Carl Shuker, a former editor at the British Medical Journal, knows his medical procedures, and the politics of New Zealand's medical profession. In pared back, precise prose, he tells the story of a fearsome surgeon, Elizabeth Taylor, who makes an error during an operation, and the consequences of that error. The opening sequence, in the operating theatre, is on of the most agonisingly tense scenes I've ever read. The rest of the novel retains that tension.

This is a debut novel from a powerful new voice. Malachi Tallack is the author of two non-fiction titles, both a fusion of nature writing, history and memoir. This novel explores similar territory. Set in Shetland, it tells a story of crofting in a remote valley, the families that make their living there, their struggles and relationships. It is an intense, powerfully moving novel, in which the island and its climate are an intrinsic character. I loved it.

Island of Wings is a novel based on true events, set on the isolated island of St Kilda off the west coast of Scotland in the 1830s and 1840s. The novel focuses on the life of Lizzie MacKenzie, wife of the Reverend Neil MacKenzie, who was the priest on the small community from 1830 to 1844. He was responsible for modernising of the agricultural techniques on the island and the building of a new church, but the experiences of his wife are equally fascinating, as she struggles with privations, childbirth, language and social isolation.

An extraordinary book by the Australian journalist Leigh sales about what happens to people when they are struck by life-changing events, especially those that involve the intrusive glare of the media. She also condenses the latest research on the way the human mind processes grief, and finds courage where she expected to find broken lives.

A fictionalised look at true events US in the 1930s, through the eyes of Lorena Hickok, a straight-talking journalist from South Dakota, this fascinating novel is full of White House intrigue. Hickok, known as Hick, apparently had a passionate relationship with Eleanor Roosevelt, the idealistic First Lady and wife of Franklin Roosevelt. It's unclear if the actual relationship was ever physical, although it's clear from their many letters that it was passionate, but Amy Bloom imagines it as being physical, which would have been controversial in the 1930s.

Tracey Thorn still has the diaries that she kept from the 1970s, growing up a bored and cynical teenager in London's suburbia. She later became a famous and successful musician as half of the duo Everything But The Girl. This wise, nostalgic memoir is structured from those diaries as Thorn takes us beyond the banal entries like 'Took dog for a walk and did loads more exercises' to what life was like as a teenager, rebelling against acquisitive parents, becoming interested in boys and punk music and trying to figure what kind of person you want to be.