CHEMISTRY LESSONS

Bonnie Harmus (Penguin, £9.99, 400pp)

This is the chemistry that brings Elizabeth Zott and Calvin Evans together. Both of them are chemists in a private research laboratory in California. Calvin is a genius; Elizabeth is almost as talented, but it’s the 1960s and men, including Calvin, often mistake her for a secretary. When this misunderstanding was cleared up, they fell deeply in love.

But tragedy strikes and Elizabeth finds herself a single parent struggling to make ends meet until a chance encounter lands her a job hosting a daytime television cooking show.

A reluctant TV star, she refuses to patronize her Housewives audience, instead introducing them to the chemistry of cooking and the science of self-belief. The television adaptation of Bonnie Harmus’ gritty and funny debut debuts this month on Apple TV+, starring Brie Larson.

LEFT ON TENTH

Delia Ephron (Penguin, £10.99, 304pp)

Left on Tenth by Delia Ephron is now available in paperback

When Delia Ephron’s husband, Jerry, died of cancer in 2015, it was her second heartbreaking loss after the 2012 death of her sister, Nora, from leukemia.

A year after Jerry’s death, while Delia was still figuring out how to live without him, she received a letter from a man named Peter. When they were young, he wrote, Nora set them up on a date. He lived in California, was a psychiatrist and also died recently. Delia couldn’t remember their date, but she was fascinated by his email.

They met, love blossomed and late happiness seemed possible. But then Delia was diagnosed with aggressive leukemia. Her wonderful memoir describes her experience of “a lot of luck wrapped around a lot of bad luck” with poignant humor and grace.

WAR IN THE WEST

by Douglas Murray (Harper Collins, £10.99, 320 pages)

Douglas Murray’s new bestseller The War in the West is out, according to the Sunday Times

The statue is torn down and thrown into Bristol Harbour; wartime prime minister denounced as racist; the restaurant-museum is closing because its mural features an image of an enslaved child among other scenes.

These are just some of the examples given by Douglas Murray in his analysis of the current offensive against the West. Arguing that “an unfair ledger has been created in which it appears that the West can do no right and the rest of the world can do no wrong,” he argues that the history of Western culture is a history of openness to ideas and influences, “not subjugating and not to steal them, but to learn from them.’

Murray warns that demonizing the great gifts of the Western tradition—from music and art to politics and science—threatens to “kill the goose that laid the very golden eggs.”