Curiosities of Literature: A Book-lover's Anthology of Literary Erudition, by John Sutherland
Random House, £12.99 Buy the book

Sutherland invokes Isaac D'Israeli's gossiping Curiosities of Literature as the inspiration for this whimsical miscellany of literary quiddities, savagely illustrated by Martin Rowson, haphazardly arranged by catch-all themes from “Literary Baked Meats” to “Morbid Curiosity” and terminated by a short quiz labelled “Curious Connections” to which he provides answers in a chuckling, donnish tone. The prose is punctuated by little asides, pert, personal and peppery, seasoning for a warmed-over olla podrida of literary anecdote and authorial arcana.

The Last Jews of Kerala by Edna Fernandes
Portobello, £16.99 Buy the book

The extinction of the few remaining Jews of the Indian city of Cochin (many of them emigrated to Israel in the late 1940s) is imminent, mainly because of their own wilful custom of apartheid: the White Jews of Kerala oppress and disdain to intermarry with the Black Jews of Kerala. Fernandes, a modern young Anglo-Indian journalist, can't help a tone of exasperation with the Kerala Jews who are no longer adaptable to the wider world. They and their culture will vanish and only this short, tragic testament will memorialise them.

The Terminal Spy: The Life and Death of Alexander Litvinenko, by Alan Cowell
Doubleday, £16.99 Buy the book

“A True Story of Espionage, Betrayal and Murder”, by the London bureau chief of The New York Times, locates Litvinenko, poisoned by a rare radioactive isotope, in a seedy London of conspiratorial expatriates caught between political dream and personal reality, taking in each other's dirty laundry in the form of information traded as a commodity in their attempts to destabilise the “new Russia” and, in particular, the presidency of Vladimir Putin. Cowell fleshes out an analysis of the Litvinenko case with circumstantial detail worthy of a good spy novel.

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