Kia ora and welcome to the Reading Doctor! Each week, literary critic and devoted reader Dr Louise recommends books to us on a particular theme, or responds to reader questions. Send us your questions for her by emailing: communications@read-nz.org

This week, she recommends some books with most excellent titles.

What’s in a name?

If you can’t judge a book by its cover, perhaps its title is a better indication of what lies within. These books have titles which have caught my fancy, and proved to be entirely trustworthy guides.

- We Are Now Beginning Our Descent by James Meek: a journalist in Afghanistan reporting on the US attacks on the Taliban is also writing a novel on the side when he meets a mysterious American journalist whose brief email, 14 months later, has him on the first flight to New York.

- Mr Allbones Ferrets: An Historical Pastoral Satirical Scientifical Romance, with Mustelids by Fiona Farrell: based on a real person, and his real ferrets, this is a Victoria romance set in the context of the great colonial experiment, in which exotic species travelled across the world to join European collections, and useful species were sent to populate the colonies.

- Due Preparations for the Plague by Janette Turner Hospital: this book of paranoia and conspiracy is set in the aftermath of the hijacking of Air France Flight 64, unravelling the interconnections between victims and perpetrators.

- The Last Days of the National Costume by Anne Kennedy: a woman who mends clothes for a living is privy to the truths behind the rips and tears of fabric and seam, a colluder in covering up the tracks of those who lie and cheat.

- The Colony of Unrequited Dreams by Wayne Johnston: a story about the first premier of Newfoundland and the national history of an impossible country.

- Started Early, Took My Dog by Kate Atkinson: one moment of madness turn’s security chief Tracey Waterhouse’s life upside down, teaching her that no go deed goes unpunished, and that the past is never past.

- Burley Cross Postbox Theft by Nicola Barker: an investigation into the theft of 27 undelivered missives, dumped in an alley, undercovers the dark underbelly of a scenic village in this comic epistolary novel.

- Undermajordomo Minor by Patrick deWitt: Lucien Minor accepts a post assisting the majordomo of a remote and forbidding castle where someone roams the corridors late at night, meeting thieves, madmen, aristocrats and a puppy, and where Gothic romance meets dark fairy tale.

- Never Tell Your Lover That His Wife Could Be Having an Affair by Tracey Slaughter: this short story, from the collection Devil’s Trumpet, is just as sharp and acerbic and full of heartbreak as it sounds.

- The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid: at a café in Lahore, a Pakistani tells his story to an American stranger, about his successful life as an immigrant in America, and the seismic changes wrought after 9/11.