The latest releases reviewed
Bad Dirt, Annie Proulx, Harper Perennial, £7.99
In addition to her vivid evocation of the vast skies, multi-coloured mountain ranges and ramshackle ranches of Wyoming, Proulx captures the foibles and illusions of its ranchers, wardens and barmaids and with a scrupulous and dispassionate eye. She can nail someone's physical appearance or character with one wry phrase, whether it's the trailer dwellers in The Wamsutter Wolf or the middle-class professionals in Man Crawling out of Trees. Some of the stories have mischievous twists: in The Indian Wars Refought, more than a century after the massacre at Wounded Knee, a young Native American woman makes a small but sweet act of revenge. Some have a fantastical element - there's an enchanted tea-kettle in Dump Truck, a fiery ditch that consumes poachers in The Hellhole - but this magic-gritty-realism, introduced without ceremony, somehow works in these laconic yet loving tales of the author's adopted home state. - Cathy Dillon
Beyond Black, Hilary Mantel, Harper Perennial, £7.99
What kind of a life could a medium lead if not only the living but also the dead - invisible and inaudible to most - were constantly twittering away at one, begging for attention? This daunting prospect intrigued Hilary Mantel enough for her to write a sizeable yet very readable novel exploring the life of her fictional protagonist Alison Hart. Plagued by the dead, who are just as petty, silly and self-absorbed as they were in real everyday life, Alison also has darker memories and unsavoury ghosts to deal with from her desolate childhood. Her manager Colette, Alison's opposite in almost every way, smartens up her medium business, but isit becomes increasingly aggravated with Alison's bizarre lifestyle, being surrounded by beings that can't be seen or heard (but whose farts and objectionable behaviour darken the atmosphere). The very dark and very witty narrative spins out an imaginative foray into the banal side of the occult. - Christine Madden
Eats, Shoots & Leaves, Lynne Truss, Profile Books, £6.99
Truss brings all her experience as a comic writer to enliven the sober subject of declining punctuation standards, and in so doing produces a wickedly entertaining and educational book with a zero tolerance attitude for those who neglect, scorn and misplace those traffic signals of language: the comma, apostrophe, colon and semicolon. The book was a surprise bestseller in hardback last year. It's encouraging, in this era of texting and e-mailing, that there are still sensitive sticklers for punctuation, whose pulse quickens at the sight of a sign that reads "Mens Coat's". For such folk, the book comes equipped with a "punctuation repair kit" - a set of stick-on punctuation marks - to be used to rectify such affronts. - Martin Noonan
The Devil Kissed Her - The Story of Mary Lamb, Kathy Watson, Bloomsbury, £8.99
Very likely the Lambs - Charles and Mary - have disappeared from view because there were so many original artists and writers alive at the same time. Most of them - including Hazlitt, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Crabbe Robinson, Leigh Hunt and the Godwins - were delighted to attend the Lambs' famously informal but robust parties. Mary's many bouts of madness - she killed her mother - meant she had to be restrained in asylums for weeks at a time. However, her brother's generosity in having her live with him changed both their lives and, while there were tempers, shortages and frustration, their worlds were also sustained by friendships, considerable gaiety and talent realised.The book highlights Mary's breakthrough into children's literature; Mrs Leicester's School was published in 1808. Previously, Mary had co-written, with Charles, the comedies of the famous Lambs' Tales from Shakespeare; both works received strong, favourable, critical attention. - Kate Bateman
This I Believe: An A-Z of a Writer's Life, Carlos Fuentes, Translated by Kristina Cordero, Bloomsbury, £6.99
This eclectic collection of essays by Mexico's leading novelist is an imaginative set of musings on anything and everything that takes his fancy. Fuentes' writing is as mesmerising here as in the best-known of his many novels, The Death of Artemio Cruz and The Years with Laura Díaz. An excellent introduction to Fuentes and the themes of his work, it is a captivating book. Collections of short works appeal because they can be interrupted and read in short sittings, but that doesn't apply here. This seamless and commanding translation of Fuentes' spellbinding prose makes This I Believe the answer to a long winter afternoon. - Nora Mahony
The Crimean War: The Truth Behind the Myth, Clive Ponting, Pimlico, £8.99
Ponting calls the Crimean War the forgotten war. For the British it became an aberration between their great European victories of 1815 and 1918. Little wonder they were anxious to forget. The organisation of their army was a shambles: commanders would not get out of bed on time. The navy's ships collided because their sailors lacked basic seamanship. Cholera killed more than combat. Florence Nightingale emerges as a self-righteous proselytiser who accomplished little in medical terms. The Earl of Cardigan, having led the Charge of the Light Brigade, returned to his yacht moored near Balaklava to a bottle of champagne and a bath. The approach taken in this book makes vivid this detailed account of the politics, people and battles of the Crimean War. - Ralph Benson