Part polemic, part autobiography, its title a riff on Betty Freidan’s Feminine Mystique, this presents Jessica Mann’s family story interspersed with political argument.

‘I was absolutely stunned. How could antisemitism persist in Poland after the war?” Three times in our conversation, Jan Gross states how he was astonished by a revelation in the course of his work as a historian. First, by the story of how Poles had massacred the Jewish half of the population of Jedwabne, a small town in eastern Poland, in July 1941.

A perfect hat-trick, as any football fan knows, is one goal scored with the left foot, one with the right, and a header. In 2010, Gabriel Josipovici produced a writer’s hat-trick: a book of short stories, a book of criticism and a novel, all highly acclaimed.

Jubilee fever is showing no signs of fading. Along with last weekend’s Big One, there are several notable anniversaries in 2012. There is even another queen celebrating: the beloved ruler of British fashion, Alexandra Shulman, has now been editor of Vogue for 20 years, during which time she has increased its readership to well over a million.

As Consciousness is Harnessed to Flesh, the second of three volumes of Susan Sontag’s journals, edited by her son, David Rieff, begins where the first ended — in the mid 1960s.

In Joseph Skibell’s new novel, Dr Jakob Sammelsohn, an impoverished ophthalmologist in Vienna with a non-existent sex life, falls in love with a woman he sees at the theatre. In the play’s interval, he engineers a conversation with her companion, who, it transpires, is Sigmund Freud.

Unorthodox is an account of Deborah Feldman’s Chasidic upbringing in New York, her unhappiness at what she sees as her oppression, and ultimately her escape into secular society. Inevitably, the Satmar community in which Feldman grew up has responded aggressively, accusing her of mistakes, omissions and outright lies.

Butterflies represent the souls of the dead, according to the ancient Greeks. And lepidopterous lore becomes a fascination for 12-year-old Becky in Butterfly Summer, by Anne-Marie Conway (Usborne, £5.99). Becky spends her days by the lake in the village butterfly garden, where she makes a new friend, Rosa May.