Super hack
Marion Elizabeth Rodgers's fine biography hails the magic of American journalist HL Mencken, no prophet but a tetchy, flawed genius, says Peter Preston.
The unquiet American
Film: Philip Seymour Hoffman turns in a stunning performance as the complex Truman Capote, hailed by some as the greatest writer of his generation, and by others as an exploitative fraud, says Phillip French.
The long discipline of happiness
Blake Morrison is impressed by John Burnside's truly original memoir, A Lie About My Father.
‘There’s really good stuff in the way I was brought up. But rubbish stuff too’
Naomi Alderman's first novel provides a rare glimpse into the world of Britain's Orthodox Jews. Aida Edemariam meets her.
Naturally svelte
Helen Zaltzman on Mirelle Guiliano's common-sense approach to female health in French Women Don't Get Fat | Plus Philip Hoare's England's Lost Eden | Flashman on the March | Borrowed Light | By Myself and Then Some | The Alchemy of Desire | Campo Santo | Headcrusher
The diary of a misanthrope
John Fowles's journals present an anti-semitic homophobe whose public and private personas were in constant conflict, says Adam Mars-Jones.
No answer to the laird’s prayer
Belinda Rathbone's memoir The Guynd finds the move from New York to a new life in the Highlands to be a tricky transition, says Viv Groskop.
Me, myself and Emily
Siri Hustvedt's new collection of essays, A Plea for Eros, embraces her psyche, herself - and her passion for the Brontes, says Serena Davies.
Doing it for themselves
Kathryn Hughes assesses the lives of two 19th-century pioneers in Ken McGoogan's Lady Franklin's Revenge and Julia Boyd's The Excellent Doctor Blackwell.
Maternity wear and tear
Nicholas Lezard welcomes the Slack Mum of Stephanie Calman's Confessions of a Bad Mother.
Sparks from the divine ragbag
Ron Powers' enjoyable biography, Mark Twain: A Life, has a tendency to all-American bombast, but shows Twain's life and mind are as compelling and energetic as his prose, says Philip Horne.
The truth about James Joyce
Sometimes scabrous, invariably insightful, Javier Marias's portraits of the great and the good, Written Lives, are a wonderful corrective to maintstream lit crit, says Sarah Emily Miano.
Corpse celebre
Tom Paine's dismembered cadaver is the unlikely starting point for Paul Collins's ingenious life of the great libertarian, The Trouble With Tom, says Alex Butterworth.
Updike’s ways of seeing
John Updike brings all the eloquence and observation of his fiction to a collection of art-historical essays, Still Looking. But even he admits to failing to do justice to Edward Hopper, says Tim Adams.
Who betrayed the Lundys?
Roy Foster hails Derek Lundy's honest and personal appraisal of Northern Ireland's endemic neuroses, Men That God Made Mad.