Stephen Fry is back with his new Grecian offering and joins Jodi Picoult and Paula

ODYSSEY by Stephen Fry (Michael Joseph £25, 432pp)

Fry completes his retellings of the Greek myths with the story of Odysseus and his wanderings. 

The familiar narrative bounds along in a chatty style, coloured with mildly revisionist insights into the characters – Fry’s Menelaus, for instance, is more winning than Homer’s (and Tennyson’s) wimp.

There are imaginative reconstructions of key scenes – Agamemnon’s death being a particular corker – and Fry sticks with Homer’s love of high-end interiors – nothing Spartan about Helen’s palace at Sparta.

But the art, as ever, is concealing the art and Fry’s easygoing manner belies careful editing and research.

The Odyssey: Corking deaths and high-end interiors

BY ANY OTHER NAME by Jodi Picoult (Michael Joseph £22, 544pp)

IN THIS time-slip novel, Picoult presents a daring theory about who really wrote Shakespeare’s plays. 

Meet Emilia Bassano, a beautiful courtesan in Elizabethan London and also a gifted playwright. But as a woman she has no chance of having her work put on.

Meanwhile, in present-day New York, a sexist critic has sapped the confidence of playwright Melina Green.

To beat the system, she gets a man to front her work, as, centuries before, does Emilia, joining a stable of authors writing for a certain William Shakespeare.

He can’t pen a line but has all the right connections.

Whether or not you believe Emilia wrote Hamlet, this is a tale told with brio, imagination and racy romance.

THE BLUE HOUR by Paula Hawkins (Doubleday £22, 336pp)

I LOVED this art-world-set thriller with its stately-home Saltburn vibe.

James Becker, a young working-class curator, is an expert on the late Vanessa Chapman, a glam boho painter with a complex love life.

She left her collection to the Lennoxes, a poisonous posh family with whom Becker is romantically and professionally involved.

The discovery of a human bone in a Chapman sculpture sends Becker north to the Scottish island home of Grace, Vanessa’s friend and companion. 

Here the mystery of the artist’s private life grows darker as various bodies enter the picture.

Hawkins weaves a skilful tale about class and privilege and keeps up the tension until the very end.