Byline: CLAUDIA PUGH-THOMAS

Leaving Earth Helen Humphreys, Bloomsbury Pounds 6.99, pp218

As the Depression bites, two pilots, Grace O'Gorman and Willa Briggs, fly wide circles over Toronto for 19 days, breaking previous records. Grace, the darling of the public, accepts idolisation by her co-pilot and Maddy, their young witness on the ground, as the norm. The measured pace of the novel does not falter as the drama in the skies intensifies and as anti-Semitism escalates. But Maddy, ostracised for her Jewishness, looks increasingly to Grace for deliverance. When disaster strikes, however, it is Maddy who proves to be her heroine's salvation. Based on a true story, Leaving Earth is a moving tale, written with simplicity and clarity.The Jew of Li nz Kimberley Cornish, rrow Pounds 7.99, pp298

Cornish's hypothesis that Wittgenstein was the 'mysterious young Jewish boy' who fuelled the anti-Semitism of Hitler's Mein Kampf is an original,...