Paperbacks: The Tattooed Girl<br/>Daughters<br/>Joshua Reynolds<br/>The Floating Book<br/>The River<br/>Ideas that Changed the World<br/>Berlin Blues

Although it is dedicated to Philip Roth, Oates's 31st novel is not too kind to ageing Jewish novelists.

The Tattooed Girl by Joyce Carol Oates (HARPERPERENNIAL £7.99 (307pp))

Although it is dedicated to Philip Roth, Oates's 31st novel is not too kind to ageing Jewish novelists. Set in "glacier gouged" upstate New York, the book has an emotional temperature as chilly as the landscape. The plot revolves around an unlikely twosome: Joshua Seigl, a wealthy writer in search of an assistant, and Alma Busch, a needy young woman with an obscure past. After a chance encounter, Alma is hired to sort out the great man's domestic chaos and moves into his towering home. Like many of Oates's male characters, Seigl is sexually susceptible but emotionally unavailable. He has chosen to live alone, though there is a occasional, astringently observed, flirtation with a fellow academic, Sondra Blumenthal. In contrast with the intense Sondra, Alma represents white trash at its palest. A "soft fleshy goose" of a girl, branded in a tracery of delicate tattoos, she despises her employer, and his Jewishness, though at the same time she wants to seduce him. Throughout, you're never quite sure whether Seigl and Alma are going to end up sleeping together or killing each other. Ground glass appears in the seafood casserole. In a novel of Hollywood-style chills and thrills, Oates introduces some robust exchanges about Holocaust denial and Virgilian poetry to thicken the mix. EH

Daughters by Paule Marshall (SERPENT'S TAIL £7.99 (408pp))

First published in 1991, Daughters joined a wave of novels exploring cross-cultural roots and lost cuisines. Marshall's account of an African-American woman's journey home is distinguished by its lack of sentimentality and brainy realism. The heroine, Ursa Mackenzie, is trapped between New York and Triunion, a fictional island in the Caribbean. When the novel opens she's recovering from a late abortion. Deciding to turn down a well-paid research job and to end a loveless relationship, Ursa returns to Triunion. The activities of her politicking father get in the way of any tidy resolution. EH

Joshua Reynolds by Ian McIntyre (PENGUIN £14.99 (608pp))

First president of the Royal Academy (in 1768) and later painter to the king, Joshua Reynolds has looked like a smooth Establishment flunkey to romantics ever since William Blake cursed him as the man "Hired to Depress Art". As lusciously tinted and densely textured as one of its subject's slick society portraits, this very accomplished biography deepens our perspective. Technically gifted, and socially savvy, the Devon-born artist still emerges as a consummate professional operator of more talent than genius. But McIntyre's richly-painted background lets the insight and energy of Reynolds shine in the company of many brilliant friends - such as Johnson, Burke and Goldsmith. BT

The Floating Book by Michelle Lovric (VIRAGO £7.99 (490pp))

You expect historical novels to come with frilly dialogue, and Lovric's Venetian epic is indecently lavish. Set in the late 15th century, at the time of the first printing press, Lovric's novel plots a story around the sexcapades of Sosia, a Venetian Jewess. One of her conquests is Bruno, an editor wrestling with the idea of printing the works of Catullus. A Savonarola-like monk, a dwarf and a porcine-faced nun are not happy with the idea. Sosia takes up with a Veronese scribe who wants to pen circles on her buttocks. Lovric takes bodice-ripping to respectable new heights. EH

The River by Rafael Sanchez Ferlosio (DEDALUS £9.99 (406pp))

The son of the Francoist intellectual Rafael Sánchez Mazas (the dandyish anti-hero of Javier Cercas's great Soldiers of Salamis), Sánchez Ferlosio was still in his twenties when, in 1955, he wrote this remarkable landmark of Spanish realist fiction. Like some dappled Impressionist canvas, but with grimmer undertones, the novel sends a pack of day-trippers from stifling Madrid out into the country, to chat, flirt, dream and remember by the Jarama. A dialogue-driven portrait of Spaniards at play, The River - published with Franco's tyranny still in full spate - also acts as a sly political fable, as the Jarama (site of a bloody Civil War battle) slowly yields its secrets. BT

Ideas that Changed the World by Felipe Fernandez-Armesto (DORLING KINDERSLEY £12.99 (400pp))

A dazzling project that marries intellectual and visual flair. Global historian Fernández-Armesto contributes 180 lapidary essays on the Big Ideas that drove human history, from measuring time to multiculturalism. Around his texts, DK weaves its hi-tech design magic, with illustrations, captions and diagrams. It's beautifully packaged, hugely browsable, and endlessly useful as a fount of instant wisdom. BT

Berlin Blues by Sven Regener (VINTAGE £6.99 (248pp))

When Regener's argumentative protagonist starts to annoy, it's a relief to remember that you're reading a novel, not stuck in a bar with him. It's Berlin in 1989, and the bartender Lehmann lives a loaferish existence in bohemian Kreuzberg. A series of events - involving parents, women, landlords - threatens to undermine his peaceable life. Targets for his schnapps-fuelled outrage include mothers who call too early and waiters who say, "I'm really an artist." EH

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