Kim Stanley Robinson is an American science fiction writer, who has written around 20 books since the 1980s; this is the first I've read. It's epic and ambitious, a little under 500 pages. It opens 160 years into an multi-generation colonisation expedition to a star system 12 light years from Earth, having left our solar system in 2545. The star ship has a population of around 2000, supported by self-contained biomes.

George Mackay Brown (1921 - 1996) was a very prolific writer from Stromness in the Orkney Islands who wrote poetry, novels and short stories, plays and essays, and the autobiography For The Islands I Sing which was written late in life but he didn't want it published until after his death. He suffered from tuberculosis for most of his life. The memoir is primarily focussed on his development throughout his life as a reader and writer, and his observations and recollections are haunting and mythical.

Dad Art is Damien Wilkins' 8th novel, and 13th book overall, which makes him one of the most prolific writers in New Zealand over the last 25 years. He has also won a number of awards. He is a vivid and exuberant writer, a very acute observer of human frailty and self-deception. His characters are often drifting somewhat passively through life, as many of us do, then experience a crisis of some kind, which forces them to subtly change their perception of themselves.

A beautifully packaged, very brief hardback (80 pages), which explains seven key concepts in physics. Aimed at the intelligent, non-specialist reader, the book covers Einstein's General Theory of Relativity, quantum mechanics, the cosmos, elementary particles, quantum gravity, probability and the heat of black holes, and how to think about our own existence and the nature of consciousness. You will know more at the end of the book than you did at the beginning, and your head will spin.

My Brilliant Friend, The Story of a New Name, Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay, and The Story of a Lost Child make up the Neapolitan series, a massively acclaimed series of books tracing the lives of two friends, bookish Elena and feisty Lila, from childhood to late in life, set mostly in Naples. Ferrante is now considered one of world's greatest living writers, the books have been bestsellers wherever they have been published. It's hard to know what to say about them that hasn't already been said, but I can't find myself agreeing, quite, with all the acclaim they've had.

A novella, and three short stories. These are fine stories, worthy of publication in this way. The novella is an unconventional murder mystery - an elderly man is attacked after leaving a restaurant where he has lunched with his son. Detectives work on the case using surveillance cameras to track the characters movements, and gradually piece together a case. The story is told from various perspectives, and in elegant prose. I love McCann's longer novels, but this will do while we wait for his next.