The Liar’s Wife is a book-lover’s dream: one of our best writers, at the top of her game, tracing interconnections between the US and Europe in four collected novellas, including two about iconic writers (Simone Weil in New York and Thomas Mann in Gary, Indiana). Gordon captures Weil in the autumn of 1942, through the eyes of Genevieve, a former student who has given up her own intellectual ambitions to become a wife and mother. In a few brief meetings, etched with exquisite subtlety, Genevieve discovers the flaws in the teacher she once idolised. Mann’s visit is narrated by the sex-obsessed teen chosen to host Mann during a 1939 visit to his high school. Now 90, he recalls how in preparation he learned about anti-Semitism, Hitler’s Germany, and, in reading Death in Venice, the difference between sex and eros. He elaborates upon the electrifying effect of Mann’s message and its surprising aftermath. (Pantheon Books)