Queen of the higher schmaltz

Christopher Robbins moves Simon Callow with his funny, colourful story of a friendship, The Empress of Ireland

Clues and corpses

Clea Koff shows how forensic science can shed light on human rights abuses in The Bone Woman. Uncovering the truth can be a painful process, says Phil Whitaker

Black Death blamed on man, not rats

A new analysis of more than 100 plague epidemics which swept Europe for hundreds of years concludes that it was not spread by rodents running between villages and towns but by man himself.

A god without a cloud

Alan Strachan's biography of Michael Redgrave, Secret Dreams, restores one of Britain's finest 20th-century actors to his rightful place, says Simon Callow

From Russia with Lev

Antony Beevor tells the remarkable story of an actress and a Soviet spy sent to assassinate Hitler in The Mystery of Olga Chekhova

Keepers of the blame

Emma Gerstein deploys meticulous scholarship in her warts-and-all account of the Mandelstams, Moscow Memoirs. A literary spat is always entertaining, says Virginia Rounding

Blame Chaucer

David Hughes thinks he's found the source of the modern media. He tracks down the guilty parties in The Hack's Tale

The name of the robes

Mick Brown's investigation of Tibetan Buddhism, The Dance of 17 Lives, reveals dark deeds and Machiavellian wranglings at the heart of an often idealised religion

The worst wing

Bob Woodward's inside story of the run-up to war in Iraq, Plan of Attack, shows the US capital to be one of the most dysfunctional places on earth, says Jonathan Freedland

‘Me too’ memoirs

Kathryn Hughes learns a little too much about Josceline Dimbleby in her family memoir, A Profound Secret