The Alchemist's Secret

Scott Mariani (Avon, £6.99)

Mariani has a modern languages degree from Christ Church, Oxford, while his hero, private detective and former SAS man Ben Hope, studied ancient history there. However, he does speak French and Spanish with only the trace of an accent - useful when you are on a trail that leads from Oxford - where Hope seeks help from his former tutor - to Paris and the ancient Cathar strongholds of Languedoc. The author has signed a three-book deal with the publshers, who are marketing Hope as "a Jason Bourne for the Noughties". The first story also has similarities to the Da Vinci Code, with medieval manuscripts and powerful Catholic organisation Gladius Domini. Oxford will also feature in the second Hope story, The Mozart Conspiracy, out in July.

Ocean Devil

James MacManus (Harper Perennial, £8.99)

This features another "Oxford man" - George Hogg, who left the enchanted world of a 1930s undergraduate to become a journalist in war-torn China, later caring for a school of orphans in the heart of communist guerilla territory. During the Japanese invasion in the 1940s, he trekked 700 miles through 15,000ft mountains to the Mongolian border. There he founded a new school, only to die four months later of tetanus. MacManus was working as a reporter in 1980s China when he heard about a statue being erected to Hogg in a remote town on the Mongolian border, and he weaves Chinese history into Hogg's life story with a fluent narrative flair. The book has been made into a film called The Children of Huang Shi, due to be released in May.