Maggie Hartford checks out the latest crop of top titles in paperback . . .

THE BANYAN TREE

Christopher Nolan (Phoenix, 6.99)

Minnie O'Brien is struggling to keep her small farm, left to her by her husband, safe from encroachment by her avaricious neighbour, Jude Fortune. As Minnie waits for her prodigal younger son, Frankie, to return to Westmeath to run the farm, the story of her long life unfolds: the first time she meets and falls in love with her future husband, Peter; their wedding and Dublin honeymoon in 1922; their life together on the farm; the raising of their three children and what eventually becomes of them.

ON THE SPINE OF ITALY

A Year in the Abruzzi

Harry Clifton (Pan, 6.99)

It was summer when Irish poet Harry Clifton and his new wife moved into a tiny village high in the Abruzzo mountains of central Italy. In July and August the population of the village had swelled from its usual 90 to three times that size, but by the autumn the couple start to learn more about the tensions between Church and the State, rural generosity and how an ancient rural way of life survives in modern Italy.

GOODNIGHT VIENNA

Phil Andrews (Flame, 12)

England's soccer coach is under pressure to resign the team's poor showing in the World Cup qualifiers is evoking such hostile press and hate mail from disgruntled fans that rookie investigator Steve Strong is hired to protect him. England's prospects receive a further blow when a former key player is murdered. The police put his death down to suicide and then their goalkeeper goes into hiding. Strong must keep the coach alive for England's last match. If not, it will be Goodnight Vienna for him and for England's World Cup hopes.

THE NEW PENGUIN DICTIONARY OF ABBREVIATIONS

Rosalind Fergusson (6.99)

If yr thinking that the use of abbrs is OTT, and are baffled by FAQs and URLs, then you need this essential guide to TLAs (three-letter abbreviations) and all other shortenings, symbols and short-forms from A (Aberdeen, absolute zero, or dozens of other things) to zz (zigzag). There are also useful separate sections giving abbreviations used in newspaper advertisements, email and Internet.

BLOOD RAIN

Michael Dibdin

(Faber, 5.99)

Dibdin, who moved some years ago from Oxford to Seattle, is on a winning streak with the seventh book in the acclaimed Aurelio Zen series, in which the Italian police detective is posted to Catania in Sicily. This is the order that Zen has been dreading throughout his career. A stronghold of various Mafia clans, Catania is run by unwritten rules enforced by violence and just one false step can prove fatal.

UP AT THE VILLA

Somerset Maugham (Vintage, 6.99)

It's 1941 (though you'd hardly know there was a war on) and in a beautiful villa, high in the hills above Florence, Mary Panton, having been hurt by love, is thinking of a second marriage to Sir Edgar Swift, based on admiration and respect. She knows she should not trust the flirty Rowley Flint, a reputed degenerate, but she starts to rely on him after a single act of compassion towards a young and desolate refugee begins a nightmare of violence. In the end she decides it is worth the risk of loss to gain love and life.

WHEN ALL YOU'VE EVER WANTED

Isn't Enough

Harold S. Kushner (Pan, 5.99)

Kushner applies his techniques to a problem that is more delicate than that of sudden tragedy, but just as dangerous - the feeling that life is utterly meaningless.