A Lesson Before Dying, Ernest J. Gaines (Serpent's Tail, £6.99 in UK)

Five weeks at the top of the US paperback fiction charts, winner of the National Book Critics Circle award for fiction, "An Oprah Bookclub Selection" emblazoned across its cover, A Lesson Before Dying has been compared to a blues song. But in truth, it's more like a slice of in-your-face country music - no twists, no turns, just heart-on-the-sleeve emotion all the way. Which doesn't make it a bad book - just arm yourself with a box of tissues, that's all, for the tale of the bond that develops between two young black men in a southern cane-cutting town, which is painful, shocking and terribly, terribly sad. One is sentenced to death for a murder he did not commit, the other, a teacher is forced by his family to visit the lad on death row. The simplicity of plot and characterisation give A Lesson Before Dying an almost cartoon-like feel, but it gets its socio-political points across with ease. A sentence such as "There was a Catholic church uptown for whites; a Catholic church back of town for coloured" now, more than ever, delivers a stinging punch.