Paperbacks: The Hornet's Nest<br/>Ladies' Night<br/>Peacock Cries<br/>Not Married, Not Bothered<br/>The Coffee House<br/>The Word and the Bomb<br/>The Decline and Fall of the British Aristocracy

The Hornet's Nest, by Jimmy Carter (POCKET BOOKS £7.99 (465pp))

President Jimmy Carter is no slouch. Since his retirement from the Oval Office, he has written 16 works of non-fiction, a clutch of respectable poems and eradicated Guinea Worm disease in Africa. Now in his eighties, he is also the first US President to publish a novel. Set during the American Revolution, Carter's congenial historical narrative follows the lives of two brothers caught up in the seditious activities of an enclave of northern Georgia partisans. Originally from Philadelphia, Henry Pratt and younger brother, Ethan, head south to expand their father's shoemaking business. While Ethan buckles down to work, Henry can't resist the company of his politicking peers. As you might expect from a Nobel Peace Prize winner, Carter is even-handed in his historical judgements. Alongside his depiction of ordinary colonists, his most convincing creations include Thomas Brown, a disaffected British agent, and Quash Dolly, a beautiful slave. In this novel of stodgy dialogue and unexpectedly frank romance, Carter nevertheless succeeds in mastering the complicated footnotes of revolutionary politics, and leaves us wanting to know whether Ethan (and his "tight trousers") will survive the drama intact. EH

Ladies' Night, edited by Jessica Adams et al (HARPERCOLLINS £6.99 (512pp))

The latest volume in the bestselling "Girls' Night In" series (a collection of stories written to raise money for the charities War Child and No Strings) is choc-a-block with tales of electronic romance. Meg Cabot's story, "Party Planner", is told as a series of office emails, while Imogen Edwards-Jones's modern morality tale warns against the dangers of the undeleted message. Stella Duffy raises the literary stakes with "Siren Songs" - an elegant riff on hot baths -- and Deborah Wright signs off with a witty number about a disappointing night with Lord Byron. EH

Peacock Cries, by Hong Ying (MARION BOYARS £7.99 (334pp))

The Yangzte river was a malevolent presence in Hong Ying's autobiography Daughter of the River - a depository of bloated corpses and evil smells. Her fourth novel, set against the backdrop of the controversial Three Gorges dam project, also implicates the river in a trail of destruction and loss. Lui, Hong Ying's depressed narrator, is married to one of the directors of the damn project. On an impromptu visit to Liang County to find out if her husband is having an affair, she also revisits her childhood home, soon to be covered by flood waters. A novel that paints a very tangible portrait of contemporary Chinese life. EH

Not Married, Not Bothered, by Carol Clewlow (HARPERCOLLINS £6.99 (345pp))

Like Jane Austen, the single heroine of Carol Clewlow's latest novel, Riley Gordon, is a great believer in "the importance of aunts". An advocate of the single life, she sets out to prove the joys of spinsterhood to family and friends. In a novel that reinforces Maureen Dowd's thesis that successful women are less likely to get hitched, Clewlow faces the difficult task of convincing us that a cat really is better than a baby, and affairs with married men more satisfactory than the marital bed. An intermittently entertaining read. EH

The Coffee House, by Markman Ellis (PHOENIX £8.99 (304pp))

There was a time when a coffee-house didn't mean Starbucks. A cup of coffee was not a bucket-sized vat of flavoured milk, but a brew "redolent of stewed prunes, burnt beans and soot". Markman Ellis's fascinating and wide-ranging cultural history explores the evolution of a phenomenon that started in Constantinople in 1554 and soon took the world by storm. Samuel Pepys, whose diary records 99 visits to coffee houses, found "much pleasure" in them, "through the diversity of company" - company which included Dryden, Congreve and "all the wits of the town". Like Starbucks now, of course. CP

The Word and the Bomb, by Hanif Kureishi (FABER £5.99 (100pp))

"In an age of propaganda," writes Kureishi in this selection from his work on faith, doubt and freedom, "our stories are crucial". This mix of essays, short fictions and novel extracts adds up to a handbook of multicultural manners; and a plea for the playful values of art and thought against dogma. Kureishi flays the fundamentalists, but smug liberals too, in a timely celebration of "the carnival of culture". BT

The Decline and Fall of the British Aristocracy, by David Cannadine (PENGUIN £14.99 (813pp))

This tirelessly witty, hugely detailed study (from 1990) charts the slide of the nobility from roaring "lions" to feeble "unicorns". Cheer it or mourn it, there can be "little real doubt" about the ousting of the toffs. Yet, 15 years on, those unicorns won't fade. Young Cameron (related to grand peers) rises, as the "staying power" that Cannadine also notes moves up a notch. BT