Paperbacks: A Child's Book of True Crime, by Chloe Hooper <br></br>And That's Not All, by Joan Plowright <br></br>Like Rabbits, by Lynne Bryan <br></br>The Complete Short Stories, by J G Ballard <br></br>Collected Stories, by Saul Bellow

A Child's Book of True Crime, by Chloe Hooper (Vintage, £6.99, 337pp)

Don't be put off by this novel's opening pages, which feature a talking wombat and a weeping koala. As it soon becomes apparent, Chloe Hooper's compelling debut (shortlisted for the Orange Prize) is more erotic thriller than esoteric fable. Set in present-day Tasmania, it follows several days in the life of a young primary-school teacher, Kate Byrne, as she conducts an illicit affair with the father of her star pupil. As the story opens, Kate is seen slipping off her knickers en route to an upmarket B&B. Here amid the faux Victoriana, she and the urbane Thomas Marne pursue their own, very different, romantic agendas. Adding to the frisson of their adulterous liaison is the fact that Thomas's wife, a fortysomething crime writer, has just published an account of a local crime passionnel, in which a teenage girl, caught sleeping with her boss, is stabbed to death by his vengeful wife. Kate, of course, has read the book, so when her car is sabotaged on a remote cliff-top road, she finds herself drawn into a paranoid fantasy in which she and the doomed young girl look likely to share the same fate.

This intriguing and intelligent first novel is more than a series of sinister erotic moments. Exploring the inequalities inherent in a relationship between a young woman and an older man, Hooper creates in Kate a character who has more in common with her classroom charges than the man she's sleeping with. Classroom psychology, Australian history and small-town politics all play their part in this absorbing hothouse of a novel, which sees Hooper deconstructing one crime story in order to tell another.

And That's Not All, by Joan Plowright (Orion, £8.99, 287pp)

Postwar luviedom is fully explored in Joan Plowright's warm-hearted memoirs of life on the British stage. What we really want to know about, however, is not her pioneering days at Chichester and the National, but the May-and-December romance that saw the up-and-coming actress supplanting Vivien Leigh as the first lady of the theatre. Plowright, not being a "promiscuous" kind of girl, at first deflected Olivier's attentions; Olivier nicknamed her "Miss Wheelshare" and forced her out to lunch. Worth reading, if only for the couple's electric early love letters – at one stage Plowright declares that her love for Larry has brought her back to God.

Like Rabbits, by Lynne Bryan (Sceptre, £6.99, 309pp)

Norfolk-based writer Lynne Bryan has often written humorously about life's "crappier" moments. Her debut novel Gorgeous chronicled the miseries of a downtrodden housewife, and her short story collection included tales of abuse and EU subsidies. This latest novel is told entirely from the point of view of a five-year-old girl. Trapped in a small flat with her mum, grandfather and a hutch-full of prizewinning rabbits, Lily translates adult life via a dangerous combination of guesswork and fierce perception. An utterly convincing portrayal of childhood's more uncomfortable upsets, from wet pants to absent dads.

The Complete Short Stories, by J G Ballard (Flamingo, £16.99, 1,189pp)

This brick of a book ranks as a smasher in every sense. Among British writers alive today, Ballard possesses a unique power to crash through every cosy convention of narrative in pursuit of his uncanny dystopian visions. As a generic label, "science fiction" doesn't begin to equal either the variety of his methods, or the enthralling singularity of his voice. This rich slab collects his 100-odd exercises in short fiction between 1956 and 1992. The earliest, like the latest, sound timeless and contemporary: Ballard doesn't date. In these eerie landscapes, paranoia, hedonism and an out-of-control technology conspire to break and re-make the human soul. Essential, epoch-making work.

Collected Stories, by Saul Bellow (Penguin, £8.99, 442pp)

Sixty years on from his first published story, Saul Bellow's "Collected" arrives as a hefty final testament to one of America's most distinguished modern writers. The earliest stories are from 1951 ("Looking for Mr Green"; "Leaving the Yellow House"); the later ones include the tenderly written "Something to Remember Me By". In a preface by his wife, Janice, we learn about the author's aerobic approach to writing ("he sweats when he writes and peels off layers of clothing") and his partiality for chocolate cake. Introduced by critic James Wood, this collection will come as a long-awaited treat for British Bellow fans.