Paperbacks: <br></br>The Little Friend; <br></br>The Crimson Petal and the White; <br></br>The Crazed; <br></br>The Songs of the Kings; <br></br>Postmodern Pooh; <br></br>The Child of an Ancient People; <br></br>On Modern British Fiction

The Little Friend, by Donna Tartt
Bloomsbury £7.99 (555pp)

Every great Southern writer has a coming-of-age novel in them, and Donna Tartt's long-awaited second book is just that. Set in Mississipp , the author's home-state, The Little Friend is as different a beast from Tartt's cult debut, The Secret History, as a snowy Vermont campus is from a plantation porch.

The novel opens with the death of a child. Robin Cleve Dufresnes is nine years old when he's found hanging from the branch of a black tupelo tree. It's an event from which his family never recover. 12 years on and Robin's younger sister, Harriet becomes fixated on avenging his death. Like Harper Lee's "Scout", Harriet is a serious-minded young girl whose heroes are Robert Louis Stevenson and Joan of Arc. Convinced that Robin's murderer must be one of her brother's former class mates, Harriet settles on Danny Ratliff as suspect numero uno - a redneck from the wrong side of the tracks.

The best parts of the novel, however, aren't Harriet's inconclusive investigations into Robin's death, but Tartt's portrait of a family which is forced to add a nightmarish coda to its usually sunny history. Tartt's depiction of Harriet's relationships with her tough-love granny and eggnog-drinking great-aunts linger long after the novel's more dramatic set pieces fade. Less self-consciously literary than the The Secret History, Tartt's second novel takes time to unearth all the emotional archaeology - particularly childhood's more mystifying relics. EH

The Crimson Petal and the White, by Michel Faber
Canongate £8.99 (835pp)

Michel's Faber's previous fiction has mainly consisted of quirky novelettes about distinctly neurotic types. It's hard, then, to believe that this sprawling pastiche issues from the same pen. Set in 1870s London, the novel follows the progress of a prostitute called Sugar - a woman determined to write up the secrets of her trade. Under the auspices of her favourite client, she insinuates herself into middle-class life and eventually his family home in Notting Hill. Like Sarah Waters's historical fiction, Faber reaches the places Dickens couldn't touch. EH

The Crazed, by Ha Jin
Vintage £6.99 (323pp)

At the start of Ha Jin's latest novel a distinguished Chinese academic, Professor Yang, suffers a stroke that leaves him dangerously garrulous. In the presence of his prospective son-in-law he starts to rant about Chairman Mao, Dante and women's breasts. In turn, the ever attentive Jian, himself a literary scholar, is prompted to reflect on his own career. But before all this internalising gets too much, the novel moves out of the hospital room and into the villages of rural China, where the dialogue and cuisine perk up no end. Every character in this appealing book is low-level depressed. EH

The Songs of the Kings, by Barry Unsworth
Penguin £7.99 (245pp)

Barry Unsworth's latest historical novel, a prequel to The Iliad, shares many of the drawbacks of a classical text. It is authentically archaic in tone, with a lot of embarking and disembarking going on by heroes whose genealogy it's easy to forget. The action starts in a state of stasis with Agamemnon's invasion fleet confined to Aulis by an ill wind. Corruption in the camp is rife, and soon the troops are baying for blood. Unsworth's prose may be portentous, but his gloss is contemporary - with Achilles cast as homicidal maniac, Ajax as a hygiene freak and Odysseus as spin-doctor. EH

Postmodern Pooh, by Frederick Crews
Profile Books £6.99 (175pp)

Nearly 40 years on from The Pooh Perplex, his hilarious send-up of post-war academic trends, Frederick Crews has hit the spot again. Postmodern Pooh benefits, if such a thing is possible, from the rise of literary theory and its more peculiar manifestations in the groves of academe. Ostensibly a collection of papers given at a Pooh conference in Washington, it includes priceless offerings from a Lacanian postcolonialist, a poststructuralist Marxist and Sisera Catheter, a radical feminist. The footnotes are as brilliant as what a postmodernist would insist on calling the text. CP

The Child of an Ancient People, by Anouar Benmalek
Harvill £10.99 (245pp)

Raised in Algeria, based in France, Benmalek chooses a hero and heroine from his twin countries in this bold and gripping 19th-century adventure. Lislei, jailed survivor of the 1871 Paris Commune, falls for the captured Saharan prince, Kader. Together the outcast couple embark for Australia, along with a Tasmanian Aboriginal boy. Benmalek's account of colonial-era cruelties comes embedded in a fast-moving, richly-painted romance of the oceans and deserts (nippily translated by Andrew Riemer). Fans of Matthew Kneale's English Passengers will relish this dramatic voyage. BT

On Modern British Fiction. Ed. Zachary Leader
Oxford £8.99 (319pp)

If the Booker wrangles send you in search of a map of recent UK fiction, this collection will prove a mixed blessing. These 17 essays don't add up to a full survey. Instead, the volume mixes critical studies (on PD James, Angus Wilson, 'LadLit' etc) and personal pieces from starry names: Martin Amis, Hilary Mantel, Ian McEwan. The outcome is persuasive on the 1940s-1970s period, but pretty patchy on the past two decades. Come here to grasp Isherwood, not Ishiguro. BT