The latest paperback relases
Tenderwireby Claire Kilroy Faber, 7.99
Some books, you can't put down. With others - such as this tale of a young Irish musician who buys a rare violin from a dodgy bloke she meets in a pub - it's more a case of the world falling away; eventually you look up, amazed to find yourself still sitting in your own kitchen. A psychological thriller set in a snowy New York and a stormy Dublin, Tenderwire has garnered comparisons with Patricia Highsmith, and it's easy to see why. Kilroy effortlessly ratchets up the tension, and in her feckless and unstable young heroine, Eva Tyne, she has created a kind of Ripley for the Celtic Tiger generation. But she does more; she recreates the dodgy world of the glamorous young violin prodigy with an exactness of observation which suggests both a sharp eye and a lyrical ear. The result is a story which vibrates in the memory - dreamy, polished and ever so slightly disturbing. Arminta Wallace
A Royal Affairby Stella Tillyard Vintage, £8.99
Tillyard is a superb biographer - the wit, imagination, and sheer charisma of her narrative style is rare in non-fiction writing. She uncovers the lives of King George III of England and his siblings with all the precision and dazzling dexterity of a magician - yet there is nothing superficial about her style. George III, the third in the Hanoverian dynasty, became king at the age of 22; he was naïve, devoted, self-righteous, dependent, stubborn. Despite his profound commitment to family and State, his reign was fraught with disappointment: at only 35, he had lost popular support, domestic stability, the all-important territory of America, and, through either death or estrangement, seven of his eight siblings. Working from regal correspondence and private journals, and using her own multi-layered awareness of political events and climates and her insight into human nature, Tillyard has produced a real page-turner. Claire Anderson-Wheeler
Will & Me: How Shakespeare Took Over My Lifeby Dominic Dromgoole Penguin, £8.99
Shakespeare has played an integral, sometimes hilarious role in the life of Dominic Dromgoole. As an infant, Dromgoole was introduced to the wonders of the bard by his father, who would pace around the cot, reading Shakespeare in a steady voice, his feet "padding to and fro to an iambic beat". As a young boy, instead of riding a bike or playing cowpat frisbee Dromgoole would read Julius Caesar, sometimes aloud to a field of cows. Shakespearean poetry was even read to his grandfather on his deathbed. Dromgoole describes the many ways in which Shakespeare has come to dominate his life - from the disastrous student productions he starred in to his current role as artistic director of Shakespeare's Globe. Using humorous and vivid autobiographical anecdotes, Dromgoole creates a passionate and self-mocking account of his love affair with the world's most famous playwright. Sorcha Hamilton
The Long Marchby Sun Shuyun Harper Perennial, £8.99
The Long March, the founding myth of Communist China, was the march in 1934 of the 200,000-strong Red Army, driven from its bases in southern China, to the remote north, with only a fifth surviving. Shuyun retraced the soldiers' march through appalling terrain, poorly dressed and equipped, worn down by heavy packs, covering huge distances daily on empty stomachs, and ambushed and bombed in between battles with more mobile and better-armed opponents. She interviews some 40 of the 500 or so veterans still alive and the book is their remarkable story: a tale of idealism, hope, suffering, sacrifice, harshness and courage, but also of ruthless purges, great numbers of desertions and the executions of any deserters unlucky enough to be caught. It is tragic to learn of the subsequent fate of some of the march's participants - they deserved better. Brian Maye
Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945by Tony Judt Pimlico, £10.99
From the ruins of its bombed and broken cities at the end of the second World War, Europeans rebuilt their continent in less than a decade. By the 1960s, a new consumer class in the West was able to buy fridges, televisions and cars, and go on foreign holidays. But the arrival of the 1970s brought economic depression and mass unemployment. On the other side of the Iron Curtain, prospects of a socialist utopia faded, until the communist regimes of the Eastern Bloc fell, one by one, at the end of the 1980s. With an eye for the telling statistic, the author sounds an optimistic note about the continent's future role as a paragon of inter-state relations in this lucid, comprehensive, if hefty, account of Europe's post-war social, political and cultural history. Tim Fanning
In the Bunker with Hitler: The Last Eye Witness Speaksby Bernd Freytag von Loringhoven Orion, £8.99
Baron von Loringhoven didn't exactly cosy up to Hitler but there wasn't a lot of space in the bunker during those final frantic weeks as the Allied forces closed in on Berlin in 1945. An aristocratic army officer of the Reichwehr, as ADC to army chief General Guderian he attended all briefings and reported on troop movements and military events - an increasingly thankless task since Hitler was disinclined to believe anything anyway. Loringhoven witnessed the rows, the paranoia and the fears as those in the bunker teetered between survival and suicide, hope and resignation. Hitler's marriage to Eva Braun just before their joint suicide took Loringhoven by surprise, but he had his own exit plan, too, and fled. He was captured by the Americans and filled notebooks with recollections, which he kept hidden for 60 years. He died in February, aged 93. Mary O'Leary