From Andrew Janiak to Alison Wood Brooks: new books reviewed in short

The Secret Painter by Joe Tucker is a gentle memoir by the painter’s nephew.

Eric Tucker is routinely described as another Lowry , a northerner who depicted the streets, drinking dens and working-class life of the industrial north.

The Sound of Utopia: Musicians in the Time of Stalin by Michel Krielaars is a compelling retelling of the stories of ten musicians from household names such as Dmitri Shostakovich to forgotten composers like Vsevolod Zaderatsky .

Many of her ideas found their way, unacknowledged, into Diderot and d’Alembert ’s Encyclopédie. Her peers, says Janiak in his lucid biography, described her as a disciple of others “but denied her the status of modern’ philosopher”. That she died at 42 meant she could not fight back. By Michael Prodger Oxford University Press, 304pp , 22.99 . Buy the book [See also: The radical women who made modern dance].