Girl With A Pearl Earring, by Tracy Chevalier (Flamingo, £6.99 in UK)

A vermeer painting inspires this taut, atmospheric novel in which an older, wiser Griet tells her story. As the daughter of an impoverished family, she was sent off to work as a maid in the Vermeer household. Life under the artist's roof is not easy; his suspicious, perpetually pregnant wife is not welcoming, while there is also a touchy family retainer to deal with. The real boss, however, is the wife's mother. Vermeer proves little more than a detached presence. Griet misses her family but she is equally preoccupied by her emerging sexuality. Chevalier's unusual second novel succeeds through the superb characterisation of the artist's shrewd mother-in-law and particularly that of the narrator, an irritable and vain girl increasingly drawn to the selfish painter whom she begins to assist, and eventually sit for. Her sexual frustration and resentment is brilliantly balanced against his opportunistic remoteness and flair for compromising her. While a convincing, intelligent example of historical fiction at its most disciplined, the true genius of Chevalier's beautiful, brutal novel lies in its exploration of the personalities and the power struggles determining the relationships within the household.