Fearless, open, honest and incredibly funny especially about bad sex, the novel is set in 1995. 'I'm Johanna Morrigan. It's 1995. I'm nineteen and I live in the epicentre of Britpop. Park life! My unrequited love, John Kite, is busy with a Number One album, world-tour, drugs, and a nervous breakdown. So, I've started hanging out with hot young comedian Jerry Sharp. Big mistake. Then John Kite, Johanna's unrequited love, has an album which does go to Number One and suddenly he exists on another plane of reality - that of the Famouses, a world of rabid fans and VIP access, or excess. Johanna lacks the traditional trappings of fame (famous parents, mind-scorching hotness, exotic sandals etc.) So she does the only thing a self-respecting Lady Sex Adventurer can do. She starts a magazine column critiquing the lives and follies of the Famouses around her. But as Johanna skyrockets to fame herself, she begins to realise that with celebrity comes sacrifice, and hers may mean giving up the one person she was determined to keep. Written by the Times columnist who has clearly spent a lot of her early youth hanging around Camden, smoking, partying and having lots of sex. 337pp, paperback. Remainder mark.

A witty and perceptive take on modern life with a focus on technology and the supernatural, the title story is a nice take on reality TV like Love Island. Another story is a parody of complacent academia and the dissent of the English language. There is a Kafka-esque 'Which of these would you like' story, 'Signal' is a clever look at the mobile phone, and Cold Call a realistic treatment of adult social care with a great twist, and Charity a great take on the curse of taking selfies with your camera. Brilliant observations of contemporary life, these are quick, old-fashioned scary stories updated with new technology, Tales of the Unexpected for the digital age, and vinegar-sharp satires that horrify and amuse in equal measure. 215pp, Faber paperback.

Iconic, tough-but-tender Boston PI Spenser delves into the black-market art scene to investigate a decades-long unsolved crime of dangerous proportions. The heist was legendary, still talked about 20 years after the priceless paintings disappeared from one of Boston's premier art museums. Most thought the art was lost forever, buried deep, sold off overseas or worse, destroyed as incriminating evidence. But when paint chips from the valuable piece stolen, Gentlemen in Black, by a Spanish master arrive at the desk of a Boston journalist, the museum finds hope, and enlists Spenser's help. Soon the cold art case thrusts him into the shady world of black-market art dealers, aged Mafia bosses, and old vendettas. A five million dollar reward by the museum's top benefactor, and an unlikable Boston socialite set Spenser and pals Vinnie Morris and Hawk onto a trail of hidden secrets, jailhouse confessions, murder, and double crosses. Atkins's gift for mimicking the late Robert B. Parker delights devotees. 255pp, paperback.

'...but they all had to talk to someone. That someone had, strangely enough, been Percy Ogden. He had always been, by contrast, a sort of heroic figure, changing at ten from a bright boy with interests - trains, cactuses, dinosaurs, historical buildings - into someone marked by the curled lip and the smart comeback.' Set in 1981, our narrator and observer is Spike, at a stiffly conservative school in Sheffield. Ogden is the leader of a clique of radical left-wing pupils who questions a visiting recruiting army officer. They meet up with a slightly older group headed by the charismatic Joaquin, a refugee from Chile, who initiates a lifelong homosexual relationship with Spike. The group engages in activities like painting slogans on walls, smashing up rival political meetings, talking all night. They are joyous, exuberant, destructive and in search of a better world. Five years later Spike and Ogden are on a two week holiday in East Germany, to get some idea how a socialist state was working. Ogden is now believed in charge of a parliamentary democracy and working for a Labour MP. Joaquin is a person honoured in East Germany. 30 years on, it is 2018. Spike is now 53, Joaquin 59 and for the last ten years he and Joaquin have been taking walking holidays in the former East Germany when they meet Pete Frinton, the younger brother of James, one of the clique of 1981. This triggers accounts and memories of the past like the time Spike and James and Tracy, the anarcho-syndicalist, had been at Oxford University, putting their radical years behind them. Only Spike and Joaquin had never changed their opinions. Well researched with observations of town and country in pre and post Berlin Wall Germany and the UK of the 1980s, told in Hensher's funny and distinctive voice, a regret-soaked story about the marks left on our adult lives by the idealism of our youth. 324pp, paperback.

It's Christmas and a serial killer is leaving displayed body parts all over Cumbria. A strange message is left at each scene: #BSC6. Called in to investigate, the National Crime Agency's Washington Poe and Tilly Bradshaw are faced with a case that makes no sense. Why were some of the victims anaesthetised while others died in appalling agony? Why is their only suspect denying what they can irrefutably prove but admitting to things they weren't even aware of? And why did the victims all take the same two weeks off work three years earlier? When a disgraced FBI agent gets in touch things take an even darker turn because she doesn't think Poe is dealing with a serial killer at all - she thinks he's dealing with someone far, far worse, a man who calls himself the Curator. And nothing will ever be the same again. A jaw-droppingly shocking and intense tightly woven mystery which was the winner of the CWA Best Crime Novel of 2019 award. 'Unlike most procedurals, M. W. Craven grabs the reader by the scruff of the neck and drags them bodily over the grit and grimness of this expertly-crafted tale.' 387pp, paperback.

It is 1938 and in the final days of the British Empire in a bungalow high up in the green hills above the plains of Ceylon live the Ferguson family - Bella, a precocious eight year old and her father Henry, owner of Pitlochry, a tea plantation, and her mother Virginia. The story centres around the Pavilion in the Clouds, nestled in idyllic grounds carved out of the wilderness. But all is not as serene as it seems. Bella is suspicious of her governess Miss White's intentions and her intuition sparks off her mother's imagination. After an unfortunate series of events, a confrontation results in a gunshot ringing out through the valley. Years later Bella, now living back in Scotland at university in St Andrews, is faced once again with her past. Will she at last find out what happened between her Father and Miss White? And will the guilt she has lived with all these years be reconciled by a long over-due apology? '...This house would be shrouded with cool mist, like thin, attenuated rain, and in this way would be invisible from the plains far below.' A lyrical and enchanting tale. 224pp.

'When I was asked by The Sunday Times to write a number of short stories for the newspaper, I suggested that I should select photographs from their extensive photographic archive, and create stories based on what I imagine the pictures depicted... From the tiniest visual clue we can create a whole hinterland of experience - of love, of hope, of simply being human.' We travel to exotic and intriguing places and share the lives of three sisters, brought up in Penang. We read of what happened to them and to their Chinese neighbours caught in the tides of war. We see a group of small boys in a Glasgow slum, their young lives stunted by poverty, and hear how life worked out in contrasting ways for them. We follow a young woman's search for love in the unlikely realm of Egyptian antiquities. 'She is smiling, the young woman perched on the cross-bar; she is smiling broadly as they follow the tram lines... She did not know what possessed her to accept a ride into work from Professor Mactaggart.' Through the through the medium of sepia images, we glimpse a world long departed, the lives of the people in the frame imagined and explored, layer by layer by one of our favourite writers, and who's to say how close to the truth AMS reaches? Stare at the images reproduced in the book and create your own short story. 179pp.

Author of 'The Little Paris Bookshop' Nina George found this novel 'enchanting'. It is heart-breaking and touching, an international bestseller, translated from the German. Julien Azoulay is famous around the world for his bestselling romance novels, but last year his beloved wife Hélène died, leaving him to raise their young son alone. Since then, Julien seems to have lost his belief in love, and with it his ability to write. Luckily, Hélène was clever and before she died she made Julien promise to write her one letter for each year of her life. Now, in the famous cemetery in Paris, Julien stands with his painful first letter in his hand. Here, even though Julien wouldn't believe it, something wonderful is going to happen. Amongst the narrow, cobbled streets of Montmartre, Julien will discover the truth we all hope to find - that love is real, that miracles can happen and, most of all, that if you can be brave enough it's never too late to rediscover your dreams. The author studied romance, languages and literature at the Sorbonne, worked in a bookshop on the Rive Gauche in Paris, and in his love letter to the city believes in the healing power of the written word. A charming read for every bibliophile and Francophile, the book has beaucoup de charme. 260pp, paperback.

A gripping mystery of codebreaking by the author of The Da Vinci Code. National Security Agency Fort Meade, Maryland. When the most powerful intelligence organisation on earth's invincible code-breaking machine encounters a mysterious code it cannot break, it calls for its head cryptographer Susan Fletcher, a brilliant and beautiful mathematician. What Susan uncovers sends shock waves through the corridors of power. The NSA is being held hostage, not by guns or bombs, but by a code so ingeniously complex that if released it would cripple US intelligence. In Seville, Spain, the creator of that code Ensei Tankado is found dead, and with him has died the secret to his impregnable code-writing formula that threatens to obliterate the post-Cold War balance of power forever. From the underground hallways of power to the skyscrapers of Tokyo and the towering cathedrals of Spain, a desperate race unfolds. Caught in an accelerating tempest of secrecy and lies, and betrayal on all sides, Susan Fletcher finds herself fighting not only for her country but for her life, and in the end, for the life of the man she loves. Told at a cracking pace, 510pp, paperback.

An autobiographical novel of sex, love, family and friendship, conceived following the death of Martin Amis's closest friend, the incomparable Christopher Hitchens. From their early days as young magazine staffers in London, reviewing romantic entanglements and the latest literary gossip, not to mention ideas, books, and where to lunch, Hitch was Amis's wingman and adviser, especially in the matter of the alluringly amoral Phoebe Phelps - an obsession Amis must somehow put behind him if he is ever to find love, marriage and a plausible run at happiness. Other significant figures competing for his attention are his father Kingsley, his hero Saul Bellow, the weirdly self-finessing poet Philip Larkin, and significant literary women from Iris Murdoch to Elizabeth Jane Howard. His quest is a tender, witty exploration of how to live, grieve and die set against the horrors of the still-unfolding impact of the 9/11 attacks and what this has taught him about how to be a writer. Whether touching on Islamism, the Holocaust, the Jewish people, Alzheimer's, there is plenty of name dropping, sex, gossip, romance and a taste of the mid 20th century literary world. Includes photos, 538 roughcut pages, highly desirable in this US edition.