Author Kiran Millwood Hargrave picks her favourites, including Monique Roffey’s fabulist Caribbean and Madeline Miller’s witch banished by Zeus

From Mary Shelley’s sole survivor to David Farrier’s survey of the traces we leave behind … author Cal Flyn on the most potent predictions

Author Howard Cunnell picks his favourites, including a pioneering tale of a young black girl in the UK and a poetry collection by a mysterious ‘Mick Guffan’

From This Land Is Our Land to Why Rebel, the message is that if we take heed of the natural world, we can heal ourselves

From the steppe to wild forests, country estates to urban parks … Russia’s writers and artists have forged enduring links between nature and nation

From Kafka’s The Trial to insightful accounts from barristers on their time in the courts, here are some outstanding titles to explain the legal system

From a guide to being an ‘ethical slut’ to Charlotte Roche’s disturbing Wetlands, historian Kate Lister picks the best books about the beauty, ugliness and joy of sexuality

The Super League fiasco exposed the sport’s complex relationship with finance – and these books by David Conn, Kelly Smith and more are brilliant

Author Emma Stonex shares her favourites, including psychological novels by John Fowles and Iris Murdoch, and an illuminating history of lighthouses

Whether it is Vera Brittain or Elena Ferrante, women’s relationships have provided succour in troubled times, writes Lucy Jago

From polar bears to murder mysteries, Katherine Rundell’s picks will make long days feel shorter and a small world seem larger

As Covid-19 vaccinations gain speed around the world, Eula Biss picks books that explore this huge advance in medical science

Whether you are after a novel or informative non-fiction, hope and renewal are in the air at last, writes Lia Leendertz

From spellbinding love stories to a memoir that shook the British establishment, Michael Cashman shares his favourites, touching on persecution, freedom and friendship

From Audre Lorde to Amanda Gorman, poetry has long provided a potent way for people to speak up and bring about progress

From Regency romance queen Georgette Heyer to a novel about the search for Tutankhamun’s tomb, author Harriet Evans picks her favourites

From Agatha Christie’s Mary Westmacott novels to life lessons from a Stoic philosopher, Sophie Hannah recommends books to see in 2021

From Hercule Poirot to the Jolly Christmas Postman, Jenny Colgan picks books to enjoy this festive period

From a wartime romance to a comedy of cooking errors … Amanda Craig recommends books that lift the spirits

From fiction by Daniel Kehlmann and Helen Oyeyemi to a Shirley Jackson biography, author Daisy Johnson selects tales to give you goosebumps