Father and son still racing ahead
	11:56am Thu 28 Aug 08
	Two years of ill health, which began with major heart surgery and ended in a leg amputation, have not deterred Dick Francis from racing ahead with another surefire best-seller - with the help of his son, Felix.

Destruction of civilisation

11:55am Thursday 28th August 2008

Comanche Empire Pekka Hamalainen (Yale, £25) Books on the American West tend to overlook the immense contibution to the nation of the Indian tribes, except perhaps to focus on their ultimate tragedy (Dee Brown's Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee is the epic of this genre). The Comanches, who roamed vast tracts of land from Louisiana and Mexico to the Rockies, were a gifted tribe who knew the value of nature. Three million bison and a million wild horses were their heritage, giving them a sound foundation in economic power. French withdrawal from North America and Spanish weakness gave them freedom of the grasslands and this would sustain them for more than a century. In a cultural sense, they ruled an empire. The Civil War was the catalyst of destruction along with the greed of ranchers, "an invasion they could not stop nor escape". The infamous reservations awaited. Hamalainen has done a great service with this fascinating saga of Comanche history and lifestyle.

Paradise lost

11:53am Thursday 28th August 2008

Paradise Lost: Smyrna 1922 Giles Milton (Sceptre, £20) While British soldiers were losing their lives in Gallipoli, life in the Ottoman Empire was exceptionally good just a short distance away. The city of Smyrna - now Ismir in Turkey - had all the blessings of a peaceful history bestowed on it. Its cosmopolitan citizens, including fabulously rich Levantine families, Jews, Armenians and Greeks, enjoyed a social life of opera and yachting unrivalled anywhere in the world. In one of the greatest massacres in modern history, all this came to an end in 1922 when Turkish soldiers - reacting to occupation by the Greeks - wiped out the city with an orgy of looting, rape and arson.

Follow the money

11:51am Thursday 28th August 2008

A SPLENDID EXCHANGE: HOW TRADE SHAPED THE WORLD William Bernstein (Atlantic Books, £22)My reading of A Splendid Exchange was interrupted by a breaking news e-mail from the BBC: Geneva talks to liberalise global trade collapse'. World trade, if you think about it, is extraordinary. Much to the British phonographic Industry's chagrin, I can personally import a CD or DVD from Hong Kong for less than the cost of buying the same from HMV or Zavvi.

Light reading

11:49am Thursday 28th August 2008

THE UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS OF SCONES Alexander McCall Smith (Polygon, £14.99) A few years ago, this prolific author started writing a serial about the goings-on in a shared house in Edinburgh's Scotland Street, and the episodes were published in The Scotsman. The episodes were collected for the first book in the series, entitled 44, Scotland Street.

Gritty story

11:48am Thursday 28th August 2008

MUSE Susan Irvine (Quercus, £14.99)Susan Irvine's début centres on the meltdown of a young stylist after a life-changing trip to Paris. Naomi Price spends a week with the beautiful Sylvie and Sergei, living her life to the full and letting her imagination lead her on. She meets Eric, a shy hotel porter, who starts to send her romantic letters and poems.

Behind the scenes

11:47am Thursday 28th August 2008

Now that the Olympics have finished, it is a good time to search out the historic secrets of the vast land which hosted them.

The cook and the millionaire

3:11pm Thursday 21st August 2008

Local newspaper archives can provide a mine of background information to authors writing a period novel. The adverts are particularly useful, as Oxford-born author Bethan Roberts soon discovered when she began working on her second novel The Good Plain Cook.

Paperback choice

2:59pm Thursday 21st August 2008

The Duchess: Georgiana Duchess of Devonshire Amanda Foreman (Harper Perennial, £7.99) Foreman has been criticised by more staid biographers for sexing up this story about an 18th-century heiress. She makes much of the fact that Georgiana was the great-great-great-great aunt of Diana, Princess of Wales, with echoes of phrases such as "there are three people in this marriage". But it's a great story, with plenty of intrigue and adultery, told in a readable way. Georgiana was a compulsive gambler, a political savant and a crafty operator, a drug addict, an adulteress - and the darling of the common people, we are told. Foreman, who wrote the book at the age of 24 while researching her doctorate at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, has made her fortune. This edition of the book coincides with the release of a film starring Keira Knightley and Ralph Fiennes, out on September 5.

Stories about mothers and daughters

2:58pm Thursday 21st August 2008

Mothers and daughters - who would have them? Here are two books with this particular relationship as the main theme. They are very different books, with a complicated, topsy-turvy, seesaw balance and imbalance between the generations.

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