Brick Lane
Monica Ali
Publisher: Black Swan

Still in her teenage years, Nazneen finds herself in an arranged marriage with a disappointed man who is twenty years older. Away from the mud and heat of her Bangladeshi village, home is now a cramped flat in a high-rise block in London's East End...

Oryx and Crake
Margaret Atwood
Publisher: Virago Press Ltd.

Pigs might not fly but they are strangely altered. So, for that matter, are wolves and racoons. A man, once named Jimmy, lives in a tree, wrapped in old bedsheets, now calls himself Snowman.

The Largest Baby in Ireland After the Famine
Anne Barnett
Publisher: Virago Press Ltd.

Every Sunday the men met at the bridge. Felix Campbell was there with a couple of dozen men. They were all shapes and sizes, ages and wits. What they shared was history, what they knew was their place...

A Long Long Way
Sebastian Barry
Publisher: Faber and Faber

Barely eighteen years old, Willie Dunne leaves Dublin in 1914 to fight for the Allied cause, largely unaware of the growing political and religious tensions festering back home...