Non-Fiction
Harold Robbins: The Man Who Invented Sex
by Andrew Wilson
The king of trashy novelists certainly left his biographer plenty to get his teeth into. Harold Robbins claimed to be the son of Tsar Nicholas II (untrue), that he ran away to join the navy at 15 (untrue) and had amassed $1m by 21 (untrue). Just about every claim he ever made wasn't even within nodding distance of veracity. He turned this tale telling, however, to good account. His execrable books - The Dream Merchants, The Carpetbaggers - made him a fortune and were something like him: frenetic, preposterous, over-sexed, profoundly vulgar but nevertheless gripping. Not that he cared about style; merely where the next dollar, the next lay, the next line of coke was coming from. At the time of his death, his $100m-plus fortune had gone and he was $1m in debt. Andrew Wilson does full justice to his man - how could he not? Still, it's a shame that Robbins never came up with a character as good as himself.
Bloomsbury, £16.99
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A Voyage Around
John Mortimer
by
Valerie Grove
This is the second biography of John Mortimer to appear in as many years. The earlier, unauthorised one contained the revelation - unlikely on so many levels - that he had fathered a child with Wendy Craig, and left the official biographer Valerie Grove well and truly scooped. She nevertheless does a thorough job, winding her way through the marriages and extended family, the career at the Bar culminating in the Oz trial, the Rumpole and Titmuss books, the love affair with New Labour and its bitter end (he now votes Lib Dem) and the turns as a celebrity socialist and thinking man's Stephen Fry. It is engaging stuff because Mortimer is an engaging chap, but one wonders whether being a national treasure is really enough to warrant two books picking over the traces. For all his real political and legal convictions, Mortimer has always been happy to play it for laughs - which has made him a popular but also lightweight figure.
Viking, £25
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A Life Decoded: My Genome, My Life
by Craig Venter
The first man to have his entire genome (his DNA) decoded, Craig Venter is unique. He did it himself, too - using a fast-track method that upset the established biochemists seeking to unravel the human genome methodically and, they hoped, officially. When Venter grew tired of trying to cooperate, he set up a private company, Celera, in direct opposition to US government scientists. He won the race and is now in position to reap the financial spoils - but his approach to research has shaken the scientific world badly. While the biochemistry is the most important strand in this story, it's not the only one of interest. Venter has been a colourful type outside the lab, too. He served as a medic in Vietnam, is much divorced and even more frequently adulterous - it must be in his DNA - which makes for that rare thing: an exciting and exceptionally readable scientific autobiography.
Allen Lane, £25
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Shopping, Seduction
and Mr Selfridge
by Lindy Woodhead
If only all shopkeepers were as entertaining as the American entrepreneur Gordon Selfridge. When he arrived in London at the age of 50, he was already a successful retailer who knew that shopping need be less of a chore than a pleasure (above all, a theatrical pleasure). And when he launched his eponymous department store on Oxford Street in 1909, he made it unlike any other. Selfridge announced the opening in the biggest advertising campaign ever seen and introduced spectacle among the goods: a roof top ice rink, sales inaugurated by Ivor Novello, cookery demonstrations, election night parties. His was not, as they now say, any old store - and among those who delighted in the stock were the numerous special lady friends Selfridge set up with accounts. Lindy Woodhead's lively biography delivers not just the man but also the nature of consumer culture in his time. Happy shopping.
Profile, £17.99
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Fiction
The Quiet Girl
by Peter Hoeg
Peter Hoeg never quite recovered from the success of Miss Smilla's Feeling For Snow. That novel came with an unexpected heroine going about her business in an unexpected setting, and the novelty was underpinned by a strong plot and taut narrative. But in subsequent books, Hoeg has been meandering and whimsical; the whimsy becoming so insistent that it has taken over his latest. Kaspar Krone is not just a clown but a Bach nut, too - oh, and he has a gambling habit. In order to evade the tax authorities, he seeks sanctuary with an order of nuns in return for looking after a group of children with special abilities. When one girl goes missing, Kaspar sets off to find both her and the real motives driving the mysterious world in which he finds himself (and some of the motives are very big indeed). Unless you can suspend your disbelief at a preternatural height, you'll find this effort a great disappointment.
Harvill Secker, £16.99
Fame and Fortune
by Frederic Raphael
Thanks to the television adaptation of The Glittering Prizes, screenwriter Frederic Raphael became a name outside the realm of cinema. That novel, written in 1976, looked at how Adam Morris and his group of Cambridge friends faced up to a world beyond the Gothic lodges of their colleges. Now, 30 years later, Raphael has written a sequel. It is 1979 and Mrs Thatcher has just arrived in Downing Street. The Cambridge cluster is still in touch - Adam and Barbara remain married (with children about to repeat their own university experiences), Mike Clode remains the provocateur - and their concerns (notably books and sex) remain unchanged. However, it is not all chattering class angst - real life intrudes in the form of violence - and if, three decades on, the characters seem rather tired, their dialogue retains all its thrust and parry. A novel for Raphael alumni rather than freshmen.
JR Books, £16.99
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Picture this
Lisette Model
People, in all their diversity, are the subjects of Lisette Model: the toffs and hoi polloi, the eccentrics and the mundane. This faithful re-issue of Model's first ever 1979 monograph gathers together a motley crew, from the promenades of Nice to the jazz bars of New York, and commemorates 25 years since the photographer's death. Paradigmatic of her distinctive style - one that infiltrated the works of her proteges Diane Arbus and Larry Fink - these are close-up, unforgiving portraits that confront vanities and insecurities alike; unsentimental, certainly, but passionate and never spiteful. It's a fitting tribute to the woman who simply wanted her subjects to speak for themselves.
Aperture, £29.50
Paperbacks
The Life of Kingsley Amis
Zachary Leader's nicely-judged biography traces the rise and plateau-ing of the comic novelist. From the suburbs to Swansea, America and the Garrick - with a rickety private life to boot - Amis was never dull or earnest, and was a more complicated man than his curmudgeonly image suggested.
Vintage, £11.99
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City of Laughter
Vic Gatrell's hugely entertaining and beautifully illustrated book looks at how Georgian London was satirised by a clutch of exceptional cartoonists (Rowlandson, Gillray et al). Nothing and no one was sacred to them - which made for brilliant if visceral humour.
Atlantic, £19.99
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Seize the Hour
The impressive Margaret MacMillan examines the week in 1972 that Nixon ended years of hostility with China by flying to Beijing and shaking Mao's hand. This is diplomatic history at its best - and Nixon's sidekick Kissinger does not get the easiest of rides.
John Murray, £9.99
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Thirteen Moons
Charles Frazier's novel revisits the big skies and epic landscapes of Cold Mountain. Here a young boy becomes bound up with both the fate of the Cherokee Indians and a mysterious girl called Claire. It's portentous, overblown stuff, for those who like that sort of thing.
Sceptre, £7.99
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