This powerful, epic novel by a New Zealander now living near Melbourne is steeped in the Australian interior, a place where the city's rules don't apply. Saul's best and oldest friend Jed takes his own life soon after returning from working in a remote Aboriginal community. Saul, devastated, sets out to the community to try to come to terms with his friend's sudden death. It's a gripping story, set in an alien landscape, beautifully written, haunting and has a lot to say about grief. It's a brave and compassionate, graceful novel of great humanity.

Elizabeth Smither's new novel weaves the lives of three generations of women, in a clever, subtle and satisfying narrative set in Auckland and Paris. The style is wry and ironic, the characterisation deep and true, the plot meandering and unforced. As good as anything by Anne Tyler or Mary Wesley, fiction like this doesn't come very often from New Zealand, but it's all the better for the familiar surroundings.

Lanny is like nothing else I've ever read, and it deserves the widest possible readership. It's an amazing piece of work. Lanny is an eccentric child, perhaps somewhat autistic, who both enchants and baffles his parents and neighbours in a small rural village in England. There is an encounter with a mythical figure, Dead Papa Toothwort, an ancient spirit, which changes everybody's lives. The story is told in a fabulous collage of characters, voices and words, constructing a parable for our times. Absolute genius, it will stay with you, haunt you for weeks.

Incredibly, this is the first Philip Roth I've read - aside from Portnoy's Complaint as a naive teenager, which I failed to get. I'd always had this belief that he's 'difficult'. I think that had put me off. Anyway, I'm pleased I've now read this superb, epic novel, which is extremely readable, while also being subtle, profound and moving. It tells the story of a successful businessman, good-looking, and thriving in post-war America, until his daughter commits a violent act of political terrorism, which destroys his family.

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.