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A middle-aged man over his head in debt and secrets; high school girls in love with a bad but irresistible musician; and a pregnant petty criminal and her boyfriend: three worlds collide in what has been described as ‘Renberg’s pitch-black novel from Stavanger’. Translated from the Norwegian by Seán Kinsella.

Found in a second-hand suitcase, an old Polaroid of two Danish girls standing on the England ferry intrigues the London-based journalist Nora Sand. Lisbeth and Lulu went missing 20 years ago; revisiting the mystery of their disappearance draws Nora into the hunt for a serial killer. Translated from the Danish by Charlotte Barslund. Off-mint.

The award-winning foreign correspondent Peter Millar journeys through Cuba aboard a decaying railway system that was once the pride of Latin America. From the capital Havana, he travels with ordinary Cubans to the US naval base and detention camp at Guantanamo, sharing anecdotes, life stories and political opinions. Slightly off-mint and felt-tip mark on lower trimmed edge.

A successful journalist, a crack secret-service agent and Vuk, a highly skilled assassin who was raised in Denmark, but of Serbian descent: in a chilling political thriller, these three lonely people become trapped in a world of secret deals, private passions and organized crime. Translated from the Danish by Barbara J Haveland.

The third part of Kjærstad’s award-winning trilogy finds Jonas Wergeland aboard the Voyager, a boat named after a space probe, with a group of young geographers exploring the Sognefjord; but Jonas is also exploring his own past to discover the truth of his life and of his wife’s death. Translated from the Norwegian by Barbara J Haveland. Off-mint.

Filippo, an escaped prisoner, writes down a story a fellow inmate told him about the leader of an Italian terrorist group. The book is published, and though Filippo maintains it is fiction, the police don’t believe him. Slightly off-mint.

After a call girl is murdered and a plane full of arms bound for Iran disappears, rookie investigator Noria Ghozali begins to uncover a web of corruption that leads to the highest echelons of the French government.

Early 18th-century Sicilian noblewoman Marianna, who married her uncle aged 13, is a deafmute due to a childhood trauma. This historical fiction is set against the stultifying, class-obsessed society of the period, which confined women to subordinate roles. Slightly off-mint.

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In Wilson’s critically acclaimed Cold War thriller, MI6 agent William Catesby is given the job of finding – then burying – a secret from the past of Lady Somers, who is the new head of the Ministry of Defence; but the search takes a dangerous turn, even confronting him with the enigma of China’s emergence as a superpower.

As Europe teeters on the brink of war, twin sisters Lotte, who is planning to marry a Jewish musician, and Anna, beholden to the Third Reich, reunite after more than ten years apart, only to find their bond fractured.

MI6 agent William Catesby is tasked with doing whatever is necessary to prevent Argentina from obtaining more lethal Exocet missiles and threatening British lives in the Falklands, set against a backdrop of political differences in Westminster.

Family man Pal is weighed down by debt; lovestruck teenagers Sandra and William are determined to be together; and pregnant petty criminal Cecilie dreams of escaping her past. When the paths of the disparate characters cross, each is changed forever.

When strange historical artefacts are discovered alongside the bodies of murdered boys, the investigating detective enlists the local museum curator to help link the ancient symbolism to the modern crimes, before another life is lost. Slightly off-mint.

Set over five historical periods, characters from a young scribe in the sixth century BCE to a 1990s Hollywood star living with AIDS struggle to make sense of the religious condemnation of their homosexuality.

In this appeal for us to reject religion’s ‘chimeras’, the businessman and philanthropist Vitaly Malkin argues that the adoption of monotheistic doctrines slowed down the progress of human civilization and has failed to make people happier. Examining the big questions of evil, death, suffering and ‘the great battle against pleasure’, he encourages the reader to question what benefit religious practices offer and to live in the present rather than wait for life after death. Slightly off-mint.

This wry account of a rail tour of the USA ranges from New York to LA, from Niagara Falls to New Orleans. The author meets card-playing Amish, traces his Irish roots with the Mormons, and visits a number of microbreweries along the way.

Simon Gandolfi first visited India in the 1960s, driving a VW to Goa, where he met and fell in love with Vanessa. Forty years later, fury at the terrorist attacks on the Taj Hotel in Mumbai leads him to return, this time on a Honda 125. Gandolfi’s unique and charming travelogue interweaves the two trips, combining bittersweet memories of the past with a window on the India of today.