Philippa Logan picks her favourites from the latest crop of novels

I didn't think I liked Fay Weldon, but I loved her latest collection of short stories, Nothing to Wear and Nowhere to Hide (Flamingo, £14.99). They range from a tale about the soul of a dog to the forging of an early Christian cross which throws a spanner in the works of an archaeological dig.

It's not just the mini-stories that are engaging, but the lightning character sketches and the amusing, side-swiping, throw-away lines -- the characters' views on life, loves and laundry. The book is hard to describe because it is so full of unexpected tales, following fast and furious after each other -- a great read, and great fun.

At the other extreme -- meaning, not exactly a bundle of laughs -- is Pale as the Dead by Cotswold author Fiona Mountain (Orion, £9.99). The heroine is Natasha Blake, who calls herself an 'ancestor detective', engaged by clients to investigate their family trees. Her most recent commission is from a man who claims to be the boyfriend of a young girl, Bethany, who has disappeared. Bethany was obsessed with Lizzie Siddal, pre-Raphaelite model and wife of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, who died from an overdose of laudanum.

Natasha's investigations finally unravel the mystery of Bethany's family background and the reason for Bethany's obsession. It is an intriguing book, with some interesting facts about Siddal and Rossetti thrown in, and makes an unusual detective story.

Teresa Waugh's novel The House (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, £16.99) consists entirely of diary entries, letters and academic notes and is based on Teresa Waugh's own childhood home -- Clandon Park, near Guildford, which is now a National Trust property.

The book begins in 1945, with Sydney Otterton returning home from the war to find that his father has died, leaving him a beautiful but dilapidated house, Cranfield, and no money for upkeep. Sydney moves his family into the house and begins to keep a diary, as does his young daughter Georgina, and their faithful housekeeper Annie. Annie also chronicles events in letters to her sister Dolly. Also contributing information about the house is an eccentric academic, Zbigniew Rakowski, who is there to research the family archives.

The four of them tell the unfolding story, describing the way of life at the time, with a cast of governesses and butlers. There are secrets too, in which Sydney's dreadful mother seems to be involved, and it gradually becomes clear that something sinister is going on. This is a delightful period piece, with a difference.

Another house, another place, is celebrated in House of Day, House of Night, a translation of a Polish best-seller by Olga Tokarczuk (Granta, £12). It centres on the town of Nowa Ruda, in south-west Poland, which has been German, Czech and Austro-Hungarian in the past. Borders and languages come and go, as the narrator and her husband discover when they settle in the area.

With the help of Marta, her elderly neighbour, the narrator gathers the stories of the local people, who all have their secrets. One looks for the lover of his dreams, another has a monthly metamorphosis into a werewolf, and a monk explores his sexual ambiguity. Interspersed with all these stories are dreams collected from a website and recipes for mushrooms (not recommended). This is a strange book, very non-British, but vivid, and interesting for its foreignness.