dilapidated slums of Alphabet City, where kids had little choice but to roam free in the rubble and amuse themselves. And they did - with a primeval approach that should delight parents and terrify Toys'R'Us. Cooper captured the enthusiasm and industrious craftsmanship of these cheeky scavengers as they turned barricades into go-karts and cardboard boxes into houses. Now her images are rather wistful in feel, and prove just what you can do with a little imagination.
From Here to Fame/Eastpak, £19.99
Paperbacks
Magic Bus
Rory Maclean follows the old hippy trail from Europe to Afghanistan and Nepal. Many of the countries that once offered enlightenment are now part of the 'axis of evil' but Maclean meanders winningly along, talking to many of the original travellers as he goes.
Penguin, £8.99
The Ongoing Moment
Geoff Dyer is a writer who never settles for long on one subject. Here he's alighted on photography and gives a nicely free-form history of the subject. He concentrates largely on the American greats: his perceptions are interesting and his style elegant.
Abacus, £9.99
Kingdom Come
A man is shot in a giant shopping mall outside an M25 dormitory town. When the victim's son goes to the site of the murder he finds an alternative world worshipping consumerism and seething with discontents. J.G. Ballard at his dystopian best.
HarperPerennial, £7.99
The Meaning of Night
Michael Cox's whopper of Victorian pastiche was 20 years in the making and tells the story of Edward Glyver, adopted as a baby and now in search of his inheritance and faced with an old-fashioned baddie in Phoebus Daunt. It's overlong but entertaining.
John Murray, £6.99
Books is edited by Edwin Reardon
Big Book: The Wealth of Nations
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