How were the Nazis possible?

"What is history, and where does it take place?" Sebastian Haffner's book isn't concerned with the type of history we learn at school. Great leaders take small roles in the narrative because "decisions that influence the course of history arise out of the individual experiences of thousands or millions of individuals." Defying Hitler is the memoir of one such individual and "offers direct answers to two questions [-] 'How were the Nazis possible?’ and ‘Why didn’t you stop them?’"

Extremely shoddy editing

Some people like to lie on a beach and do nothing on holiday. Robert, the English protagonist of Lawrence Osborne's Hunters in the Dark prefers to do nothing whilst upright. When we meet the 28-year-old teacher, he's crossing the border from Thailand to Cambodia, where the story is set. He'd just experienced "the happiest month of his life thus far. The happiest and also the vaguest: the two were connected." He has no firm plans for his remaining month other than to roam, and since there "would be little else to do here anyway" he visits a casino, plays roulette and wins some money. His holiday takes a more interesting turn after he meets a louche American called Simon.

Who knows what will work?

Before you think of getting into the movie business, do yourself a favour and read William Goldman's Adventures in the Screen Trade. Although it was written in the early 1980s, it rings true about what is generally known about the industry today.

It's split into three parts. The first part describes the industry in terms of its key players and elements. Stars "live in a world in which no one disagrees with them", agents "are not noted for human kindness", but above all, "not one person in the entire motion picture field knows for a certainty what's going to work".

Can she really be so naive?

Poor Aroon St Charles. In the opening chapter of Molly Keane's Good Behaviour she insists, "I do know how to behave .... All my life so far I have done everything for the best reasons and the most unselfish motives." She reminisces on why so many people she knew have been unhappy, even her bed-ridden Mummie, to whom she's taking a dish of rabbit quenelles for luncheon. What follows is a memoir of Aroon's life at Temple Alice in Ireland, the grand house owned by Mummie when the family had money. She documents relationships between family and friends, as well as those that work for them, shining a light on expectations of behaviour and propriety within the fast collapsing Anglo-Irish society of the early 20th century.

Deprivation of liberty is punishment all by itself

Incompetent, inadequate, spiteful, indifferent - these are just a few of the words that come to mind when considering the management of UK prisons as described in Chris Atkins's journal, A Bit of a Stretch: The Diaries of a Prisoner.

As the title explains, the book is an account of the author's experience in prison after being convicted of tax fraud. It's limited to the first 9 months of his sentence, which he spends in HMP Wandsworth. Urged on by some of his friends, he recorded his experience with the hope that his "unvarnished account will provide a strong argument for urgent prison reform".

How should people die?

Margaret Forster's Have the Men Had Enough? starts on a Sunday, at a McKay family lunch. Grandma, in the early stages of dementia, is at the table with her son Charlie, his wife Jenny, and their children Hannah and Adrian. Grandma doesn't live with them tho'. She has her own flat, paid for by Charlie, and is looked after by her daughter Bridget and a team of helpers.

The story is narrated by Jenny and Hannah in alternate chapters. They share their thoughts about how their relatives behave, and their frustrations about caring for Grandma, whom they both love. But love is not enough to help them decide what is in Grandma's best interests as her health deteriorates.

Everyone can be exploitable in moments of weakness

Going Dark is the result of Julia Ebner's "personal research" into how extremists use social media, online forums, trolling and hacking in order to radicalise individuals.

Six parts deal with different stages in the radicalisation process: recruitment, socialisation, communication, networking, mobilisation, and attack. A final section looks at potential developments over the next five years and then suggests action we might take in 2020.

Is this the future of child birth?

Anne Charnock's Dreams Before the Start of Time is a story that speculates on the future of child birth. It uses as its basis the current state of research and development in human reproduction, including egg production, impregnation, genetic modification and artificial wombs.

The story begins in 2034 with friends Millie and Toni. Millie wants a baby and chooses donor insemination because it's not the right time for her partner Aiden. Toni becomes pregnant unintentionally and naturally by her partner Atticus. For the next 75 years the book follows the lives of their children, families, and people who are influenced by their choices.

To avenge her father's blood

Many will know the story of True Grit having seen one of the two screen versions. Charles Portis's book is nonetheless well worth the read, even if you know the ending.

It's narrated by Mattie Ross, a Presbyterian, middle-aged, successful business woman. She tells the story of how, when she was 14, her father was killed by Tom Chaney. Determined to avenge his death she employs a US marshal to track the murderer down. Rooster Cogburn is her choice, the meanest one, "a pitiless man, double-tough, and fear don't enter into his thinking. He loves to pull a cork."

For fans of John le Carré

At the end of The Night Manager, John le Carré discusses plot and character differences that were used in the 2015 TV adaptation of his book. Let me say, up front, that I preferred the screen version.

The story is set in the early 1990s and opens with the eponymous night manager, Jonathan Pine, waiting for hotel guests to arrive. He's thinking about the death a few years earlier, of Sophie, a woman he slept with and who was killed, probably on the orders of "the worst man in the world", Richard Onslow Roper. Pine blames himself, as well as Roper, for Sophie's death, and it is Roper and his party who are expected at the hotel.

How do you define working class?

"How can you call yourself working class when you live on the French Riviera?" Good question, and one I've been asked several times. Maybe I'm no longer working class? Perhaps the Dead Ink publication Know Your Place: Essays on the Working Class by the Working Class will provide an answer.

The book is a collection of 23 essays, written "in response to a tweet that, in the aftermath of the EU referendum, requested someone produce a 'State of the Nation' book of working class voices". But how to define the working class? The editor tells us that the authors "self-identify as working class or [as] from a working class background".

Those who leave home, and those who don't

An American Marriage is an odd title for this book by Tayari Jones. True, it's set in America and it follows what happens to a married couple when the husband is wrongly imprisoned. But the story is about much more.

Three characters narrate the tale: Roy, his wife Celestial, and her friend since childhood, Andre, who was also Roy's friend at college. They slowly reveal how Roy and Celestial met, what their parents are like, and how Roy came to be in prison for five years. We also find out how Celestial coped during those five years, and what happened to their relationship when Roy was released.

A mysterious distribution of chapatis

I had high expectations for The Siege of Krishnapur, perhaps too high.

JG Farrell's book is a fictionalised account of the 1857 Indian Mutiny and Siege of Lucknow. It's nearly all set in the British residency in Krishnapur, North India, and features a cast of characters of whom the Collector is perhaps the most important. He's obsessed with the 1851 Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations that was staged in London.

It was grim oop North

If you want a cosy story that takes you out of your day-to-day existence, Pat Barker's Union Street is definitely not for you. It contains seven chapters, each tracing the story of a woman who lives on the eponymous street. Other reviewers have described the book as dark, but it's more accurate to label it as authentic, or truthful.

It's set in the early 1970s in north east England, when industry was in decline and traditional working class communities and values were beginning to fracture.

Greatly appreciated in the midst of mud and rain and shells

The thing about Richard Hannay, protagonist of The Thirty-Nine Steps, is that he's bored. "I was tired of seeing sights, and in less than a month I had had enough of restaurants and theatres and race-meetings" he tells us. In other words, he wants an adventure. If John Buchan hadn't made this so obvious in the first paragraphs of his book, it would be impossible to suspend belief and follow the frankly ludicrous story.

Consequences of the little misplacement of a silver thimble

The Abbess of Crewe is about the political manoeuvering of Alexandra, who has recently been elected as the head of the Abbey of Crewe. In the first few pages we learn that her ancestry is impeccable, "fourteen generations of pale and ruling ancestors of England, and ten before them of France", she has electronically bugged the Abbey to listen to the nuns's conversations, and she has a secret, "most profitable pact" with the Jesuits. She also has a plan to discredit Felicity, the only other contender for the position of Abbess, which unexpectedly results in an "international newspaper scandal." The remainder of the book explains what happened, and how it started "merely from the little misplacement, or at most the theft, of Sister Felicity's silver thimble".

Rather a sad tale

The Vet's Daughter is a curious, gothic, magical tale. It follows the adolescent Alice Rowlands, as her mother becomes ill, dies and is replaced with Rosa the "strumpet" by her cruel father. Life is neither easy nor happy for Alice.

Barbara Comyns tells her story in a simple and straightforward style, rather like a fairy tale. The characters are mostly grotesque and mostly concerned only with their own lives. It's rather a sad tale.

I loathed Mexico

Graham Greene "was commissioned to write a book on the religious situation" in Mexico in 1938, which resulted in The Lawless Roads travel memoir, as well as inspiring his novel The Power and the Glory.

"I loathed Mexico" admits Greene, and after reading of his experiences it's no surprise. He travels by bus, train, boat and plane, but most memorably over the mountains by mule. He stays on the border, visits Mexico City, and promised himself to spend Holy Week "in Catholic Las Casas, to see how it was observed in a city where the churches were open - so I was told - but the priests not allowed inside." His travels are filled with mosquitos, black beetles, discomfort and dysentery, and yet on his return home Greene tried to remember his hatred. Like many travellers he finds "a bad time over is always tinged with regret."

Why Bournemouth?

There's no hanging around waiting for things to happen in The Fog. James Herbert has disaster strike at the end of the first chapter and follows up with scenes of violence and madness that tumble one after the other. It's as if he's imagined as many unconnected examples of people and animals behaving in a deranged, uncontrolled way as possible, then makes up the "fog" as a spurious device to link them. About half way through, after the Bournemouth episode, the plot eventually kicks in and the authorities, aided by the hero Holman, must work out how to stop the horror.

Grey Goose vodka, Louboutins, and Miu Miu

It's difficult to read Luke Jennings's Codename Villanelle without imagining the Killing Eve TV series (see trailer below), but here goes.

The book opens in an Italian lakeside villa where a group of twelve men are meeting to discuss their European business interests, which are being threatened by a Sicilian mafia boss. The men unanimously decide he must be killed. We then meet the assassin Villanelle and her handler Konstantin.