The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay - Michael Chabon

One night in 1939, Josef Kavalier shuffles into his cousin Sam Clay’s cramped New York bedroom, his nerve-racking escape from Prague finally achieved. Little does he realise that this is the beginning of an extraordinary friendship and even more fruitful business partnership. Together, they create a comic strip called ‘The Escapist’, its superhero a Nazi-busting saviour who liberates the oppressed around the world. ‘The Escapist’ makes their fortune, but Joe can think of only one thing: how can he effect a real-life escape, and free his family from the tyranny of Hitler?

Michael Chabon’s exceptional novel is a thrilling tight-rope walk between high comedy and bitter tragedy, and confirms his position as one of the most inventive and daring of contemporary American writers. In Joe Kavalier and Sam Clay, he has created two unforgettable characters bound together by love, family and cartoons.

The Lady from Zagred - Phillip Kerr

In 1942, there are worse places to be than Zurich and detective Bernie Gunther has seen his fair share of them. So when a superior asks him to track down a glamorous German actress believed to be hiding in Zurich, he takes the job. The actress, it emerges, is the daughter of a fanatical Croatian fascist, the sadistic commandant of a notorious concentration camp and Bernie finds himself involved in something much more sinister.

The Monuments Men - Robert Edsel

What if I told you that there was an epic story about World War II that has not been told, involving the most unlikely group of heroes?

What if I told you there was a group of men on the front lines who didn’t carry machine guns or drive tanks; a new kind of soldier, one charged with saving, not destroying.

From caves to castles in a thrilling race against time, these men risked their lives daily to save hundreds of thousands of the world’s greatest works of art.

THEY were the Monuments Men, and THIS is their extraordinary true story.

Child 44 - Tom Rob Smith

In Stalin's Soviet Union, crime does not exist. But still millions live in fear. The mere suspicion of disloyalty to the State, the wrong word at the wrong time, can send an innocent person to his execution. Officer Leo Demidov, an idealistic war hero, believes he's building a perfect society. But after witnessing the interrogation of an innocent man, his loyalty begins to waver, and when ordered to investigate his own wife, Raisa, Leo is forced to choose where his heart truly lies. Then the impossible happens. A murderer is on the loose, killing at will, and every belief Leo has ever held is shattered. Denounced by his enemies and exiled from home, with only Raisa by his side, he must risk everything to find a criminal that the State won't admit even exists. On the run, Leo soon discovers the danger isn't from the killer he is trying to catch, but from the country he is trying to protect.

A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens

A Tale of Two Cities (1859), Dickens’ greatest historical novel, traces the private lives of a group of people caught up in the cataclysm of the French Revolution and the Terror. Dickens based his historical detail on Carlyle’s great work – The French Revolution – and also on his own observations and investigations during numerous visits to Paris.

‘The best story I have written’ was Dickens’ own verdict on A Tale of Two Cities, and the reader is unlikely to disagree with this judgement of a story which combines historical fact with the author’s unsurpassed genius for poignant tales of human suffering, self-sacrifice, and redemption.

Mr Standfast - John Buchan

Set in the later years of World War I, Brigadier-General Hannay is recalled from active service on the Western Front to undertake a secret mission hunting for a dangerous German agent at large in Britain. He is forced to work undercover disguised as a pacifist, roaming the country incognito to investigate the deadly spy and his agents.

Dead Girl Walking - Christopher Brookmyre

Famous, beautiful and talented, Heike Gunn has the world at her feet. Then, one day, she simply vanishes.

Jack Parlabane has lost everything: his journalism career, his marriage, his self-respect. A call for help from an old friend offers a chance for redemption - but only if he can find out what happened to Heike.

Pursued by those who would punish him for past crimes, Parlabane enters the world of Heike's band, Savage Earth Heart, a group at breaking point. Each of its members seems to be hiding something, not least its newest recruit Monica Halcrow, whose possible relationship with Heike has become a public obsession.

Monica's own story, however, reveals a far darker truth. Fixated on Heike from day one, she has been engulfed by paranoia, jealousy and fear, as she discovers the hidden price of fame.

From Berlin to Barcelona, from the streets of Milan to remote Scottish islands, Parlabane must find out what happened before it's too late, all while the walls are closing in on him...