Paperbacks: The Door <br/> Midnight Cactus <br/> Get A Life <br/> The House of Subadar <br/> Sunbathing in the Rain <br/> Dream Boogie <br/> The Good European

The Door, by Magda Szabó trans. Len Rix (VINTAGE £7.99 (261pp))

Master and servant relationships can throw up all manner of sinister scenarios, and this Hungarian classic does justice to most of them. Originally published 20 years ago, and shortlisted for this year's Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, Magda Szabó's multi-layered novel opens with a middle-aged novelist remembering a period in her life that she'd rather forget. On the brink of literary and financial success, the novel's young narrator decides to look for a housekeeper. She hires Emerence, a local old crone known for her Valkyrian strength and devotion to bleach. The perfect domestic, Emerence keeps her employer's flat immaculate and disdains small talk. It's only after a couple of furious showdowns that we begin to doubt Emerence's sanity. One "Virgilian" night she confides that, as a child, she saw her brother and sister burnt to a crisp by lightning. There are also rumours that behind Emerence's permanently locked front door lies a cache of death-camp treasures. As the relationship between the two women deepens, so too do the possibilities for betrayal. The writer puts Emerence's more bizarre behaviour down to a troubled wartime past, but the reader begins to suspect a more folkloric force at work. Szabó combines myth and history in a memorably toxic mix. EH

Midnight Cactus, by Bella Pollen (PAN £6.99 (436pp))

Loosely based on her own mid-life crisis, Pollen's fourth novel is cow-girl escapism for mums on the school run. Taking a break from married life, London mother Alice Coleman decides to take her two young children, Jack and Emmy, out of school and transplant them to the Arizona desert. The novel invites us to live on the edge as Alice's children survive on Twinkies and Pop Tarts, while she goes off in search of adventure on the Mexican border. An impassioned blockbuster which does justice to life in the South-west: its harsh beauty, and the plight of illegal immigrants left to negotiate its treacherous mountain passes. EH

Get A Life, by Nadine Gordimer (BLOOMSBURY £7.99 (187pp))

Now in her eighties, Nadine Gordimer has spent a lifetime chronicling the malaise at the heart of white South Africa. In her 14th novel, she writes about sickness on a more personal level. Ecologist Paul Bannerman is 35 when he is diagnosed with thyroid cancer. After radical treatment leaves him radioactive, he returns to his parents' home to protect his young family from the effects of radiation. His spell of isolation prompts his liberal lawyer mother to re-examine her own life. Gordimer has many valid points to make about segregation, but there are times when her unconventional prose-style hampers the story's natural momentum. EH

The House of Subadar, by Vijay Medtia (BLACKAMBER £11.99 (194pp))

Newly released from prison for the murder of a local debt collector, Veer Subadar returns home to find that the family farm has been repossessed by the bank. There is little option but to lead his parents and grandparents in an epic, Grapes of Wrath-style trek from their community in north-west India through Gujarat and Rajasthan, with the hope of starting over in Bombay. Medtia's unpretentious and evocative debut captures the realities of life on the road. The threat of religious upheaval and violence is never far away. EH

Sunbathing in the Rain, by Gwyneth Lewis (HARPERPERENNIAL £7.99 (245pp))

"Every serious episode of depression," says Gwyneth Lewis in the introduction to her excellent book, "is a murder mystery. Your old self is gone and in its place is a ghost". Drawing with painful honesty on her own experiences when life beyond the duvet seemed unendurable, this wise, witty and strangely cheerful book offers solace, common sense and plenty of practical tips. In the process, she explodes a few myths - that misery is necessary for poetry, for example - and draws on an eclectic range of sources. Prayer helps, apparently, and so do the mystics, nail varnish and Hello! CP

Dream Boogie, by Peter Guralnick (ABACUS £12.99 (747pp))

Does a Chicago soul singer dead at 33 in a motel brawl need a meticulous monster of a life? When the subject is the angel-voiced, demon-driven Sam Cooke, and the author Guralnick (the finest Elvis biographer by far), "yes" is the answer. Weaving private passions with the public dramas of race, rights and pop culture, he turns Cooke's ascent from cherubic Gospel crooner to business-minded sex god into an epic, then a tragic, American tale. BT

The Good European, by Iain Bamforth (CARCANET £16.95 (317pp))

A Strasbourg-based Scots doctor with a sweeping literary range, Bamforth is well qualified to offer this lively and learned collection of essays and reviews on European culture, past and present. Wittily irreverent, but drily nostalgic for a lost idealism, he moves easily from Berlin to Santiago, Sebald to Céline. This civilised and entertaining quest aims to locate what's left of Europe in the ruins of its grandiose dreams. BT

To order these books call: 0870 079 8897