King charming

IF you are already suffering withdrawal symptoms following the ending of BBC 1's lavish four-part series Charles II, fear no more. With an exquisite sense of timing - and a canny eye on the Christmas market - Phoenix have re-issued in paperback Antonia Fraser's equally lavish biography of the "most charming and approachable of kings". King Charles II (£9.99) runs to 600 pages, but is a racy read for all that and will enable you to sort out in your mind just who all those characters who so recently paraded across our TV screens were. For added value, Antonia Fraser's Cromwell (Phoenix, £10.99) has been re-issued too. So you can find out just how Charles's father came to lose his head in the first place.

If history isn't your thing, what about the movies? In Cult Movies In Sixty Seconds (Vision, £10.99) journalist and film fanatic Soren McCarthy pesents "all the info you need about these films that everyone seems to know and love" in a handy, concise form. Great for those Christmas party games.

Speaking of which, if you meant to make a note of our 100 best-loved books while The Big Read was on TV but forgot, never fear. Ottakar's have taken pity and produced The Little Read (Ottakar's, £3.99), "the Unofficial and Irreverent Guide to The Big Read's 100 Best-Loved Books". So that's all right, then.

If it's classic crime books you're in to, Orion have brought out four more of Ed McBain's 87th Precinct novels. Fat Ollie's Book, 'Til Death, King's Ransom and The Con Man (all Orion, £5.99) show why he remains a master after all these years.

For a British take on contemprary crime try TrueCrime (Sceptre, £10.99) by Jake Arnott. The third part in his London crime trilogy, it features a fabulous cast of Essex drug dealers, club entrepreneurs, wannabe cockney film directors and bank robbers looking for a book deal. Very Guy Ritchie.

For those who can't help themselves, La La La by Kylie Minogue and William Baker (Hodder and Stoughton, £12.99) promises "the book that all Kylie fans have been waiting for, offering a behind-the-scenes view of the creativity and talent that have made Kylie Minogue one of the world's biggest pop stars." Steady on there, fellas.

Perhaps the over-excitable among you should calm yourselves down at this point by dipping into The Xmas Files, by Stephen Law (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, £7.99). Subtitled "The Philosophy of Christmas", this aims to be "an entertaining introduction to some of the philosophical puzzles and dilemmas raised by the Christmas season" - such as, what do you do if Aunt Gertrude has just, for the tenth year running, presented you with a hideous tie for Christmas?

One to make you think.

Which brings me neatly on to The Next Fifty Years (Phoenix, £7.99, edited by John Brockman) - a series of thought-provoking and very readable essays by some of our best scientists which looks at just where science will be taking us over the next half century.

Chances are, however, that you would prefer a little local nostalgia to worrying about the future of the world. In which case you could do far worse than Constable In The Wilderness by Nicholas Rhea (Robert Hale, £17.99), the latest from the pen of the local author who inspired Heartbeat.

Meanwhile, well-known Yorkshire dialectitian Dr Arnold Kellett has produced a volume of 100 Christmas poems, some in Yorkshire dialect, which he has entitled simply Kellett's Christmas (Foundery Press, £5.50). And in North Yorkshire: Off The Beaten Track (Countryside Books, £8.95) local author Eileen Rennison has written a quirky guide to the abundance of treasures from the past that survive in the towns, villages and hamlets of North Yorkshire.

So there you are: something for everyone.

Kellett's Christmas is available from the Barbican Bookshop, York, or The Methodist Publishing House, Peterborough, on 01733 325002. Proceeds go to the Methodist Relief and Development Fund.

Press critics' choice:

Hugh MacDougall

A harrowing but compelling story of fortitude written in 1946, but only recently come to light for publication and as an Oscar-winning film, is The Pianist by Wladyslaw Szpilman (Phoenix, £7.99), the journal of a Polish Jew hiding from the Nazis in Warsaw during the Second World War.

Easily the best new work about York is York Minster: An Architectural History 1220-1500 by Sarah Brown (English Heritage, £60).

Although costly it is well worth the outlay, beautifully produced, with authoritative text, excellent photographs and helpful diagrams.

Turning to another great city, Edinburgh,The Golden Age, by Mary Cosh (John Donald Publishers, Edinburgh, £40) is a superb insight into Auld Reekie during the Scottish Enlightenment when the New Town was built and Scotland's capital developed into the Athens of the North.

Natalya Wilson

One of my favourite reads this year was Harry Potter And The Order Of The Phoenix, by JK Rowling (Bloomsbury, £16.99). One of the year's most anticipated and hyped releases, I had to read the tome in just a couple of days to meet my reviewers' deadline. Fortunately, I was glued to the pages from beginning to end, so it wasn't a chore. Harry's latest adventure was thrilling and darker than those that preceded it.

Another book I really enjoyed was The Miracles Of Santa Fico by DL Smith, (Time Warner, £12.99) which was a lazy stroll through one summer in an Italian village and the adventures surrounding the lives of the villagers. Lastly, I've re-read The Lord Of The Rings (HarperCollins, £14.99) trilogy, a true classic that I have really enjoyed re-discovering.

Jo Haywood

The Other Boleyn Girl by Philippa Gregory (HarperCollins, £6.99). Everyone knows what happened to Anne Boleyn, but what about her older sister, Mary? Philippa Gregory brings the court of Henry VIII into vivid focus with her much-praised book about the lesser known Boleyn girl, who caught the eye of the king long before her sassy younger sibling came to court.

Told with verve, vivacity and at a pace that puts contemporary thrillers to shame, this is a real gem of a read.

The Crimson Petal And The White by Michel Faber (Canongate, £8.99). More verve and vivacity, but this time with a Victorian backdrop.

Michel Faber presents us with the fall and rise of Sugar, an alluring 19-year-old prostitute with a talent for words as well as wickedness.

Taking us from the filth and depravity of Mrs Castaway's brothel to the sumptuous home of William Rackham, heir to a perfumier's fortune and husband to an unhinged wife, this rich, deeply satisfying read takes in all manner of intricately drawn and superbly realised characters along the way.

Malcolm Baylis

IT has been a bumper year for books, especially those following an historical theme.

We have celebrated the 500-year or so anniversary of Queen Elizabeth I with such authorities as David Starkey, retraced the footsteps of Shakespeare with Michael Wood, enjoyed the swashbuckling adventures of seaman Francis Drake with Stephen Coote, wandered the streets of Elizabethan London with Liza Picard and dwelt on the last few weeks of Walter Raleigh's life with Paul Hyland before it ended on the scaffold.

All good readable main-course stuff. But if you are into snack-reading, then two little gems stand out ... and neither is utterly dependent on an historical background. They are Schott's Original Miscellany and Schott's Food & Drink Miscellany, by Ben Schott (Bloomsbury, £9.99). You are in the world of "Well, I never knew that!". Books like no other.

Richard Foster

The Dambusters by John Sweetman, David Coward and Gary Johnstone (timewarner, £15)

The Dambusters accomplished one of Britain's most celebrated feats of arms against the Nazis in the Second World War. The raid by RAF Lancaster bombers on Ruhr hydro-electric dams has entered British folklore.

Aeronautical engineer Barnes Wallis, who built the R100 airship at Howden, near Goole, was the genius behind Operation Chastise. He designed the "bouncing bombs" that demolished the Mohne and Eder dams in May 1943.

But 617 Squadron paid a heavy price. Excluding the three Lancasters that aborted the operation, half of the airmen in the remaining 16 aircraft did not return: 53 were killed and three were taken prisoner.

Footnote* by Boff Whalley (Pomona, £8.99)

Boff Whalley is a founder member of the anarchist band Chumbawamba - famous for the international hit Tubthumping and drenching Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott with water from a champagne bucket at the Brit Awards in 1998.

Boff prefers to regard these two events as mere footnotes in Chumbawamba's colourful story.

Linda Clover

TO choose one book for 2003 is almost impossible, so many deserve a mention - The Love Letters Of Dylan Thomas and Annie Hawes' superb Ripe For The Picking to name just a couple. But for sheer readability, Birthright by Nora Roberts (Piatkus, £10.99 has the edge. It is one of her best.

Archaeologist Callie Dunbrook arrives in a small town in the Blue Ridge Mountains to investigate the discovery of some 5,000-year-old bones and walks into mystery, murder and rumours of a curse. Is she the daughter of a local family snatched from her pram 29 years earlier, or is her privileged Boston childhood just what it always seemed?

On top of everything else she also has to cope with the presence of her incredibly irritating - but still, apparently, irresistible - ex-husband Jake. The characters are brilliant, the scenes between Callie and the woman who may or may not be her natural mother are touching, powerful and handled very delicately.

With a wonderful depth of emotion, this is pure entertainment and thoroughly recommended.

Updated: 14:05 Wednesday, December 10, 2003