LATEST fiction includes Got You Back by Jane Fallon (paperback original by Penguin, £6.99), which follows her best-seller debut novel, Getting Rid of Matthew. It's an odds-on bet that this will do just as well.

Stephanie is a successful stylist to the stars, mother of Finn and wife of James, a vet who divides his time between practices in London and Lincolnshire. Unbeknown to Stephanie, he's also dividing his time between her and his girlfriend, Katie, a complementary therapist - who is also blissfully ignorant.

But when the deceit is uncovered, the girls secretly plot together to make James's life a complete misery - and it's true what they say.

Hell hath no fury like a pair of women scorned. It may sound like a familiar story, but Fallon manages to put a neat and original twist to this fast-paced and enjoyable read.

Sandra Mangan

Lush Life by Richard Price (hardback by Bloomsbury, £12.99) is by the author whose book, Clockers was adapted for the screen by Spike Lee, but his real guarantee of immortality is that he wrote for The Wire, regarded by some as the best television show ever made.

Like that series, Lush Life is largely uninterested in good and evil, even guilt and innocence - it's more about using a crime as a scalpel with which to anatomise a modern city, its mechanisms, mortals and mistakes.

The plot is restrained, turning on one small crime - a mugging gone wrong - but then showing us, meticulously, how this affects the perpetrator, the investigating police, and above all, the survivors.

The victim's father in particular is a masterly portrait of grief. "What does it take to survive here?", he asks of New York, the city that killed his son - and that, more than whether justice will be done, is what Price wants us asking too.

Alex Sarle

The Other Hand by Chris Cleave (published in hardback by Sceptre, £12.99) is a haunting, yet beautiful tale of an unlikely friendship between a British magazine editor and an illegal Nigerian refugee, formed when their paths cross for a few hours on an African beach.

Little Bee, a brave, African village girl locked up in an Essex detention centre, tells the story of two completely different women coming to terms with life's cruelties.

Cleave deftly turns Little Bee's tragic character into a comic heroine after she turns up on the doorstep of a bemused English woman one morning and asks simply "Can you help?"

Ultimately, their bond will come up against the biggest test imaginable when both women are faced with a devastating decision. The follow-up to Cleave's international bestseller, The Incendiary, due to be released as a film, is a touching story packed with humour that keeps you gripped until the end of their magical journey.

Paperback choice
Fieldwork is a debut novel by Mischa Berlinski (published in paperback by Atlantic Books, £11.99).

When an American anthropologist working in Thailand goes to jail for murder, a young journalist on an extended holiday wants to find out the whole story. This highly imaginative young author conjures tribes and passionate characters in a riveting and atmospheric adventure set in the wilds of South East Asia.

Bringing Nothing To The Party: True Confessions of a Media Whore by Paul Carr (published by Wedenfeld & Nicholson, £8.99).

Though the title might sound slightly nauseating, Carr is a surprisingly witty writer. His tall tales about trying to start an internet company, nights spent on the tiles with dot com millionaires, and his limitless capacity for drink, work and web-related ideas, are utterly endearing. This is completely addictive reading.

Sarah O'Meara