Julian Barnes

The Sea

John Banville

Described by The Observer as "one of the most rewarding and humane novels of recent years", Banville's tale - which deservedly won the Man Booker Prize in 2005 - tells the tale of an elderly art historian who loses his wife to cancer and feels compelled to revisit the seaside villa where he spent childhood holidays, told in typically restrained, elegant style.

The Sea by John Banville: RRP £7.99

Never Let Me Go

Kazuo Ishiguro

An evocative and reflective tale of love, friendship and memory, this is the latest offering from the author of The Remains of the Day, which imagines the lives of a group of students growing up in a darkly skewed version of contemporary England. In typically haunting style, the narrator relives her childhood at her apparently idyllic school, and considers the fates of herself and her friends in the outside world.

Never Let me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro: RRP £7.99

The Secret River

Kate Grenville

The most recent novel from Sydney-born Kate Grenville, this lyrical and compelling tale follows the life of a young apprentice and his wife from the London of the 1790s, to the fledgling penal colony of Australia, to which the couple end up being transported. An evocative imagining of both big, dirty London and the small colony in Australia, where the native population is frustrated by the endemic cruelty of growing colonial rule.

The Secret River by Kate Grenville: RRP: £7.99