Paperbacks to flick through

The intriguing premise of this excellent first novel is an ordinary family who becomes suddenly, bottomlessly rich. Narrated with humour and tenderness by 12-year-old Teddy, this is the story of Theo Pappas, a mild academic obsessed with the American Civil War. Still grieving for his dead wife, he chooses a lottery ticket with her favourite numbers and scoops the big one, a cool 190 million dollars. Unsurprisingly, a whole raft of friends, relations and sleaze merchants start oozing out of the woodwork, hands outstretched. Most notable are Theo's younger brother Frank, a failed film-maker; Sylvanius, an elderly actor specialising in vampire roles on daytime TV; and, most shocking of all, the dead wife's first husband, who claims he's Teddy's biological father. Colourful, witty and moving, this is a great debut.

Peggy Guggenheim: The Life Of An Art Addict by Anton Gill (HarperCollins, £9.99)

This biography is packed with juicy and eccentric detail. Peggy Guggenheim is famous for two things: her astonishing art collection in a Venetian palazzo (stuffed with important pieces by Picasso, Jackson Pollock and Miro) and her even more astonishing sexual conquests. Late in life, she was asked: 'How many husbands have you had, Mrs Guggenheim?' She flashed back: 'D'you mean my own or other people's?' Her own were a nasty lot - alcoholics and wife beaters - and she claimed to have had a thousand lovers. Why so many encounters? The author has several theories: insecurity about her looks (she had inherited the famously large Guggenheim potato nose); the need for a father figure (her own died on the Titanic after installing the lift in the Eiffel Tower); and a fiercely independent spirit unusual for a woman of her time.

The Dressing Station by Jonathan Kaplan (Picador, £6.99)

Imagine A&E in a large hospital on Friday night after the pubs have closed. Now multiply the blood and chaos by 100 and you get some idea of this memoir of a surgeon on the front line. Kaplan has been stationed in the Middle East with Medecins Sans Frontieres, worked in primitive conditions during the Turkish-Iraqi conflict, witnessed the opium trade in war-torn Burma and seen the effects of mercury contamination in Brazilian mines. Sensitive readers will find some parts too gory, but I was fascinated by this raw, beautifully written book. Here are vivid accounts of what it's like to slice open a patient to take out bullets (you have to press hard, apparently, like cutting steak) and how it feels to lose the battle to time, infection and blood loss.

Uplift by Barbara Delinsky (Piatkus, £7.99)

With 65 novels under her belt, Delinsky was knocked sideways by breast cancer. As a survivor, she has put together this book to help other women going through what is a frightening and complicated battle. By interviewing 300 women who have fought or are fighting breast cancer, she has collected 'all the practical little secrets of survival that have nothing to do with doctors, machines or drugs', from the food you can face when feeling nauseous from chemo (the answers range from chicken soup to cookies) to how to feel feminine when you've had a mastectomy and lost most of your hair. Astonishingly, much of the advice is genuinely uplifting because so many of these women found their illness was a turning point. When time suddenly became precious, there are many stories of rethought priorities, blessings appreciated and old grievances laid to rest.