• James Lasdun’s Seven Lies appears this month. Laura Miller called his riveting first novel, The Horned Man, “Poe for the 21st century, a brainy chiller that finds the most terrifying monsters are those within.”

• Does the Booker need a brouhaha?

• Andrea Levy’s Small Island won the “best of the best” Orange Prize on Monday.

• Justine Lévy’s Nothing Serious hit the bestseller charts in Europe partly because of its autobiographical inspiration: when the novelist’s husband had left her for a model/singer, the split spawned a tabloid feeding frenzy in France. (Lévy is the daugher of a certain famed French philosopher.) Vogue reviewer Megan O’Grady says that “in Lévy’s deft hands, what could have been recycled pulp takes on surprising nuance.”