Paperbacks reviewed by William Leith

Cycle of Lies by Juliet Macur (William Collins, £8.99)

We think we know about Lance Armstrong. He survived testicular cancer. Then he won the Tour de France seven times. There were rumours that he wasn’t riding clean; that he had been doping. The rumours turned out to be true and he was stripped of his titles. But the story is very complicated and murky. It wasn’t just Armstrong who doped. So did lots of other cyclists. They’d been doing it for decades. By the time Armstrong arrived, the big drug was EPO — a potion that gives you more red blood cells, which boosts endurance. Juliet Macur gives us the gory details. The blood bags. The needles. The lawsuits. What a hornet’s nest.

Unmastered by Katherine Angel (Penguin, £9.99)

This is “a book on desire, most difficult to tell”. It’s about wanting sex, having sex, thinking about sex, and the consequences of sex. Angel tells us about her own sexual imagination. During sex with her lover, “an image inserts itself, suddenly, of him hitting me. Of him, yes, hitting me... I want him to do something like hitting. Something — something — that would stop me in my tracks.” Later, she tells the guy about it. “Do you think you want me to do that, he asks, or do you just like to imagine it? I think I probably don’t. No, probably not.” This will shock some people. And it reads like a poem.

The Undercover Economist Strikes Back by Tim Harford (Abacus, £9.99)

Tim Harford is a brilliant explainer of economics. In his previous books he has explained why poor countries are poor (because people don’t trust each other), and why failure leads to success (because we learn from our mistakes). Here he explains, among other things, how there are two types of recession: ones where people stop wanting to buy things, and ones where there’s not enough stuff to buy. He shows us that Keynesian stimulus can work in the short term, but not for ever. There’s a beautifully clear section on the origins of money itself. A superb guide, whatever your level of expertise.