Sandra Howard’s A Matter of Loyalty (Simon & Schuster, £12.99) is rather too close for comfort – especially with the real-life alleged planned attack on a shopping centre in Manchester at Easter, pre-empted by the police raid.

The book makes uncomfortable reading, but despite that, makes one want to read to the end to discover whether the fictional ending is as the real-life ending – or not.

The story opens with a terrorist bomb in London’s West End. Home Secretary, Victoria Osborne, feels she has failed in her duty to protect the public. Her husband William is editor of a national newspaper, and is persuaded by a young Muslim on his staff, Ahmed Khan, to let him go incognito to his childhood home in Leeds, to try and winkle his way into possible terrorist cells and thus prevent other possible attacks.

But before he sets off for Leeds, Ahmed meets Victoria and William’s daughter, Nattie at a party. The attraction is mutual, and the two begin seeing each other. But he is playing with fire: his involvement with her, at the same time as his infiltration into a group of potential terrorists, is not a good idea for either side. Catastrophe looms.

Sandra Howard knows what she is talking about on the political front, married as she is to former leader of the Conservative party Michael Howard. And she also knows how to ratchet up the tension in this all-too-topical novel.

Another tale of man against man is chronicled in Victoria Hislop’s The Return (Simon & Schuster, £6.99). However, this is a lovely read, much more light-hearted, far more suitable for bedtime than Sandra Howard’s, partly set in the past, in the Spanish Civil War.

Here, the main character is a woman who loves to dance. Sonia Cameron is persuaded by her friend to go to Granada for a carefree week of salsa lessons. While her friend is swept off her feet by the new man in her life, Sonia sits in a quiet cafe and strikes up a conversation with the elderly cafe owner.

And herein lies the tale. Sonia’s fascination with the Alhambra, and the secrets that it holds, make her the ideal listener to this elderly man. Her own story – her dancing, her dusty marriage, her widowed father – is interweaved with a narrative of the Spanish Civil War, and in particular, its effects on the cafe owner’s family. The Ramirez family, like Spain itself, was torn apart in that conflict, with sons fighting on different sides and a flamenco-dancing daughter separated from the man she loved. Sonia not only finds out about what happened to that family, but also discovers more than she could ever have imagined about her own background. Publication has been timed to coincide with the 70th anniversary of the end of the Spanish Civil War.