BOOK OF THE WEEK

The Mistress Of Paris: The 19th Century Courtesan Who Built An Empire On A Secret by Catherine Hewitt is published in hardback by Icon Books, priced £20 (ebook £8.79). Available now

In 1848, the Year of Revolutions, little Emilie-Louise Delabigne began her life in the worst slum in Paris, the illegitimate daughter of a laundress turned prostitute. Growing up on the streets whilst her mother entertained her clients, she learned her own trade early whilst working first as a poorly paid shop assistant and then as a bar girl in one of the racy new brasserie de femmes that catered to the male taste for pretty young women.

Playing bit parts as an actress, it soon became clear she had limited skills in that direction, but what she did have going for her was something even more special - her ethereal, flame-haired beauty, which attracted the attention of her first big catch, the composer Jacques Offenbach.

In 1878, a promising young writer named Emile Zola was researching the background to a novel which he wished to set in the Parisian demi-monde. Delabigne invited him to one of her stylish dinner parties and he repaid her kindness by immortalising her as the stupid and venal Nana.

But in truth, just as the best crooks are essentially honest, for a woman to make her way successfully as a 'grande horizontale', she had to be witty, cultured and clever. Over the years, Delabigne ruthlessly amassed and then wisely invested a huge fortune from lovers that included famous artists, top military men, aristocracy and royalty. Henri Gervex painted her in a fashionable crowd that included Edward, Prince of Wales and the future Tsar of Russia. She even felt confident enough to meddle in French colonial politics.

If Catherine Hewitt's well-researched and annotated biography has a fault, it is that, like Delabigne herself, she sometimes glosses over the reality of how the self-invented Comtesse Valtesse de la Bigne actually earned her living. Nevertheless, she has written a truly handsome boudoir book.

9/10

(Review by Liz Ryan)

FICTION

The Winter Isles by Antonia Senior is published in hardback by Corvus, priced £16.99 (£3.79). Available now

Scotland's sea-streaked, windswept history roars out of the pages of former Times journalist Antonia Senior's second novel like a wave of salt and blood. It retells the legend of Somerled, a 12th century warrior and tribe leader who lived during the post-Macbeth struggle to bring the Western Isles' culture under the heel of mainland feudal systems. As little is truly known about the man beyond his deeds - even his death is subject to two theories - Senior has space to build a tough world that verges on the fantastic in its Beowulf-like strangeness, while still being painfully real. Aside from the many warriors vital for Somerled's fight to claim land, clan and power, Senior populates her narrative with strong female characters; from the fiery Eimhear, who teaches Somerled how to swim, to his coarse, pagan mother Sigrdrifa, to beautiful Ragnhild, caught up with the politics of warring rulers. It's vicious, bloody, full of profanities - and completely gripping.

7/10

(Review by Natalie Bowen)

Numero Zero by Umberto Eco is published in hardback by Harvill Secker, priced £16.99 (ebook £9.99). Available now

Numero Zero is a novel of two stories: the shooting of Mussolini and his mistress in 1945, and that of Colonna, a writer in 1992 Milan who accepts the task of ghost-writing a journalist's memoir. The journalist in question - Braggadocio - is setting up a newspaper titled Domani (Tomorrow), financed by a magnate and not intended for actual publication. Instead, the financier's intention is to ruffle the feathers of the rich and powerful, in the hope they will bribe him to shut it down. A neat set-up, until Braggadocio uncovers a conspiracy involving Mussolini's death that turns out to be true... Though it contains all the skilful twists and turns you'd expect from Eco, it's certainly not one for those coming to him for the first time, and the pay-off isn't sufficiently satisfying. Nonetheless, the exploration of the nature of the media makes it a novel for our times.

6/10

(Review by Emma Herdman)

The Storm Sister by Lucinda Riley is published in hardback by Macmillan, priced £16.99 (ebook £6.59). Available now

Ally D'Apliese is enjoying a weekend break with her boyfriend, Theo, ahead of the Fastnet yacht race, when she learns of the death of her adoptive father, Pa Salt. On returning to the family home in Geneva, she discovers he has left her some clues to her origins and her birth family. When Theo drowns in the race, Ally decides to follow up the clues. Eventually, the trail takes her to Norway. Part love story, part historical drama, part Who Do You Think You Are?, this is the second book in Lucinda Riley's Seven Sisters series. It gets off to a promising, pacy start, but Ally's meandering, long-winded back story, one-dimensional characters and clunky dialogue - not to mention a predictable denouement that is obvious barely a quarter of the way in, and an unconvincing twist about the Norwegian composer Edvard Grieg - may deter all but die-hard Riley fans.

6/10

(Review by Catherine Small)

The Little Red Chairs by Edna O'Brien is published in hardback by Faber & Faber, priced £18.99 (ebook £7.80). Available now

Now into her sixth decade of writing - and 10 years on from her last novel - Edna O'Brien brings us a story of loss and homecoming, loosely based on the story of Serbian war criminal Radovan Karadzic. Dr Vladimir, a stranger with an Eastern European accent and a monastic demeanour, arrives in the small town of Cloonoila, Ireland, and sets up a clinic for New Age healing and sexual therapy. He begins an affair with Fidelma McBride, who falls pregnant, but when he is outed and arrested as the Butcher of Bosnia, she is forced to flee to London, where she finds herself as just one more refugee, another broken story amongst many. As an exploration of what it means to fit and find a home, it holds much promise, but the narrative is so meandering, and the cast of characters so vast, that the story rarely manages more than a host of well worn cliches.

4/10

(Review by Adam Weymouth)

NON-FICTION

John Le Carre: The Biography by Adam Sisman is published in hardback by Bloomsbury, priced £35 (ebook £11.88). Available now

John Le Carre - real name David Cornwall - has for decades enjoyed a status rare among writers: the acknowledged master of a genre whose work is also considered real literature. Yet, as the years have passed, and despite massive global success and countless film and TV adaptations - we seem to know less and less about him. This absorbing new doorstopper from Sisman - acclaimed biographer of AJP Taylor, Boswell and Hugh Trevor-Roper, a lifelong enemy of Cornwall's - promises to change all that, with an in-depth study informed by hundreds of hours' access to the man himself.

Much of the first half of the book recounts the exploits of Cornwall's father Ronnie, an incorrigible fraudster and womaniser, and will be familiar to readers of A Perfect Spy. Cornwall's mother fled when Cornwall was just five, leaving him to '16 hugless years' with Ronnie.

These twin betrayals, together with lonely years of bullying in boarding school, leave deep marks on the adult Cornwall. The clandestine duplicity of service in MI5 and later MI6 suits his emotionally stunted nature, though Sisman has to glean what he can of these years from other sources. Le Carre admits he was a spy nowadays, but remains reticent as to his actual activities.

After the overnight success of The Spy Who Came In From The Cold, Cornwall morphs into Le Carre, the full-time writer, and the latter half of the book is a blurry succession of stories researched (Cornwall still travels widely and dangerously to flesh out his plots), novels reviewed, and contracts negotiated.

Though witnesses queue up to testify to Cornwall's charisma, intelligence, sense of humour and amazing mimicry skills, it is hard to like him on this showing. He claims at one point that he married his first wife on the advice of MI5, and sends his sons to boarding school, despite his own traumatic experiences there. He forms intense, quasi-romantic relationships with a range of characterful males, while his second marriage comes across as a partnership with a literary helpmeet and personal assistant rather than a soulmate.

Though Sisman is at pains to point out that he is his own man - Cornwall gives access but has no right of veto - he comes across at times as the novelist's apologist, for instance, when discussing Cornwall's tax affairs or the paucity of well-drawn female characters in his oeuvre. The biographer's claim of fearless impartiality is not helped by his decision to refer to his subject throughout as 'David'.

The Le Carre persona has enabled us to project onto this much-loved novelist all the qualities we admire in his writing and characters. Inevitably, perhaps, Cornwall the man can only be diminished in the revealing of his flaws and errors. The mask has slipped, and we are the wiser and sadder for it.

7/10

(Review by Dan Brotzel)

New Words For Old: Recycling Our Language For The Modern World by Caroline Taggart is published in hardback by O'Mara Books, priced £9.99 (ebook £4.74). Available now

Our language had smoke and fog for a long time before we needed to combine them to describe "smog". And a "folder" only got its name because it's made by folding a piece of card. Caroline Taggart's latest lexical offering - her previous books covered grammar, idioms and "words you should know" - looks at how English repurposes its existing components when up against new concepts and inventions. It's a resourceful language. Taggart arranges her etymological studies in loosely thematic chapters containing individual entries on words with a few paragraphs of explanation apiece. With no overarching ideas wrapping it all up, it's an unsatisfying read as a whole, but taken in bits you'll feel like an instant linguistics expert. And it is a hard book to resist dipping into, if only to find out how your household "budget" owes its name to a spat between politicians in the eighteenth century.

6/10

(Review by Stephen Wood)

CHILDREN'S BOOK OF THE WEEK

Tales From Schwartzgarten: Marius And The Band Of Blood by Christopher William Hill is published in hardback by Orchard Books, priced £10.99 (ebook £7.49). Available now

Christopher William Hill returns with the fourth book in the Tales From Schwartsgarten series, a must for fans of Roald Dahl and Lemony Snicket. When Marius Myerdorf's parents are killed, he is sent to live with his great, great uncle Kalvitas in Schwartzgarten. But Marius is convinced his uncle really does not want him, so runs away and meets a society of orphans called the Band of Blood. Marius has many escapades whilst with the Band of Blood. But soon murders start happening around the town and it's up to Marius and his newfound friends to put a stop to it. But happy endings are not guaranteed. This book had plenty of twists and turns - it is a rollercoaster of a book. The storyline is so good it gets hard to put it down. The villains are well described and are extremely evil. But it gets confusing with so many characters. Marius's journey will leave you on the edge of your chair. If you prefer murderers to princes then this is the book for you.

8/10

(Review by Noah Sanders, aged 10)

BESTSELLERS FOR WEEK ENDING NOVEMBER 7

HARDBACKS

1. Old School: Diary Of A Wimpy Kid by Jeff Kinney

2. Even Dogs In The Wild by Ian Rankin

3. Grandpa's Great Escape by David Walliams

4. The Road To Little Dribbling: More Notes From A Small Island by Bill Bryson

5. When You Dead, You Dead by Guy Martin

6. Girl Online: On Tour by Zoe Sugg

7. Everyday Super Food by Jamie Oliver

8. Guinness World Records

9. The Girl On The Train by Paula Hawkins

10. Simply Nigella: Feel Good Food by Nigella Lawson

(Compiled by Waterstones)

PAPERBACKS

1. A Brief History Of Seven Killings by Marlon James

2. After The Crash by Michel Bussi

3. Harry Potter Colouring Book

4. The Haunted Hotel by Wilkie Collins

5. A Spool Of Blue Thread by Anne Tyler

6. March Violets by Philip Kerr

7. All The Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

8. My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante

9. Enchanted Forest: An Inky Quest And Colouring Book by Johanna Basford

10. The Tea Planter's Wife by Dinah Jefferies

(Compiled by Waterstones)

EBOOKS

1. The Girl With No Past by Kathryn Croft

2. The Cherry Tree Cafe by Heidi Swain

3. Dead Wrong by Helen Durrant

4. The Stranger by Harlan Coben

5. Lost Girls by Angela Marsons

6. Four Waifs on our Doorstep by Trisha Merry

7. The Runaway Family by Diney Costeloe

8. The Last Detective by Peter Lovesey

9. Little Black Lies by Sharon Bolton

10. Career of Evil by Robert Galbraith

(Compiled by amazon.co.uk)

ends