The month's best historical thriller Darktown by Thomas Mullen (Little, Brown)IT'S 1948 and segregated Atlanta gets its first black police officers. They're not allowed to arrest whites or drive squad cars. When a black woman, last seen with a white man, is murdered, no-one's interested in the case except two of those new black cops, Lucius Boggs and Tommy Smith, both war veterans. Original, unsettling but compelling take on the US's current racial politics.THE ISSUEHigh-stakes intrigue, untapped wealth, political deception, betrayal and treachery galore - and the costumes are rather fabulous. Little wonder, then, that the Vatican is now such cultural hot property. HBO's forthcoming The Young Pope, with Jude Law as a maverick Pius XIII, the first (imagined) American pontiff is a case in point. Wags have already dubbed it "Game of Cardinals".More to our remit, however, is the release this week of Robert Harris's new thriller, Conclave (Hutchinson). Set behind the locked doors of the Sistine Chapel, it's a fly-on-the-wall account over three days as 118 cardinals gather to elect the "most powerful spiritual figure on earth", as the blurb puts it. One of them could even be Africa's first pope.Early reviews have been positive. London's Sunday Times praised Harris for his ability at turning such an "arcane process" into a page-turner. "The more one looks, the more cunning the book seems. Conclave is a triumphant addition to Harris's acclaimed output." A former political journalist, Harris's novels have ranged from the blood-steeped Roman empire (the Cicero trilogy - Imperium, Lustrum and Dictator - among others), to the deceit and corruption of the Dreyfus affair (An Officer and a Spy.) Expect Conclave to shift a ton this festive season.CRASH COURSEWorking women know the scene: you're at a meeting, you make a suggestion, and everyone ignores you. Then a male colleague says exactly the same thing - and all murmur their approval, saying what a brilliant idea. Not fair, but what do you do?Jessica Bennett's hilarious and practical Feminist Fight Club: An Office Survival Manual (for a Sexist Workplace) (Portfolio Penguin), suggests, "Yank the credit right back - by thanking them for liking your idea ... Try any version of: 'Thanks for picking up on my idea.' 'Yes! That's exactly the point I was making.' 'Exactly. So glad you agree ...'" It's sneaky, Bennett admits, but it still leaves you feeling good.Filled with such advice and wisdom, the book carries a warning that it is 21% more expensive for men. (The wage gap, dummy.) Highly recommended.THE BOTTOM LINE"Only in hindsight, and from a great distance, did I come to see that I'd grown up not in the America most white people imagine, but something closer to the fearful, isolated world of apartheid South Africa." - Blood at the Root: A Racial Cleansing in America by Patrick Phillips (WW Norton & Company)...