Stardust: The Cosmic Recycling of Stars, Planets and People by John Gribbin (Penguin Books, £7.99)

When Captain Boyle in Juno and the Paycock asks, "What is the stars", this book now provides an answer. Gribbin tells us about how stars are made and how they meet their doom. And as stars are created, so too are planets and, on some quite rare occasions, planets that also have life. His effortless descriptions make the difficult world of cosmology almost easy, as he moves us along the timeline for the creation of the universe. Nothing in nature is wasted, and so he also challenges us with the proposal that ultimately we are little more than leftover stardust. The star next door that blew up eons ago eventually gets recycled into the next star down the road, as well as by its planets and the life that might inhabit them. There is real science here, too, in his descriptions of the latest astronomical discoveries and how they piece together an understanding of our origins.