Paperbacks: The Grandmothers<br/>Telling Tales<br/>An Ignoble Profession<br/>Her Name Was Lola<br/>The Letters of Vita Sackville-West and Virginia Woolf<br/>Global Warming<br/>After the Dance

There's something a little kinky about the enjoyable opening story of Lessing's latest collection, which gives the book its title.

The Grandmothers by Doris Lessing (HARPERPERENNIAL £7.99 (311pp))

There's something a little kinky about the enjoyable opening story of Lessing's latest collection, which gives the book its title. In this short novelette exploring the boundaries of maternal and sexual love, the denouement is unexpected, but entirely plausible. Set on an idyllic seaside promontory, somewhere new-world and hot, the story follows the friendship of the childhood friends Lil and Roz. Successful, talented, handsome women, they marry no less desirable men. After the birth of their children, however, the men drift in and out of the picture, eventually claimed by death and divorce. Long days are spent at the beach as Roz and Lil watch their babies turn into beautiful, sun-kissed adolescents. Sleepovers, however, start to take on a whole new meaning when the two mothers embark on relationships with each other's sons. The emotional savvy that Lessing here brings to bear is evident throughout the collection. In "Victoria and the Staveneys", Lessing, in waspish mode, describes how a well-meaning Hampstead family responds to news of a mixed-race grandchild; while her futuristic parable, "The Reason For It", points the finger at the failings of contemporary culture. EH

Telling Tales Ed. Nadine Gordimer (BLOOMSBURY £7.99 (303pp))

Gordimer, inspired by the likes of Busted and McFly, decided it was time that writers did their bit for an international good cause. In Bob Geldof mode, she persuaded fellow writers to contribute a short story free of charge to help raise money to fight HIV/Aids in Africa. Some of the world's scariest eggheads feature in her top 20 countdown: Arthur Miller and Gabriel Garcia Marquez taking the stage, with warm-up acts Salman Rushdie, Susan Sontag and Günter Grass. There's no literary equivalents of The Sugababes, then, though there is a story entitled "Sugar Baby", penned by Chinua Achebe. EH

An Ignoble Profession by Louis Sanders (SERPENT'S TAIL £8.99 (153pp))

The French novelist Sanders, author of Death in the Dordogne, sets his latest Anglo-French intrigue among a community of disenchanted expats. Settled in the more dismal outposts of the Périgord, these couples are about to face exposure with the publication of an anonymous roman à clef. No household, it seems, is without its secrets. Sanders's cast of bored retirees is confusing; the wives are either alcoholics or horse-riders, the husbands gun-toting alcoholics. The novel's murder mystery loses its way in a wintry landscape of marital spats and petty humiliations. EH

Her Name Was Lola by Russell Hoban (BLOOMSBURY £6.99 (207pp))

Even if you don't feel at home in his fictional world, Hoban's story-telling skills are never in doubt. His 12th novel gets off to a dramatic start. Max Lesser, who "writes novels that don't sell, picture books that do", is leapt on in the Tube by a foul-smelling dwarf. This is the god of forgetfulness, sent to punish him by a woman he betrayed four years before. The history of their affair unfolds against a backdrop of London landmarks; at the same time we are treated to Lesser's fictional version of Lola's life since leaving him. Hoban offers us offbeat adventures in a very real world. EH

The Letters of Vita Sackville-West and Virginia Woolf Ed. DeSalvo & Leaska (CLEIS £11.99 (448pp))

In the flood of books on Bloomsbury, here's one that's worth a second glance. Not for its introduction, which presents slightly dotty psychoanalytical theories as fact, but for the blazing brilliance of the letters themselves. They're a salutary reminder, in the age of e-mail, of the way that tortured souls and extraordinary lives were once spilt in ink and preserved. Woolf's prose glitters, of course, with the quivering wit that launched 1,000 PhDs, but so does that of her aristocratic lover: "What is love or sex, compared to the intensity of the life one leads in one's book?" Indeed. CP

Global Warming by Mark Maslin (OUP £6.99 (162pp))

A timely counterblast to the eco-sceptic extremism of Michael Crichton ( see 'A Week in Books', page 20), Maslin's primer (one of Oxford's fine "Very Short Introductions") packs an amazing quantity and quality of data and debate into its brief span. He surveys the theories, the evidence, the politics, the proposed fixes - and gives a fair hearing to doubters and scoffers. But their claims fail, abjectly. As the book concludes: "Climate is an ill-tempered beast, and we are poking it with sticks." BT

After the Dance by Edwidge Danticat (VINTAGE £6.99 (158pp))

Think Haiti: violence, voodoo, tyranny. Think again, beyond all the clichés. Danticat, the Haitian-American writer whose novels tell the moving and tragic truth about her native island, had fixed ideas of her own about the carnival in Jacmel. This gem of lyrical reportage takes her from behind a "mask of distant observer" into the heart of a "massive stream of joy", filling in the history and folklore behind the steamy surface. If you need a sensual, magical but fiercely intelligent stocking-filler - here it is. BT