Paperbacks: After the Plague <br></br>Kind of Blue <br></br>Don't Look Back <br></br>Flights of Love <br></br>Standard Time

After the Plague, by T C Boyle (Bloomsbury, £6.99, 303pp

Sniper attacks, terrorist bombings and anthrax scares – all these emergencies are run-of-the-mill happenings in a T C Boyle short story. Indeed, it's almost as if they invent America before it happens.

The collection's title story is an end-of-the-world scenario in which the narrator finds himself one of the few survivors of a virulent, Ebola-like virus. Hidden away in a writer's retreat in the Sierra foothills, he manages to escape a plague that wipes out not only most of the inhabitants of California, but the rest of the world as well. Left to fend for himself, he forages for bottled marinara and tinned asparagus, and passes the time having unsatisfactory sex (with another survivor) and reading John Cheever. Being a T C Boyle story, generous helpings of humour, cynicism and authorial cleverness go into concocting an eccentric survivalist brew, which eventually resolves itself as a surprisingly optimistic West Coast version of Adam and Eve.

Unlike many contemporary short story writers, Boyle isn't afraid of action, though at times the off-kilter energy of his writing might leave you pining after a moment of quiet epiphany. In the opening story, "Termination Dust", a group of Alaskan fur-trappers vie for the sexual favours of a group of imported single females – the resulting violence erupting "like the foam" in a loose can of beer.

Among the futuristic spoofs and offbeat, outdoorsie adventures, however, Boyle has squirrelled away some more traditional tales of love on the rocks. Though traditional may not be the right word – one especially doomed college romance climaxes in illicit childbirth, and another ends with a date rape. Whatever the case, though, T C Boyle's Californians will always do their level best to hasten their own freaky demise.

Kind of Blue, by Ashley Kahn (Granta, £12.99, 224pp)

There's a paradox at the core of this inspiring book, but it won't spoil any fan's delight in a definitive account of "the making of the Miles Davis masterpiece" in 1959. Superbly adorned with rare photographs, Ashley Kahn's record of genius at work shows with care and sensitivity how Davis, Bill Evans, John Coltrane and "Cannonball" Adderley came together to create one of the peaks, not just of modern jazz, but of Late Modernist art. And therein lies the conundrum: Kahn lavishes description on work rooted in modest, minimalist musical gestures. He compares the album's style to the Japanese principle of "Shibui". From next to nothing, Davis et al crafted a perfect world of sound and feeling. "So what", as a classic track asks. So what, indeed.

Don't Look Back, by Karin Fossum (Harvill, £9.99, 252pp)

More Ruth Rendell than Peter Hoeg, Karin Fossum is known in her native Norway for her popular detective novels featuring the plain-speaking Inspector Sejer. Don't Look Back, the first in the series, is a murder-mystery set among the fleeced-up inhabitants of a quiet mountain village. Sejer stumbles across the corpse of a young jogger while investigating a missing six-year-old. Domestic Sturm und Drang lie at the heart of this cosily plotted Nordic chiller.

Flights of Love, by Bernhard Schlink (Phoenix, £6.99, 308pp)

Law professor and mystery writer Bernhard Schlink courted praise (from Oprah) and condemnation (from Holocaust academics) after the publication of The Reader – about a man whose life was dominated by a teenage affair with a woman later exposed as an SS guard. Schlink's first collection of stories also explores questions of guilt and choice, in the sexual and cultural arenas. Many of them concern the romantic lives of middle-aged lawyers, men generally protected from passion by money and success. What his stories lack in emotion, they make up for in sheer Teutonic style.

Standard Time, by Keith Ridgway (Faber & Faber, £6.99, 248pp)

A talented teller of intimate tales, Dublin-born Keith Ridgway specialises in short stories that probe the more fleeting nuances of behaviour. His narrators – gay men, daughters-in-law, religious maniacs – are shrewd and eloquent observers of their own fates. Negotiating their way through love, lust and anger, they ask the reader to collude in the business of giving their lives meaning – while giving the impression of being more emotionally sorted than most. "Put one story behind you and start another," remarks one of his characters, after dumping his lover of five years in an alien hotel room. "All you can do is decide where to begin."