Paperbacks

This is more expensive than many language learning audios, but it does have the potential to take you to an intermediate level, rather than just reciting phrases, parrot-fashion. The four hour-long CDs are well structured, introducing the grammar in easily digested nuggets. Available in Spanish, French, Japanese, Greek, Russian, German and Portuguese, it's ideal for brushing up rusty school learning or starting a more serious learning journey. Mp3 downloads are available if you want to learn on the move, and there's a handy phrase book and practice CD.

Night Train to Lisbon Pascal Mercier (Atlantic, £12.99)

Pascal Mercier is the pseudonym of the Swiss philosopher Peter Bieri, who retired early from a chair in Berlin to write novels. He explores the notion of free will in this story of mild-mannered, middle-aged classics teacher Raimund Gregorius, who discovers a book in a dusty corner of an old bookshop, which contains the thoughts of an enigmatic Portuguese aristocrat. After encountering a woman apparently about to commit suicide, Gregorius abandons his class and boards the night train to Lisbon on a journey to find out more about the book's author, Amadeu de Prado. The picture of an extraordinary man emerges - a doctor, a poet and a rebel against Salazar's dictatorship. As Prado's story comes to light, so the once boring Gregorius begins his life afresh.

William Hague Wilberforce: The Life of the Great Anti-Slave Trade Campaigner (Harper Perennial, £9.99)

Hague's study of this remarkable and pivotal figure in British politics brings to life the great triumphs and shattering disappointments he experienced in his campaign against the slave trade, and shows how immense economic, social and political forces came to join together under his tireless persistence. Hague shows how Wilberforce, after his agonising conversion to evangelical Christianity, was able to lead a powerful tide of opinion, as MP for Hull, against the slave trade, a process which was to take up to half a century to be fully realised.

Crow Stone Jenni Mills (Harper Perennial, £7.99)

Mining engineer Kit Parry takes a job shoring up the ancient quarries beneath her home town of Bath, but someone wants her out. She has never been back to Bath since something brought her childhood to an abrupt end in the summer she became 14. When Kit stumbles across evidence of a lost Mithraic temple, the mysteries in her own past become tangled up with a search for what could be the archaeological discovery of the decade.