What new books - fiction and non-fiction - can we curl up with this winter? Read on to find out...

* Museum of Innocence by Orhan Pamuk.

Orhan Pamuk’s first novel after a six-year hiatus, Museum of Innocence, is an 83-chapter tome that comes with its own museum. Each chapter corresponds to 83 displays of objects to be exhibited at Pamuk’s actual museum in Cukurcuma, Istanbul, scheduled to open in the summer.

Set mostly in the 1970s, the new novel tells of 30-year-old Kemal, scion of one of Istanbul’s wealthy families, and his moving albeit miserable affair with his beautiful 18-year-old cousin, Fusun.

He misconstrues his lust for love and jeopardises his engagement to a more suitable woman, daughter of a retired diplomat. They break the engagement off only for Kemal to discover that Fusun has married.

There begins his peculiar, nearly-Proustian collection of ephemera, objects that remind him of his beloved – from hair barrettes to cigarette stubs.

A bittersweet love story ostensibly, it is one dedicated to Istanbul. Pamuk takes us through its winding streets and shows us its culture, its people and its struggle to reconcile its Islamic culture with its Western aspirations.

* The Left Hand Of God by Paul Hoffman.

The first in a new fantasy series for teens, touted as “the next Harry Potter”, Hoffman’s third work of fiction doesn’t disappoint.

Beginning in a fortified and maze-like prison of sorts for young boys, the tale follows the exploits of one of its apparently brainwashed inmates, Thomas Cale, as he escapes the regime of the Lord Redeemers and their hell, damnation and extreme violence take on a belief system chillingly close to Christianity.

Well-paced and with great dialogue in places, this is an impressive work in itself but one that – admittedly by design – cries out for its sequels.

* The Oligarch’s Wife by Anna Blundy.

A school trip to Moscow at the age of 15 seals Mo’s fate in a way that no English schoolgirl could ever imagine.

A chance encounter with the charming illegal vodka seller Pavel and the beautiful Katya leads to the trio’s lives being inextricably linked.

Blundy has created a thriller that promises to keep the reader hooked as the novel jets from England to Russia and from poverty to luxury.

* Smile Or Die: How Positive Thinking Fooled America & the World by Barbara Ehrenreich.

Ehrenreich’s latest exposé excoriates the misbegotten mixture of pseudoscience, warped survivals of Calvinism and plain wishful thinking behind the belief that a positive attitude is the sole key to success in life.

As the ungainly subtitle implies, really her focus is on the USA; there is a note of how “healthy British scepticism can be a barrier to these attitudes, and in general we would still tend to think of them as “a bit American”.

A timely book.

* It’s Only A Movie by Mark Kermode.

How to review a book written by one of the country’s leading film critics? By being as blunt as the author. Frankly, it’s self-indulgent. But it’s also highly entertaining in places. Kermode’s premise for this part-memoir, part-rant, is who would play him in a film of his life. Having opted for Harry Potter actor Jason Isaacs, he takes us on a tour of his life in film. Kermode’s fellow horror fans will love his musings on the genre, but for all his insights into the movie world, his style reads like a film review. Jason Isaacs be warned.