Paperbacks: Mrs Sartoris<br></br>The Pleasure of Eliza Lynch<br></br>Middlesex<br></br>The End of My Tether<br></br>London Orbital

Mrs Sartoris by Elke Schmitter, trans. Carol Brown Janeway (Faber & Faber, £10.99, 143pp)

A taut novel recounting a married woman's affair and its murderous consequences, Elke Schmitter's noir-ish début is set among the schnapps-drinking population of a dull German town.

Margaret is a 40-year-old accountant with an unhappy romantic past. At 18 she falls in love with the son of a local landowner, whose chinless abandonment of her in her hour of need lands her in the local mental asylum. Her next encounter, with a well-meaning, but dull war veteran, results in marriage. Twenty years on, and it's clear that Margaret's compromises haven't paid off. She may have a husband who adores her, a teenage daughter (whom she dislikes), and an exceptionally jolly mother-in-law, but something is missing. And this being a Madame Bovary-style situation, it's not hard to guess what the solution will be.

Enter Michael, a "ladies man" in a natty suit, and the head of the local department of culture. Schmitter makes it clear that Margaret is under no illusions about her new lover. Her portrait of an intelligent woman's quest for warmth and passion in the face of such obvious mediocrity is a triumph of understated emotion. As the novel progresses, Margaret's love life spills over into that of her daughter's. The resulting denouement - alluded to over the course of the novel - might feel over-wrought if played out in the English provinces. Here, in the drizzle of a Bavarian night, it feels coolly sophisticated and European.

The Pleasure of Eliza Lynch by Anne Enright (Vintage, £6.99, 230pp)

A brief synopsis of the factual events surrounding the life of adventuress Eliza Lynch probably helps before getting caught up in the skirts of Anne Enright's yet more fantastical interpretation. Born in Ireland in 1835, Eliza became the lover of Francisco Solan Lopez, heir to the dictatorship of Paraguay. She went with him to Asunción and was said, for a time, to be the richest woman in the world. In this mischievous interpretation, Enright's peppy prose and glittering visuals take centre stage. What is actually going on is less important than the taste of kisses exchanged.

Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides (Bloomsbury, £7.99, 529pp)

Author of the cult 1990s novel, The Virgin Suicides, Jeffrey Eugenides has produced a second book that is no less fashionable: a labyrinthine creation which jauntily sets out to deconstruct our 21st-century preoccupation with identity and genetic destiny. The novel's narrator is born a hermaphrodite and doesn't notice the existence of male genitalia until the age of 14. Now aged 41, and re-named Cal, he attempts to unravel the origin of his genes. Reinvention has always been the point of the American dream; Eugenides takes this journey from Mount Olympus to downtown Detroit one step further.

The End of My Tether by Neil Astley (Scribner, £7.99, 576pp)

Dedicated to the "memory of the two and a half million cattle needlessly slaughtered in the 1996-98 Beef War", Neil Astley's début novel is an astonishingly fruity black comedy set in the heart of rural England. Inspector Kernan is investigating the murder of a whistle-blowing scientist over-familiar with the causes of BSE. With the help of a sweet-smelling sidekick, he relies on English folklore and animal informants in a war of words with his police superiors. Woodcuts and bucolic ditties invest Astley's more Batesian moments with a mysterious magic of their own.

London Orbital by Iain Sinclair (Penguin, £7.99, 577pp)

This rambling marvel of a book may be the sole justification for the existence of the M25. In his heavenly report from the circles of hell, Iain Sinclair - eloquent chronicler of London's grunge and glory - makes a Millennium tour on foot around the fringes of this great beast of an orbital motorway. Tramping through the city's ragged margin of warehouse and asylum, superstore and estate (as always, he's mesmerising in Essex), Sinclair merges the messy history and geography of the capital with its visionary art and literature. On Hackney Marshes, he finds graffiti: "Reggie Kray for Mayor of London". Why not Iain Sinclair?