The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes

Barnes tackles the disappointments of ageing, the slipperiness of memory and the intensity of youthful experience, as narrator Tony remembers his brilliant schoolfriend Adrian and his difficult first girlfriend Veronica. The bequest of a diary puts all his comfortable certainties into question. Read the Guardian's review

On Canaan's Side by Sebastian Barry

In his fifth novel, Barry returns to the Dunne family: this time it’s 89-year-old Lilly looking back on her life. The Costa-winning Barry brings his customary lyricism to her memories of flight from Irish violence and exile in America, given new poignancy by the suicide of her grandson. Read the Guardian's review

Jamrach's Menagerie by Carol Birch

Birch’s 11th novel, also longlisted for the Orange, is a brilliantly vivid recreation of the 19th-century London docks and a doomed expedition to the South Pacific to capture a ‘dragon’ for the charismatic naturalist Jamrach. Birch combines precise historical detail with epic themes of wanderlust and survival. Read the Guardian's review Podcast interview with Carol Birch

Patrick deWitt, The Sisters Brothers

Eli and Charlie Sisters are hired killers on the American west coast in 1851, during the Gold Rush in the Sierra Nevada mountains. Caught in a cycle of inflationary violence, Eli begins to wonder if there's not an easier way to make a life, in a Western that explores humanity in the face of huge economic and technological change Read the Guardian's review

Half Blood Blues by Esi Edugyan

Canadian author Edugyan's second novel begins soon after the fall of Paris in 1940, when jazz trumpeter Hieronymous Falk is arrested in a cafe. He is never heard from again. Just 20, he was both a German citizen, and black. Fifty years later, Sid, Hiero's bandmate and the only witness that day, is going back to Berlin. Read the Guardian's review

A Cupboard Full of Coats by Yvvette Edwards

For 14 years, Jinx has been weighed down with guilt and anger after she witnessed her mother's brutal murder in east London. Out of nowhere, an old friend of her mother's reappears and wants to talk about how it all happened. Jinx sees a chance to confess, finally, to her role in the violence. But Lemon has his own secrets to share.

The Stranger's Child by Alan Hollinghurst

Hollinghurst's follow-up to his Booker-winning The Line of Beauty is an epic in five parts stretching from 1913 to the present day. In characteristically refined prose, he charts the short life and posthumous reputation of Cecil Valance, a bisexual poet killed in the first world war. Read the Guardian's review Read the Observer's review Stephen Moss interviews Alan Hollinghurst

Pigeon English by Stephen Kelman

The urban epidemic of teenage knife crime is the backdrop to this high-profile debut, which places an 11-year-old Ghanaian boy on a London housing estate. Inspired by TV cop shows, Harri and his best friend turn detective after witnessing the aftermath of a murder. Voice is all in a novel that offsets adult realities with the innocent argot of small boys. Read the Guardian's review Read the Observer's review Stephen Kelman's top 10 outsiders' stories

The Last Hundred Days by Patrick McGuinness

The end of Ceausescu through the eyes of a young English student adrift in Bucharest. Debut novel from acclaimed poet.

Snowdrops by AD Miller

Miller, a former Russian correspondent of the Economist, tackles Putin-era corruption in this assured debut. The narrator, an English lawyer living in Moscow, finds his morals compromised when he becomes entangled in a shady property deal. Read the Guardian's review Read the Observer's review AD Miller on writers' fascination with Russia

Far To Go by Alison Pick

In the build-up to the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia, the Bauer family have to make the agonising decision whether to send their only child away on the Kindertransport.

The Testament of Jessie Lamb by Jane Rogers

In the near future after an act of biological terrorism, 16-year-old Jessie is drawn into the mystery of why millions of women are dying.

Derby Day by DJ Taylor

Read the Guardian's review High and low society combine for skulduggery at the 1868 Derby in Taylor's second Victorian Mystery. DJ Taylor on William Powell Frith's Derby Day