Ash is a potent and oblique novel, interspersed with stream of consciousness bursts of free verse. It's short, ingenious, angry, and follows Thea, a vet at a rural practice, juggling mothering, a toxic workplace, a detached partner and other daily challenges. A nearby volcano coats the countryside with ash, making life even more difficult. It's intense, very readable, and far bigger than its 150 pages would indicate.

Acequias are traditional community owned and managed irrigation ditches which are a lifeline of small holding farmers in New Mexico and elsewhere. Each has a mayordomo who is elected by the users to manage the operation of the ditch for a period, and settle disputes about water usage. Stanley Crawford moved to New Mexico to farm garlic in the early 1980s, and spent a year as mayordomo in 1985 and 1986.

Although published as science fiction, Ministry For The Future is a very political novel, which speculates on a future history of the next 40 to 50 years. It's a huge feat of imaginative writing, a massively powerful book about what we may be facing, and the action required to prevent catastrophe and make a new, better world. Optimistic in the end, the human race is not without significant challenges to overcome. Whether the political and public will exists to do what Robinson suggests, I'm doubtful, but this extraordinarily addictive book is rich with ideas and ideals.

I haven't read de Bernieres for some years, so it's good to know that he is as inventive, intelligent and clever as always. Light Over Liskeard is a funny book about the end of the world, which is a tricky thing to pull off. It's set in the near future, where England has been 'rewilded' and lynxes and aurochs roam, bots do most of the work so people don't have jobs and have nothing to do, eccentrics abound. Q has retreated to remote Cornwall, as his work for the government as a quantum cryptographer has led him to believe that societal collapse is imminent.

Death Valley is an acid trip of a novel, set in the California high desert, it's about a woman travelling alone to escape her sad and lonely life. It's a surreal and magical novel, yet real and wise, briskly written, self-aware and knowing, it's possibly about the possibility of transformation. But possibly not.

An elegant and beautifully framed chronicle of a marriage, and what went before, Tom Lake is exactly what we have come to expect from Ann Patchett. Careful and compellingly written, lots of surprising revelations, and good humoured revelations of human motivations, it's ultimately about what it takes to be happy and content. Powerful, effortlessly profound, and remarkably satisfying. If only all novels could be this good!