Worst Fears, by Fay Weldon (Flamingo, £5.99 in UK)

Alexandra is poised, successful, dignified - an actress enjoying belated fame - when her husband dies suddenly in their country cottage. She takes on the role of grieving widow, but the neatly-tied ends of the story begin to unravel at an unnerving rate as she is forced to confront the evidence of her husband's infidelity - worse, total betrayal - and question the whole basis of her life. In almost any hands this would be a compelling scenario: add in Weldon's wit, cleverness and completely partisian attitude to sexual politics, and you end up with what the New York Times called, quite rightly, a "snappy whodunnit of the heart". A.W.