Viking £12.99 pp304

How this bestseller from America might survive the transition to Jane Austen-land proper could be a question asked by the book’s subject, a group that meets monthly in California to discuss Austen’s novels. It includes a French teacher, a lesbian, two schoolfriends in their fifties, and a token man who is really a science-fiction fan. Their individual stories cluster around their discussions, reflections and conclusions, but each borrows from an Austen parallel or predicament (the author hastens to the reader’s aid with helpful notes). You’ll either love the idea or hate it. If the former, the clever resonances brilliantly flesh out a homage to the Jane of Janes, a gentle satire on critical theory (the postmodernist or “pomo” Austen), and an affectionate salute to the pitfalls and problems of romance.

POPCO
by Scarlett Thomas

Fourth Estate £12.99 pp448

Alice is an employee of Popco, a hip, lateral-thinking toy company. Transported to a thought camp on Dartmoor, she is assigned to produce a killer brand for teenage girls. Alice is also engaged on another project: to solve the clues leading to a treasure on which her codebreaker grandfather spent his life. Named as one of the 20 Best British Young Writers, Thomas invests her novel with its fair share of “pomo” narrative techniques allied to a politically correct stance that takes to task modern business and branding. Stories unravel within stories, and there are elaborate riffs on codebreaking, mathematical theorems and the pure pleasure of the hunt through numbers. It is dense but not stodgy, ambitious, thought-provoking, fun and partisan — with an ending that gives a tick to all the right values.

LIGHT ON SNOW
by Anita Shreve

Time Warner £14.99 pp320

Twelve-year-old Nicky and her father, Robert, are in mourning after the car accident that killed her mother and baby sister. Formerly a successful architect, Robert, now unkempt and solitary, is a carpenter in the New England backwoods. The two of them exist on bitty meals, isolation and grief. Then, in the snowy run-up to Christmas, they discover an abandoned new-born baby in the woods. The subsequent investigation involves father and daughter in far more than the question of who or why anyone would do such a thing. It is a process that demands that they dig deep into themselves — and triggers a healing process for which they long. This is familiar Shreve territory, in which she deploys a fine and dextrous intelligence and formidable technical skills.

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