Paperbacks: The Body of Jonah Boyd<br></br> Cherry<br></br> Leopard VI, The Norwegian Feeling for Real<br></br> Taming the Beast<br></br> Alexander the Great<br></br> The Play Ethic<br></br> Around the World in 80 Treasures

"Wives be warned:" writes Judith "Denny" Denham, the narrator of David Leavitt's delightfully catty new novel, "It is not necessarily the glamorous woman...who is the female fatale." Denny, a secretary in the psychology department of a plush West Coast university, illustrates the point by sleeping with her boss, Freudian Ernest Wright. She may wear elasticised waistbands and men's Oxford shirts, but has "a fairly easy time attracting men". She is also in love with Nancy, Ernest's wife, but limits their relationship to a masochistic friendship in which she plays dowdy ingénue to Nancy's menopausal lush. Denny is invited to the Wright's infamous 1969 family Thanksgiving dinner. It's at this dinner that novelist Jonah Boyd entertains the assembled company with a reading from his work in progress, followed by a poetry reading by one of Nancy's gawky sons. When the time comes to leave, Jonah's notebooks are nowhere to be found. Twenty years later, his lost novel resurfaces - launching the career of a new literary star. Leavitt's fiction has been dominated by the question of literary theft. This entertaining period piece, like Leavitt's own life story, seems to suggest that goofing up in public can sometimes reap its own rewards.

Cherry, by Matt Thorne
PHOENIX £6.99 (179pp)

What would happen if a 33-year-old teacher, who hasn't had a girlfriend for 12 years, were set up with his perfect woman? Matt Thorne plays this scenario through to its entertaining, if ambiguous end. Steve Ellis is about to move back to his parents, when he's approached by what he assumes to be a dating service. Having specified his perfect partner and her name, Cherry, he is amazed to meet his fantasy woman in the flesh. A period of sensual nirvana follows, abruptly curtailed when Cherry's toe nails start to turn black. Thorne's smartly written novel has fun with a full complement of modern anxieties about relationships and sex.

Leopard VI, The Norwegian Feeling for Real, Ed Harald Bach-Wiig, Birgit Bjerck & Jan Kjaerstad
HARVILL £16.99 (269pp)

If you've always imagined Norway's fictional landscape to be dominated by folkloric family sagas and brooding personalities, you won't be disappointed in this enjoyable new collection of contemporary Norwegian short fiction. Stories by Karin Fossum, Jostein Gaarder and Lars Saabye Christensen are included alongside newly translated writers, all with a talent for spare, slow burn prose. The anthology's many delights include Lars Amud Vaage's "Cows" - a bovine love song to the Redpoll cow.

Taming the Beast, by Emily Maguire
SERPENT'S TAIL £10.99 (317pp)

Sarah Clark, an English Lit student, is on a mission to explore the obverse of "that whole Oprah idea of love". One of the most screwed-up girls in Sydney, she's seduced at the age of 14 by a sadistic schoolteacher, Mr Carr, and left desiring abusive sex. In a picaresque journey through the bedrooms of some of the city's seedier men, Sarah tries to apply the lessons of Emily Brontë and Shakespeare to her various encounters. Maguire's very readable prose treads a fine line between porn-lite and a more serious exploration of young desire.

Alexander the Great, by Paul Cartledge
PAN £8.99 (330pp)

Anyone bamboozled by Colin Farrell's Hollywooden Alexander - or any other pop version of the Macedonian superhero - should take a reality-check with Paul Cartledge. You'll find more flamboyant histories of Alex and his Asian conquests on the shelf, but nothing more wryly sceptical or quietly gripping than this "hunt for a new past". Cartledge shows that the myth-making began with Alexander himself, who moulded his public image and hired a historian, Callisthenes, as a sort of official spin-doctor. Students of politics won't be too surprised to learn that this hapless propagandist ended up tortured and hanged by his own boss.

The Play Ethic, by Pat Kane
PAN £8.99 (448pp)

Pat Kane is that extremely rare beast: a pop star turned management consultant. He is also, in his words, a "freelance intellectual", employed by businesses to teach them how to play. The Play Ethic is a testament to the range of his ideas, teeming with wry insights and an impressive range of allusions, from Kierkegaard to karaoke. He's particularly good on the government's obsession with a Protestant (and dour) work ethic. And not a paintball in sight.

Around the World in 80 Treasures, by Dan Cruickshank
PHOENIX £8.99 (333pp)

From Angkor Wat to the Alhambra, Machu Picchu to the Moscow Metro, one of the great TV enthusiasts waxes lyrical over these four-score iconic sites and objects. Did the Panama-topped scholar deserve that licence-payers' money? Absolutely, not just for the series, but for a book both solid and lively enough to transcend tie-in status. Cruickshank boasts breadth and depth, bubbling with as much glee over the VW Beetle as the Taj Mahal.