Oxford Guide To Countries of the World Peter Stalker (OUP, £9.99)

A welcome breath of fresh air for information collectors worldwide. If you want to know the ethnic make-up of Belize, or the relative poverty of Namibia and Nepal, it's all here. It's refreshing because it attempts to show countries in a rounded way. For example, the rankings at the end — the most interesting part of the book for true statistics nerds — include relative poverty, revealing that the inequalities that trouble us when we travel to places like India are just as marked at home. Stalker's individual summaries of each country are full of insights, but inevitably the book invites comparison to the invaluable Economist Pocket World in Figures series, which skip the commentary and go for simple, attractively laid-out lists of facts and figures. And it's irritating to read that the currency in Slovenia is the tolar, when it converted to the euro in 2007. Close inspection reveals that this 2010 edition was last revised in — yes, 2007.

Swiss Watching: Inside Europe's Landlocked Island Diccon Bewes (Nicholas Brealey, £12.99)

Despite the banks, Switzerland is a relatively equal country, according to Stalker’s book (above). Bewes worked for ten years at Lonely Planet and Holiday Which? magazine, then became manager of Stauffacher English Bookshop in Bern, where he discovered a few unexpected facts. For instance, Switzerland own more guns per head than the people of Iraq. And for a country known for its cleanliness and courtesy, it has some of the worst graffiti in Europe and forbids recycling on Sundays; the Swiss consume the same amount of chewing gum per head as Americans, and most of it ends up on the pavement. It not only gave us the Red Cross and an army knife, but also the Toilet Duck (1980) and Velcro (1955). Not all the cheese has holes, cuckoo clocks aren't Swiss and the trains don't always run exactly on time.

The Book of the Alchemist Adam Williams (Hodder, £7.99)

This novel is set in Andalucia — partly in 1938 at the height of the Spanish Civil War, and partly during the 11th-century rule of the Arabs. Professor Pinzon discovers the Arabic story while being held prisoner in a cathedral, and reads it to his fellow hostages as the Republicans prepare for a showdown with Franco’s troops. A sentimental tale of courage and redemption, and ideal holiday reading.