Exploring the lingering influence of the Inquisition, Murphy's lively book may provoke an exasperated grunt when he quotes Delores Umbridge, the Hogwarts inquisitor.

Weird book utilises staccato illiteracy of Tweeters to explain cosmology. Here's one sentence: "VLBI [Very Long Baseline Interferometry] mere factor of 2-3 away from 'seeing' Sagittarius A*'s event horizon."

Think beyond the can and try your hand at cassoulets and Boston baked beans, says Christopher Hirst

Books analysing humour tend to be bereft of humour but Bevis quells our fears: "[Comedy] means to put your shoes on the wrong feet."

Entertaining and occasionally startling, this personal view by a transplanted German explores the reasons for the differences between two very similar countries.

Can these "travels through unloved Britain" really be as bad as the toe-curling title? Not quite though Moore rubs our nose in it from his starting point on the Isle of Sheppey: "Someone had etched 'I HATE THIS FUCKING PLACE'."

After a decade reporting on its awesome horrors, English journalist, Grillo, characterises the Mexican Drug War as "smoky, black murkiness… [but] not a random explosion of violence."

Written from a locked psychiatric ward days before his suicide, Ernest Hemingway's letter to an ailing child displays flashes of one of literature's most distinctive styles: "Saw some good bass leaping in the river."