Moscow 1941 Rodric Braithwaite (Profile, £9.99)

Braithwaite's epic narrative of the Battle of Moscow, and the story of the Russian men and women who fought it, is based on mammoth research and scores of interviews. There are telling portraits of Stalin and his generals - some apparatchiks, some great commanders. It also traces the stories of ordinary individuals, soldiers, politicians and intellectuals, writers and artists and dancers, workers, schoolchildren and peasants. The battle is, by some counts, the biggest in history - it was fought over a territory the size of France. Seven million officers fought (Stalingrad involved four million), and 926,000 Soviet soldiers were killed - more than the combined casualties of the British and Americans in the whole of the Second World War.

The Grand Slave Emporium William St Clair (Profile, £9.99) It was the 'door of no return'. For 143 years, until the British slave trade was made illegal in 1807, Cape Coast Castle on the African 'Gold Coast' was, in the words of one of its British governors: "the grand emporium of the British slave trade". The book illuminates the African end of the greatest forced migration in history, whose consequences are still with us, 200 years after the abolition of the slave trade. Using records bleached by the sun or stained with salt water - agreements with local African leaders, correspondence with colleagues in the Africa Company, receipts for the buying and selling of slaves - St Clair captures a sense of the daily lives of British slavers and of their 'goods'.

The Marchesa Simonetta Agnello Hornby (Viking, £7.99) Hornby, an Italian-born writer and lawyer who lived in Kennington before moving to London, has written an elegant story set in 19th-century Palermo. Costanza Safamita, beloved daughter of Baron Domenico Safamita, is red-haired, gawky and shy, considered an outsider by many on the family estate. Her adoring father makes her sole heir to the Safamita fortune - and she must conquer Palermo society. There, she falls in love with a charming, dissolute young marchese whose sexual appetite she fears she cannot satiate. Meanwhile, the Bourbon monarchy collapses, the Mafia rise to power and Palermo's decadent aristocracy begins its inevitable decline.

The Space Between Us Thrity Umrigar (Harper Perennial, £7.99) Set in modern Bombay, this tells the story of Sera Dubash, an upper-middle-class Parsi housewife, and Bhima, who works as a domestic servant in Sera's home. Divided by class, they gradually realise they have much in common - both disappointed in marriage, they are experiencing universal female problems.

Details of book-related events can be sent to Maggie Hartford, The Oxford Times, Osney Mead, Oxford, OX2 0EJ, or emailed to maggie.hartford@nqo.com