Mayaby Alastair Campbell, Hutchinson, $32.95.

Everything’s going right for Steve Watkins. He’s got a good job, lovely wife, even a touch of tinsel in his life because his best friend is the glamorous Maya, one of the world’s most famous film stars.

No one quite understands what she sees in him, but Steve is always there for Maya, her rock in a world of lies and spin – a world this author, who used to be former British PM Tony Blair’s chief spin doctor, knows a great deal about. All those years of plotting at Downing Street pay off in a pacy, racy thriller that also has something to say about the white heat of celebrity and the way it warps everything it touches. Maybe even nice-guy Steve …

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What’s Happening To Our Boys?by Maggie Hamilton, Penguin, $29.95.

Let’s say it up front – I feel for today’s teenagers. Tricky enough that they have to find a path through the challenges particular to this stage of human evolution and Maggie Hamilton’s book canvasses them all – drugs and alcohol, peer pressure, porn, manipulation by marketers, self-image, new technology and so on.

And they also have to deal with the constant low-level fear, sometimes amped up to panic, of their parents. Still, it’s impossible to argue with the author’s pungent advice, which adds up, again and again, to reminding us to spend time with our boys, to keep them active and outdoors, to set boundaries and stick by them.

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Book Of Lost ThreadsBY TESS EVANS, ALLEN & UNWIN, $27.99.

Taunted at school because she has two mums, choral prodigy Miranda Ophelia Sinclair – “Moss” – is the first lost soul in this study of needy hearts forming unlikely friendships in lonely places.

Finn is tormented by his involvement in a fatal car crash and practising monastic silence, when Moss, his daughter, rolls into the once-thriving Victorian town of Opportunity, rain-soaked and backpacked. Debut author Tess Evans unwinds her yarn about how Moss weaves her magical ways through a town riven with old baggage, healing wounds and bringing hope back onto the horizon once more. A charming read.

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The Acceptance World by Anthony Powell, Random House, $31.95.

Nick is a young man beginning to make his way in the world. The book’s opening – a meeting with his bachelor uncle in a dingy, deserted hotel in the presence of a mysterious female clairvoyant – is unforgettable.

This is the third in a series of 12 novels titled A Dance To The Music Of Time. The books follow Nick and a group of friends from his English school days through to middle age. Happily, I still have nine books of the Dance to go!

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The Surprising Life Of Constance Spry BY SUE SHEPHARD, MACMILLAN, $56.99.

In the early 1900s, enigmatic Englishwoman Constance Spry, a young health lecturer, travelled the Irish countryside in a caravan preaching hygiene and sanitation to poor families.

Cheery “Connie” in her elegant attire was as loved by urchin children as she would be feted in the ’30s by artistic icons photographer Cecil Beaton, set designer Oliver Messel and the painter Gluck (Hannah Gluckstein), with whom Spry had a protracted love affair. This solid biography shows how Connie’s childhood passion for wild flowers and a chance meeting with a ’20s showman blossomed into an unusual profession.

Her signature flower and wedding shop, and flower school in London’s fashionable Mayfair became legendary, and she styled two royal weddings and a coronation. Yet what is most fascinating is that even in this marginal world of petals and petticoats, Connie was ahead of her time and the first to experiment with cabbage roses and cherry tomatoes as innovative table decoration.

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ACCUSED BY MARK GIMENEZ, SPHERE, $32.99.

A. Scott Feeney is that rare creature: a top-notch lawyer who loves justice and integrity more than money.

At home, he’s in dire financial straits, his wife has left him for a golf-pro and he’s raising their daughter and the orphaned daughter of a prostitute he once represented. Yet when he’s asked to defend his ex-wife, who’s accused of murdering her lover, he doesn’t hesitate. Did she do it? Does Scott still love her? A little digging unearths other suspects and this page-turner keeps us guessing. Scott is a lovable hero, his daughters are engaging and this imperturbable and ethical chief prosecutor is a fresh character for the legal thriller genre.

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THE DOG WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD BY ALEXANDER MCCALL SMITH, POLYGON, $39.95.

Those who live in Corduroy Mansions or 44 Scotland Street, or any of the residences dreamed up by the quirky Alexander McCall Smith, generally lead normal lives and have instantly recognisable pretensions and problems.

This second instalment of the Corduroy Mansions series takes a surprising turn, when Pimlico terrier Freddie de la Hay begins work for MI6, the UK’s foreign intelligence service. The story unfolds in short, easy chapters. They’re bite-sized, gently satirical, with loving observations of his various characters. It’s a pleasure to revisit the world as seen by McCall Smith. As for Freddie, the newly recruited spy-dog, does he take to a life of espionage and begin drinking shaken martinis? You won’t be on the edge of your seat, but you will settle in for a pleasurable day’s reading.

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TRIUMPH BY CAROLYN JESSOP WITH LAURA PALMER, PENGUIN, $32.95.

Remember those pasty-faced, pinafore-wearing, high-haired women, who came out of the polygamist Yearning For Zion ranch in Texas, after it was raided over allegations of child abuse? Well, Carolyn Jessop was once one of those women.

A sixth-generation polygamist, Carolyn realised at the age of 35, after bearing eight children to her 67-year-old husband, that her church and her community weren’t everything she’d been told they were since birth. Her first book, Escape, recounted her dramatic flight from the cult. Triumph examines how she came to develop her own sense of right and wrong, stayed true to herself and grew inner-strength in the confines of a misogynist claustrophobic community.

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THE IMMORTAL LIFE OF HENRIETTA LACKS BY REBECCA SKLOOT, MACMILLAN, $34.99.

Until Henrietta Lacks’ cancerous cells grew like wildfire in test-tubes and petri dishes around the world, scientists had been unable to grow human cells for any length of time. Her sturdy cells led to the development of the polio vaccine, were shot into space and used to test chemotherapy.

The woman behind the cells was a pretty African-American mother. Henrietta, known to scientists as “HeLa”, was the descendant of slaves and her children are among the poorest, least educated Americans. Her daughter, fearful when she hears “HeLa” cells have been cloned in the UK, imagines hundreds of Henriettas walking the streets of London. As Henrietta’s cells generate billions of dollars for medical companies, her children struggle to pay for a visit to the doctor. Rebecca Skloot weaves a fascinating story of scientific triumph, medical ethics and the hard lives of Henrietta’s children in a fresh and entertaining book.

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