What To Do When Someone Dies by Nicci French

Hardback published in hardback by Michael Joseph, £12.99, available now.

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ELLIE Falkner is devastated when she hears her husband Greg Manning has died in a car accident. And not only that — but a mystery woman was in the car as well. Suddenly the grieving widow has to cope with everyone assuming that Greg was having an affair.

She becomes obsessed with proving Greg's innocence, finding out who Milena Livingstone was, and what she was doing in the car.

Ellie visits Melina's office, pretending to know her, befriends her business partner Frances and ends up working there, searching through Melina's e-mails and paperwork whenever she can.

Her digging uncovers far more than she bargained for and when she discovers Frances dead in the office she becomes the suspect of both Frances and Greg's murders.

This latest offering from husband and wife writers Nicci Gerrard and Sean French is just what you expect. Taut, exciting, dramatic and un-putdownable. The subjects of grief, bereavement and betrayal are handled sensitively, adding tension to the story.

All the Nice Girls by Joan Bakewell

Hardback published by Virago, £17.99, available now.

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A SPINSTER headmistress 'adopts' a merchant ship, on behalf of her girls' grammar school, and falls in love with the captain. In another time, a grandmother ponders whether to give her kidney to her ill daughter. What is the link?

Joan Bakewell's offering of romance, independent women in the making, and loving descriptions of times past make for a jolly good yarn. Some of the descriptions are quite steamy, but only in a 'proper' way! The romance, politics and descriptions of a country at war are thoughtfully captured with respect and love.

After a slow opening, the story moves along well and the characters are intriguing and well rounded. All in all, Ms Bakewell's first novel is a lovely addition to the romantic fiction genre.

Far North by Marcel Theroux

Trade paperback published by Faber and Faber, £12.99, available now

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IN a post-apocalyptic world of the near future, society has largely regressed to a pre-industrial state and the few pockets of fearful that remain have shored themselves up in tribal settlements within the Arctic Circle. In one such settlement, Makepeace, Theroux's protagonist, patrols the increasingly empty streets through seemingly endless winters, gradually accepting that the end is probably very near.

Into this bleak landscape flies a symbol of hope when an airplane crashes and explodes but proves that somewhere, civilisation has held on. It is this hope that drives Makepeace to set out on a long, arduous journey to reconnect with humanity.

Hauntingly believable, Theroux's tale has a poetic, almost timeless, mythological quality in exploring the innate savagery of humanity when all modernity is stripped away and shelter, food and religious belief are the few remaining needs. It's the tale of humanity from its origins to its bitter, self-determined end, yet despite the despair, hope remains.

The Wikipedia Revolution: How a bunch of nobodies created the world's first greatest encyclopedia by Andrew Lih

Hardback published by Aurum Press, £14.99, available March 26.

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FOR those not familiar with Wikipedia, it's a free, all-encompassing online encyclopedia. Anyone can create an entry, it's not limited to qualified boffins and academics — although they're not excluded from contributing. Since the site's inception in January 2001, the so-called Wikipedians, the army of anonymous fact-lovers who update the website, have created more than 10million articles in more than 250 languages. Andrew Lih, an academic and Columbia University lecturer, tells the story of the site and its rise to become one of the top 10 most-used websites on the world wide web. What Lih fails to fully address, however, are the failings and controversies of the site — reliability of information, security flaws — as he gets a little too bogged down in the technical aspects that will whizz over the heads of most casual readers. Given the title, it was never going to be a damning critique of Wikipedia, and on the whole, he presents his argument in a well-written and insightful way.