The Offering by Grace McCleen is published in hardback by Sceptre, priced £17.99 (ebook £9.98). Available now

Madeline is a teenage girl whose life is torn apart on her 14th birthday.

Having moved to live on an island with her overbearing God-fearing father and submissive mother, Madeline spends her days searching for something elusive and playing with her pet dog.

She confuses the normal development of a teenage girl with her own search for God, mixing up what is real and what is imagined.

Mundane things get confused with events in the bible so that the line between what is real and what is imagined becomes permanently blurred.

Events come to a head on her birthday, celebrations laid waste by events so cataclysmic to her family that things will never be the same again.

Having taken refuge in a mental infirmary, Madeline is presented with an enigmatic young psychiatrist who attempts to unravel the mystery which has been buried in the layers of her troubled mind.

Little does he know the shattering effects his gentle probings will have.

Grace McCleen is the critically acclaimed author of award-winning offerings The Land Of Decoration and The Professor of Poetry and The Offering is sure to result in more nominations.

With praise from Hilary Mantel and AS Byatt, there's every reason to believe McCleen will remain a firm fixture of the literary intelligentsia for years to come.

9/10

(Review by Roddy Brooks)

FICTION

Mobile Library by David Whitehouse is published in hardback by Picador, priced £14.99 (ebook £5.99). Available now

Stories are king in this darkly delightful tale from journalist David Whitehouse. His second novel (his first, Bed, was published in 2012), starts at the end. Nearly-teenager Bobby Nusku and single mother Val and her daugher Rosa are surrounded by police on a cliff edge in a stolen mobile library. Misfit Bobby has run away from his dad and her girlfriend and is struggling to come to terms with his mother's absence. Val provides a comforting mother figure, who he has strong feelings for. Hiding from the police, the trio meet a tall and mysterious traveller called Joe, who has a wild temper, but who completes their makeshift family. As they travel north in search of a crumbling Scottish mansion with a private zoo that Joe remembers from his childhood, Bobby and Rosa read their way through the library's collection of books - literary references abound - and fantasy starts to blur with fiction. Whitehouse eloquently evokes Bobby's adolescent angst, with all the jealousy and rage it entails, but his obvious fascination with stories is laboured. And the book's more violent scenes sit uncomfortably against the saccharin love-fest between the four main characters. Still, a tale that will haunt right up until it's clever conclusion.

7/10

(Review by Kate Whiting)

Now That I've Found You by Ciara Geraghty is published in paperback by Hodder, priced £6.99 (ebook £3.49). Available now

Vinnie drives Ellen to her physio appointment every week. They never talk. Vinnie is preoccupied pondering how he will manage this week's school lunches, teenage tantrums, pocket money and bedwetting. This is his sole responsibility now, since his wife walked out of their home and away from their family. Ellen is too far into the heartbreak and devastation of her past to notice what is going on around her. Existing in a static limbo, she is afraid and alone. One taxi journey changes this forever, shocking both Vinnie and Ellen into finally opening their eyes and their hearts to each other. In Now That I've Found You, Ciara Geraghty gently draws sorrow, happiness, excitement and fear out of her reader. The journey she creates of Ellen and Vinnie's relationship is intricate and cautious, yet consistently engaging. A novel about parenthood, families, love and loss, Now That I've Found You is an enjoyable and moving read.

8/10

(Review by Chloe Chaplain)

A Place For Us by Harriet Evans is published in paperback by Headline, priced £7.99 (ebook £2.99). Available now

"The day Martha Winters decided to tear her family apart began like any other day." This is how the book opens, but in the first section you learn that seething under the surface, the family is ripped in several ways already - children and grandchildren spread around the world. Slights and unspoken truths are undercurrents. The place in the title is Winterfold - a blissful spot, where Martha and David have brought their family up. Chapters are narrated by different characters so you get different perspectives on the same incidents and relationships. The narrative also goes backwards and forwards in time so you can see the impact that decisions have rippling forwards. While the covers of Evans' novels gets the chick lit treatment, some of the issues she deals with are far from frothy - domestic violence or abuse, adoption, bereavement, plagiarism, women's role in the world alongside some of the romantic staples of boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl back again. The hopes and worries of older, more mature women even get a look in.

6/10

(Review by Bridie Pritchard)

NON-FICTION

The Bletchley Girls: War, Secrecy, Love And Loss - The Women Of Bletchley Park Tell their Story by Tessa Dunlop is published in hardback by Hodder & Stoughton, priced £20 (ebook £6.99). Available now

If you found yourself fascinated by Benedict Cumberbatch's turn as genius mathematician Alan Turing in The Imitation Game, then this biography of Bletchley Park life should be right up your street. In The Bletchley Girls, journalist and broadcaster Tessa Dunlop presents the stories of 12 women who worked at the United Kingdom's Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS) during the Second World War. As Dunlop interlaces their backgrounds and reactions to Park life, you discover this is not simply a biography of one shared experience, but of a generation. Having signed the Official Secrets Act, many of the stories these women have to share have gone unheard for decades - not even their families were to know of the heroic, and ground-breaking work they conducted during that time - and it is enlightening to hear them from the women's own perspectives. It is at times hard to distinguish each woman's voice through a clumsy, interwoven narrative; however the collective conscience of the Bletchley Girls is unquestionably compelling.

7/10

(Review by Holly McKenzie)

Sophia: Princess, Suffragette, Revolutionary by Anita Anand is published in Bloomsbury, priced £20 (ebook £12.34). Available now

As subject matter goes, the life of Sophia Duleep Singh offers the potential for about a dozen biographies rather than just one. The daughter of a Maharajah, her family were exiled from India to Elveden in Suffolk where her father improbably recreated the family estate complete with leopards, monkeys and exotic birds. Sophia, who also just happened to be Queen Victoria's god-daughter, grew up to be a socialite and fashion muse. But she was no ordinary It Girl. Defying a strict edict, she returned to India and fought for women's suffrage. From tending wounded soldiers to taking on the might of politicians, Sophia proved herself to be unusually resourceful and daring. This is an unforgettable, vivid tale, sweeping in scale, made all the more extraordinary when one considers it is based entirely on real life.

9/10

(Review by Anita Chaudhuri)

CHILDREN'S BOOK OF THE WEEK

Talon by Julie Kagawa is published in paperback by Mira Ink, priced £7.99 (ebook £1.79). Available now

Blood Of Eden author Julie Kagawa returns with a new series. Clutches of dragons are hiding in human form and expanding their numbers after the legendary society of dragon slayers, the Order of St. George, hunted them into near extinction. A group of dragons under the all-seeing eye of Talon have become strong and cunning, and are ready to take over the world. Rare among dragonkind, sister and brother Ember and Dante Hill are the only siblings known to their world. As they train to infiltrate society, Ember yearns for freedom, but struggles against the hierarchy of Talon. A rogue dragon she meets at the beach pricks her desire to break free, as the Order close in. Ember meets Garret Xavier Sebastian, who makes her question her purpose even more, unaware his mission is to seek out and kill all dragons. But as Ember's personality goes against everything he has been taught about the creatures, he starts to question the Order.

6/10