Lucia in the Age of Napoleon Andrea di Robilant (Faber, £20)

Two themes dominate this spendid book: the swathe of Napoleon that crushed Europe and the twilight years of Venice under the heel of France. There is a third, however, rising above the others - the life of Lucia, an ancestor of the writer di Robilant, who was a literary interpreter of this fascinating European panorama.

Her marriage at 17 to a wealthy nobleman created a golden couple in Venetian society. She was swept by the winds of political turmoil into Vienna, Milan and Paris and ultimately back to Venice, where she became Byron's tough landlady. Di Robilant, through Lucia's various journeys, offers a skilful mosaic of early 19th-century Europe with the elegance that marked his earlier book, A Venetian Affair. His intimate portrait of Lucia and the era she outlasted again brings a feast to the senses.

Meetings in No Man's Land Marc Ferro, Malcolm Brown, Remy Cazals, Olaf Mueller (Constable, £18.99)

Christmas 1914 and trench war attrition was broken by the most glorious of all truces, when enemy soldiers came together in solidarity, bringing momentary peace to the killing fields and singing carols in harmony. It has been documented before, but here four historians reveal that the fraternisation was more widespread than previously accepted. Among them is the respected Imperial War Museum author Malcolm Brown, whose writing on the various battles that were to follow - particularly the Somme - makes one wonder why this poignant festive atmosphere could not extend to the whole war. The generals thought otherwise, and a young generation was slaughtered. The book reminds us of these tragic auras of joy that descended so briefly on the battlefield.

The Slave Ship Marcus Rediker (John Murray, £20)

The slave trade was at its height between 1700 and 1808, when Africa lost six million inhabitants, the flower of its youth, to the New World plantations. It is a period that lives in infamy. The shippers were the British and the Americans, the Atlantic crossing a fearsome voyage of death and brutality, the future bleak and unknown for chained slaves. Rediker's book adds to the recent literature on slavery, marking 200 years of its attempted abolition, by focusing on the slave ship itself. Its intense concentration on the vessels, as well as such personalities as Newton and Clarkson, the captains and their human cargo, is an immense contribution on the evil trade that forced the world to recognise its shame.