My Salinger Year by Joanna Rakoff; The Private Life of Mrs Sharma by Ratika Kapur; Mr & Mrs Disraeli by Daisy Hay, paperback reviews

A lively period piece played out against the alluring backdrop of Manhattan, and a lively retelling of a well-known story

My Salinger Year by Joanna Rakoff (Bloomsbury, £8.99)

Rakoff's evocative memoir recalls a year spent working as "bright, young assistant" at a New York literary agency. It's the mid-1990s and, like legions of artistically minded young women before her, she finds herself little more than a glorified secretary. Selectric typewriters and Dictaphones are still the order of the day, but there are perks to Rakoff's office life, including her developing relationship with the agency's most celebrated author, JD Salinger. Whether she'll actually get to meet the recluse becomes the ongoing tease of the book. A lively period piece played out against the alluring backdrop of Manhattan.

Emma Hagestadt

The Private Life of Mrs Sharma by Ratika Kapur (Bloomsbury, £12.99)

Renuka, the wonderfully chatty heroine of Kapur's second novel, struggles with the contradictions of contemporary Indian life. A dutiful wife, mother and daughter-in-law, she also works as a receptionist at a Delhi hospital. Life gets yet more demanding when her husband takes a job in Dubai and she's left to run the show alone. Bored and lonely, she finds herself getting involved with an elegant stranger she meets on her daily commute. Despite the novel's breezy tone, there are plenty of moving moments as Renuka struggles with the conflicting demands of motherhood and selfhood.

EH

Mr & Mrs Disraeli by Daisy Hay (Chatto, £9.99)

"Ladies who have no children consider themselves young, handsome and fascinating for ever," wrote Charlotte de Rothschild of her friend Mary Anne Disraeli in 1865. It was not meant as a compliment, and yet Mary Anne's triumph is that she fascinates us still. She was 47 when she married 35-year-old Benjamin Disraeli in 1839, and she used her £5,000 a year to help him climb the greasy pole to power. The story is well known, but Hay's lively retelling only makes you want to applaud again the two clever commoners who outplayed the ruling elite and changed the course of British history.

Marcus Field