A selection of the latest paperbacks reviewed
Beslan: The Tragedy of School No 1, Timothy Phillips, Granta, £7.99
With Vladimir Putin having recently hand-picked his successor in an internationally condemned election, this book makes a timely read. Timothy Phillips has painstakingly pieced together the events of the days surrounding the siege in Beslan using the harrowing accounts of locals and survivors. This is a raw and blunt instrument; those interviewed rarely spare a word and it makes for stark, difficult reading. The cruelty of the terrorists who took over the school, the shambolic way the crisis was handled by the authorities, and the bitterness among those who live in the town today, make for engrossing, horrifying reading. The role played by the Kremlin, and by Putin in particular, as the siege unfolded, is deeply troubling, and the impression the book leaves is of a bewildering modern-day Russia that is twisted and corrupt at its core. It is a valuable, frank and important work. - Laurence Mackin
The Echo Maker, Richard Powers, Vintage, £7.99
In this, his ninth, novel, Richard Powers, in a blend of science and myth, tells an intriguing story. On a winter's night in Nebraska, Mark Schluter suffers a near fatal accident when his truck overturns. He is left with Capgras syndrome, believing that his caring sister Karin is an impostor. Karin engages a cognitive neurologist, Gerald Weber, to help her brother. While the book sags a little under its weighty middle, it then develops into a thriller as discoveries are made, particularly about the circumstances of the accident, which alter the lives of these three people. Part of the myth element in the novel is based on the spring migration of sandhill cranes who, in revealing the wildness of simply being, throw Weber into a meaning-of- life crisis. The manner in which Powers fuses the disparate elements from our wired world to the chaos of the universe in an attempt to show the connectedness of all living things is an astonishing achievement. - James Lawless
Beatrix Potter, Linda Lear, Penguin, £8.99
Like many famous children's authors of yesteryear, Beatrix Potter is an international household name whose personal history remained largely unknown. This winner of the Lakeland Book of the Year introduces Potter in her early years as a lover of the natural world, an artist and scientific illustrator. She soon became known for the enormous success of her two dozen books for children about Peter Rabbit, his furry friends and the dread Farmer MacGregor. Billed as chronicling "the extraordinary life of a Victorian genius", Lear's biography is a quiet, beautifully written testament to the years of selfless work Potter invested in the conservation of the Lake District, coupled with her pioneering success as a woman landowner and successful farmer. It is an in-depth look at late Victorian life, in which a strong, industrialist, Unitarian family forbade their famous daughter to wed her publisher on the grounds that he was beneath her, thus irrevocably changing her life. - Nora Mahony
In The Pesthouse Jim Crace is back on familiar territory with a tale of journeying through a dystopian wilderness. It has an interesting, moving premise; that of a post-industrial US where all are fleeing east to escape from poverty, drought and plague. The pesthouse of the title is the single-room dwelling above the ford village of Ferrytown, where Crace's character Margaret goes to either live or die of plague. When a landslide causes the release of noxious fumes from a nearby lake, all in Ferrytown die but Margaret survives and throws her lot in with Franklin Lopez, who is travelling east to catch a ship away from the US and towards a better life. Margaret and Franklin wonder at the leavings of modernity; the monstrous highways, the rusting hulks of aircraft carriers, the need for metal when wood and hemp and leather can do so much. Crace could have made more of the return to a 19th-century life by people living in (possibly) the 21st or 22nd century (they seem to have a folktale version of history) but he's more interested in the human search for the great good thing and in questioning whether that prize is an external or an internal one. - Yvonne Nolan
A Life's Work: On Becoming a Mother, Rachel Cusk, Faber, £8.99
When Rachel Cusk's unflinchingly honest account of motherhood first appeared in 2001, she was surprised at the vitriol she received from critics and readers accusing her of being a "bad mother". In her introduction to this new edition, she wonders whether those readers were expecting a childcare manual, which she describes as "the emblem of the new mother's psychic loneliness". This is no manual, but it may let some mothers know they're not alone in their fear of losing their personal autonomy to the demands of the new arrival. "Motherhood is a career in conformity . . . and pregnancy is its boot camp," she writes. Throughout this hugely readable book, she looks at the less pleasant side of motherhood - the boredom, the loneliness, the fear and guilt - but throughout, her deep love for her daughters shines through. Highly recommended, for mothers and non-mothers alike. - Anna Carey