BBC journalist Alan Johnston was kidnapped by al-Qaeda sympathisers in Gaza in March of this year, and held captive for nearly four months.

Kidnapped and Other Dispatches, a short collection of his news reports, recounts this experience, what it was like to live in the Gaza strip prior to his kidnapping, and his travels further afield to places like Afghanistan.

Johnston is a measured commentator, pointing out that his time in captivity was easy' compared to the horrors suffered by hostages in Iraq, or in 1980s Lebanon.

He condemns the indiscriminate nature of Hamas rocket attacks on Israeli settlements. However, he puts this in context by citing equally indiscriminate Israeli reprisals, and the hopeless poverty in which most Gazan Palestinians are obliged to live.

He also includes chilling portrays of the Taliban from the period when they ruled Afghanistan, and a brief but perceptive description of post-Soviet Central Asia.

Miran Rahman.

Falling -- John Connor.

Karen Sharpe is one of fiction's most troubled cops, a former undercover agent with issues, ghosts and a teenage daughter.

In this fourth novel -- as gripping as the rest -- she investigates the brutal murder of a prosecutor's wife in Yorkshire. Emotional involvement in the case and an affair with her senior officer are only her first steps into a devastating situation.

Then the case collides with her partner's separate investigation as racial tension explodes into riots.

Connor writes with flair, notching up the pressure and keeping us turning the pages of this Orion hardback.

David Knights.

Making Money -- Terry Pratchett.

I've been an avid reader of the Discworld novels for the past two decades as Pratchett has got better and better. But his recent run of excellent novels -- funny, touching and often gripping -- appears to have petered out.

I gave up on this sequel to Going Postal halfway through because I didn't laugh much and felt I been here before. This time reformed conman Moist fon Lipwig, saviour of the Post Office, has to perform a similar rescue mission on the Royal Mint.

Same hero, same type of allies, same range of opponents, same plot -- little point.

David Knights