Take a flick through these

The Sacred Art Of Stealing by Christopher Brookmyre (Abacus, £10.99)
Angelique de Xavier is not having a good day. Being a maverick cop with the Glasgow police isn't all it's cracked up to be when paperpushing superiors seem determined to turn you into the ultimate scapegoat. She's fed up with being single, fed up with hostage situations that interrupt the football, and the fact that it's her 30th birthday isn't helping much either. So when a charming and amusing man asks her out, the day at last shows signs of improvement; yes, he may have held her captive while masterminding the most audacious bank heist Scotland has ever witnessed, but as he points out: 'Just because I'm a bank robber, doesn't make me the bad guy.' Brimming with humour of the blackest hue, Brookmyre finds a rich vein of satire when pondering whether cops and robbers (or even Celtic and Rangers fans) can ever really be friends.

Hungry Hell by Kate Chisholm (Short Books, £5.99)

We all recognise the physical symptoms of anorexia nervosa: the shockingly thin limbs, protruding hip-bones and huge eyes in pale faces. But there are as many reasons why people become anorexics as there are sufferers of the disease. Twenty years after her recovery, Kate Chisholm makes a painful journey back into the mind of her younger, anorexic self. She recalls the perverse thrill of existing on only a few apples and slices of toast; the strange euphoria that comes with being light enough to walk for miles without tiring; her delight in exerting complete control over her body - until an eventual collapse. Importantly, this is also a tale of how anorexia affects friends and family, for while it is often a very selfish condition - each sufferer wrapped up in their own battle with food and life - recovery remains dependent upon untiring support from all those around.

Greenery Street by Denis Mackail (Persephone Books, £10)

First published in 1925 to fulsome praise from P.G. Wodehouse, this is a wonderfully happy book, based on the author's own first year of marriage when every detail of domestic life - however minor - is treated as a great adventure. While most young couples no longer have to live in terror of their servants, or worry that a five-storey terrace house is too small to live in comfortably, much remains familiar and fresh. Husbands who won't dance ('I went to the dances to meet you. Now - thank Heaven - I can do that by staying at home'); women's mysteriously close relationship with the telephone; the embarrassing remarks families insist on making about prams and nurseries; and even the perils of the London Underground. After the book's initial success, Denis Mackail completed almost a book a year, but tellingly, after his wife died in 1949, he never wrote again.