The latest releases reviewed.
Bad Faith: A Story of Family and Fatherland
Carmen Callil
Vintage, £9.99
Carmen Callil knew Anne Darquier as a doctor and therapist and later discovered she was the daughter of the "Commissioner for Jewish Affairs" in France. Anne had been farmed out during the second World War and reared by two women in rural England. Her father, Louis Darquier, was responsible for sending thousands of French Jews to the gas chambers - including Irène Némirovsky. Anne's mother, Myrtle, was a fantasist and a deceiver. The author skilfully evokes the day to-day life of this social-climbing, anti-semitic pair, as they negotiated the internal politics of Vichy, as well as Anne's life as a foster child, a struggling student at Oxford and, later, a doctor - all this while her champagne swilling parents failed to send support. A tremendous book, this reads as smooth as silk though the subject is grim. Kate Bateman
The Rainbow
DH Lawrence
Penguin, £9.99
Penguin's second instalment of DH Lawrence classics provides a welcome opportunity to rediscover one of literature's most sensual writers. Loosely based on the Book of Genesis, The Rainbow tells the story of three generations of the Brangwens. The family's emotional and sexual development is charted through their daughter Anna's fiery relationship with her husband, Will, and their granddaughter Ursula's affairs with a female teacher and a young officer. The familiar Lawrentian background of grinding and dehumanising industrialisation, is contrasted starkly with the vividly described "glowing, beautiful land". Its frank depiction of sexual desire saw The Rainbow banned for obscenity long before Lady Chatterley confirmed its author's notoriety, but today his insights into the complex realities of love, passion and marriage are as relevant as they once were shocking. Freya McClements
Ancestor Stones
Aminatta Forna
Bloomsbury, £7.99
A letter from Africa triggers the plot of this novel of cultural reconnection. Abie, who lives in London and is married to a Scot, is informed she has inherited a coffee plantation in the African village of her childhood. Her feelings of estrangement towards her birthplace disintegrate through listening to the tales of her four husbandless African aunts. Each aunt, born to a different wife of Abie's grandfather, a wealthy plantation owner, weaves an intricate story of "the things that go unsaid". Their stories illustrate the evolution of a family which must break away from superstition in order for its members to be "good Muslims". The aunts as naïve young girls sometimes interpret the changing and unstable aspects of their world in strange ways. This adds to their stories' magic, the sense of delving into a mysterious world where little can be controlled, and their vivacity is successfully translated onto the page. Gillian Hamill
Arlington Park
Rachel Cusk
Faber, £7.99
A rainstorm washes over the dark form of affluent Arlington Park and the houses that surround it. Julie Randall sees her disturbing dream of a cockroach as a reflection of her life, her family, her home. Arlington Park is more than a middle-class English suburb; for many of the women living there it is a battleground in which they fight to remember who they are. For Christine and her casually racist husband, for Maisie and the loving family who are suffocating her, for Julie and her gentle husband, whom she sees as a murderer and for the heavily pregnant Solly, whose only help in childbirth is her Italian English-language student, life has not turned out as planned. In their efforts to become perfect wives and mothers their true selves have been left unexplored. Cusk's style is quite cerebral, so this is not always an easy read; it is, however, a rewarding one. Claire Looby
Fakers, Forgers & Phoneys: Famous Scams and Scamps
Magnus Magnusson
Mainstream, £9.99
In his final work, the late Magnus Magnusson dons his detective hat and plunges headlong into the morally dubious world of some of the most infamous con artists, forgers and impostors to pull the wool over the eyes of the establishment. Sixteen case studies of archaeological frauds, literary scams and art forgeries prove time and again that even the most intelligent people are vulnerable to being duped when they desperately want something to be true. With a refreshing lack of pretension, Magnusson applauds the ingenuity of some of the more talented "fakers", while finding ironic humour in the case of others, such as artist Han van Meegeren. Art scholars were so deceived by his forgeries that he was charged with selling genuine masterpieces to the Nazis. . This is an entertaining coda to Magnusson's career. Kevin Cronin
The Cloudspotter's Guide
Gavin Pretor-Pinney
Sceptre, £7.99
Gavin Pretor Pinney has done great service to all who have ever wondered about clouds. In 2004, he founded the Cloud Appreciation Society. Before that year's end the society had attracted members from 25 countries. It seemed his enthusiasm for Cumulus, Cumulonimbus, Cirrocumulus and their celestial relatives, was shared. And, there's no better feeling than that for the passionate hobbyist. As membership soared - they came from as far away as Iraq and New Zealand - the inevitable website was launched (www.cloudappreciationsociety.org). And now this cloudspotter's guide to the galaxy. Brimful of photographs and diagrams, it contains everything about clouds you will ever need to know, all written with an infectious enthusiasm. No more will the cloudspotter feel lonely as he wanders. Martin Noonan