News of a Kidnapping, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (Penguin, £6.99 in UK)

More realist than magic, News of a Kidnapping traces the events surrounding the abduction of ten people, mostly journalists, in Colombia in 1993. It was obviously a dangerous book to research, treading as it does on just about every political toe in a potentially lethal political scene, and Gabriel Garcia Marquez's courage in putting his name to it is beyond question; fans of the great man should be warned, however, that he is doggedly straightforward in his approach and that his deliberate avoidance of sensationalism brings his narrative, at times, dangerously close to tedium.