The magnificent seven

    Here are the most recent arrivals, seven very different books which promise much in the way of interest and entertainment.
From the left, Jane's Fame: How Jane Austen Conquered the World by Claire Harman (and not without controversy) is part biography and part cultural history, exploring "the changing status of [Jane Austen's] work", its reception and its draw for the modern reader - and indeed viewer.
Next, D.J. Taylor's Ask Alice: "A wonderful novel of concealment and subterfuge, sweeping from Kansas to London, from 1904 to 1936...about a woman's rise and fall, the chances she takes and the secret which will undo her".
It's not unusual for books to be collaborative efforts, but quite uncommon, I should think, for the team to comprise mother and son.The authors of the third book there are just that, and in Bozo Sapiens: Why to Err Is Human Michael and Ellen Kaplan explore why the human species gets things wrong, in big ways and small. A quick dip into this marvellously comprehensive book suggests its lively and erudite analysis is done with a great deal of wit and charm, and I can attest to the fact that opening it at random leaves you quite unable to put it down!
From human error to an erring human, as next in line is Lilian Pizzichini's The Blue Hour: A Portrait of Jean Rhys. Rhys led a troubled life and this is "a stunning portrait of a complex, tortured woman, a loving ode to one of the most important writers of the twentieth century, and a biography of the first order".
Another novel, and Georgina Harding's The Spy Game is set in 1961 London when eight-year-old Anna's mother disappears into the fog. Obsessed by stories of the Cold War, Anna's brother Peter begins to believe their mother is a spy, and what follows is "a beautifully wrought novel about loss, history, memory and imagination, and the way in which we shape these to construct our own identities".
I've already mentioned The Adventures of Margery Allingham by Julia Jones as it sounded like a "must read", and here it is, just waiting to draw me in to Margery's world and that of her books.
And lastly, as a huge fan of Cold Comfort Farm, I am looking forward to reading Stella Gibbons' Nightingale Wood. Sophie Dahl says in her introduction to it, " There is romance galore: a transformative dress and a ball; much dizzy kissing in hedgerows and beyond; ... poetry and heartbreak...and a fairy-tale ending with a twist"!
All quite magnificent, don't you think?