Martha Gellhorn: A Life by Caroline Moorehead recounts the life of one of the twentieth century's most famous and adventurous journalists. Gellhorn reported from the front line of many conflicts, most notably perhaps the Spanish Civil War. Her private life was turbulent, her love life particuarly complicated, her marriage to Ernest Hemingway being one of many partnerships which failed to last. Caroline Moorehead's honest and supremely well-rounded biography brilliantly evokes both its subject and the times through which that subject lived. This book is as compulsively readable as a novel - a real page-turner.

The Good German by Joseph Kanon is a love story, a thriller and a book which asks big questions about the greatest crime of the twentieth century - the Holocaust. Set in the rubble and edgy atmosphere of Berlin immediately at the end of World War 2, it's a book which appeals to the heart and the brain.

Dope Girls by Marek Kohn is meticulously researched and beautifully written. Fascinating though it is on the subject of the drugs scene in early twentieth century Britain in general and London in particular, it's also about a lot more than that. The author provides an extraordinary glimpse into many lives and does so with genuine warmth and obvious passion for his subject.

Driftnet by Lin Anderson introduces forensic scientist Rhona MacLeod and is a vivid and exciting thriller set in Glasgow. Spare, cinematic and a real page-turner.

A Place in the Hills by Michelle Paver is the story of two passionate love affairs. Although one unfolds in Ancient Rome and the other in present day France and England, the author skilfully and movingly intertwines them by means of an archaelogical detective story. Totally absorbing, peopled by characters you really care about, this is unputdownable.

John Buchan's A Lost Lady of Old Years has been described as 'a dark, enthralling tale of loyalty & betrayal on the bloody road to Culloden Moor.' It's all that and more, a bleak but beautifully written story revolving around the anti-hero Francis Birkenshaw and the beautiful Mrs Murray of Broughton, a lady who was deeply involved in the 1745 Jacobite Rising. It's a book whose central character stays in the mind long after you've finished it.