A dark and very disturbing thriller, in which the reader is made to feel complicit in the horrors wrought by the narrator. This is not a pleasant book, but it is compelling and original.

The densely forested border area between Bulgaria, Greece and Turkey was once heavily militarised. It isn't any longer, but it is still haunted by the past, and is now a crucial pathway for refugees fleeing conflict further to the East. Kapka Kassabova explores this enigmatic and little-known region, and reports on the borderlines between nations, people and cultures with her typical iridescent prose and remarkable depth of research. This is a graceful and moving travelogue and political history, reminiscent of writers such as Patrick Leigh Fermor and Tim Cope.

In Islander, Patrick Barkham, travels to and reports on 11 islands of the coast of Great Britain, from the known - Isle of Man, St Kilda, Barra - to the small, unknown and uninhabited - Bardsey, Osea, Ray. It's an evocative and vividly observed book, and Barkham investigates history and culture and seeks to discover what it's like to live on an island, and what it means to be an islander.

This atlas is in the same style as the recent Atlas of Improbable Places, and the Atlas of Untamed Places - highly designed 'books as objects', a selection of unusual places illustrated and mapped; rather superficial perhaps, but enjoyable diversions nonetheless. This example asks 'What is a country?' and describes parts of the world where independence has been declared but not recognised by anyone, or short-lived nations and places whose definition is unclear. Entertaining, informative, and stylish.

Between Them is a memoir of Richard Ford's parents, in two parts written 30 years apart. The one about his mother was written in the aftermath of her death in 1981, the other he wrote recently, 55 years after his father's death in 1960. He attempts to understand what their life was like before Richard was born, when they were young and carefree in the early to middle part of the Twentieth Century. I think many of us wonder what their parents were like when they were young, but the past is out of reach, filtered through hazy memory and old photos.

Stan Grant is an Australian journalist who has worked for many Australian and international TV networks. He identifies as Wiradjuri, and was brought up in a rural community, and suffered poverty and racism in childhood. This book is a meditation on race, identity and history, it is at times angry, passionate, personal and honest. He may not have all the answers, but his perspective is unique, and he asks if Australia is the country that Australians want it to be, and can it be better at comforting its past.