The latest paperback releases.
Wine: A Life Uncorked
Hugh Johnson
Phoenix, £9.99
This is a little joy from start to finish. Johnson is the doyen of wine writers, at least on this side of the Atlantic. And considering what he has to say about some American wine and American critics, not least Robert Parker, that's the way it will stay. Johnson is English, very English, a tad old-fashioned, but wonderfully entertaining, informative, amusingly discursive, provocative and sound. He has his pet hates - including wines that are too alcoholic, idiotic tasting descriptions, pretentiousness - and his favourites - Riesling, elegance and character in a wine and in people, Champagne, any number of other wines, gardening and his family. Though this is his life story, invariably he tells it through his relationship with wine. The stories flow with the kind of ease that proves age has not robbed him of his fluency. Nor of his senses to judge by his sharp observations and pithy comments. Joe Breen
Natural Flights of the Human Mind
Clare Morrall
Sceptre, £7.99
Clare Morrall's latest novel is an exploration of how the past can hold us prisoner. Peter Straker, a "failed human being" and solitary inhabitant of a disused Devon lighthouse, is forced out of his decades-old routine by newly arrived Imogen Doody. Trapped by loneliness and haunted by the past, they must learn to let go before they can contemplate a shared future. Events come to a head in a final contest between sea and sky, between the reassuring immobility of the old lighthouse and the desire to soar away into "an unrealistically blue sky" in an aging Tiger Moth. Morrall's love of Biggles informs much of her novel, but unlike her assured Astonishing Splashes of Colour, this new work fails to convince. Weighed down by contrivances, its plot is as unlikely to fly as the old aeroplane. More artifice than art. Freya McClements
Benjamin Franklin and the Birth of America
Stacy Schiff
Bloomsbury, £9.99
America would not have won its independence from Britain when it did without the aid of France, and the man who more than anyone else secured that aid was Benjamin Franklin. He was 70 when he arrived in France in late 1776 with only rudimentary French and no training in diplomacy. The book covers his eight-year Parisian sojourn and tells how, "Having sailed east as a British traitor, Franklin returned home as a French saint". It is an extraordinary tale of intrigue, envy and passion, written in a sparkling, witty style. Schiff excels particularly at drawing penetrating psychological summaries of the host of characters involved. We learn much about the broad transatlantic chasm that Franklin worked so hard to bridge (a chasm that affects international relations right up to the present), work for which he (and France) ultimately received little gratitude. Brian Maye
Hotel California
Barney Hoskyns
Harper Perennial, £8.99
In the late 1960s, the Topanga and Laurel canyons around Los Angeles saw the birth of a new form of music that would come to dominate the next decade. The Troubadour club was the hub of the sound as country and rock mutated into the cocaine- fuelled West Coast stadium music that would come to rule the early 1970s. Barney Hoskyns draws together the protagonists of the scene, who included Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, Crosby Stills Nash and Young, and the biggest urban cowboys of them all - The Eagles. It was Don Henley and company who lead the scene down the commercial route, under the pervasive influence of David Geffen. The myriad relationships of all involved are well chronicled, with credit given to those less well known but highly influential, such as Gram Parsons and JD Souther. A fascinating and vividly written account. Eoghan Morrissey
Ivan's War: The Red Army at War 1939-45
Catherine Merridale
Faber, £9.99
This is a gritty, down-in-the-trenches account of soldiering life at Stalin's pleasure. It follows the troops from the outbreak of war through the invasion of Poland and the early notions of Finnish annexation, to the everyday battle to stay alive in the face of death, hunger and mutilation while defending Stalingrad, Leningrad and Moscow, among other cities, to the retaliatory march across Eastern Europe to the gates of Germany, and the euphoria and adrenaline that fostered the ensuing atrocities. Merridale's focus remains primarily on the lower orders, largely ignoring the political and military manoeuvring while unlocking the silences, forgetfulness and suspicions that so often embraced the return of the post-war Soviet army. Overall, a tightly written and well-researched endeavour. Paul O'Doherty
Hunger
Knut Hamsun
Translated by Sverre Lyngstad
Canongate, £7.99
Few modernist novels by Norwegian Nobel Laureates are packaged to look like cutting-edge thrillers, and even fewer get introductions by Paul Auster. First published in 1890, Hunger is a vaguely autobiographical sketch of Hamsun's starving artist days in Oslo - wide-eyed and growling, the protagonist and the plotline roam the frosty streets looking for inspiration, panicked at every turn with an all-pervasive hunger. Hamsun is often compared with Dostoevsky for his harshness, though some may think his style more reminiscent of the jittery, strung-out prose of the Beat classics. It's self-indulgent, highly personal and completely readable. Here's hoping we will see more neglected classics revamped in such an accessible form - who knows, it might even stem the tide of Dan Brown-alikes. Nora Mahony