The book opens in Paris 1940, after the fall of the city when it was declared an open city and the Germans (or the Boots in the characters’ slang) rolled in. Central to the story are a heterogeneous mix of men who previously played jazz together in Berlin nightclubs. The ‘Hot-Time Swingers’ jazz band was made up of a couple of black Americans from Baltimore, Sidney Griffiths and Chip Jones; two white Germans, Ernst ‘The Mouth’ von Haselberg and Big Fritz Bayer; Paul Butterstein a German Jew and a young black German, Hieronymous Falk. The jazz scene has been branded as degenerate by the Nazis

Decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War the threat of nuclear conflict has receded from public consciousness despite the continued existence of vast arsenals of nuclear weapons around the world which are ready to be fired if the orders are given. Schlosser traces the origin of nuclear doctrine after 1945 through the course of the confrontation between the US and USSR while focusing on “broken arrows" – incidents when nuclear weapons were accidentally lost – and major accidents that almost resulted in catastrophe.

After the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki the US

If you have a passion for gardens and for the wildlife that you find therein then this is the perfect book for you. In fact, I will guarantee that no matter how knowledgeable you think you are about what lives above and beneath the soil, you will discover much that you didn’t know before. Dave Goulson writes in an engaging and accessible way, with a determination to spread the word about how we can all have a positive influence on the environment.

Goulson devotes chapters to moths, bees, ants, earwigs and other creatures as well as discussing peat use, garden centres and invasive (or not?)

When ten-year-old Violet Brown moves to Perfect with her parents, she soon discovers that there’s something strange about the place. For one thing, all the inhabitants have an eye defect, which means they can’t see without the help of special rose-tinted glasses. Violet’s father, an eye specialist, has been head-hunted by the mysterious Archer brothers to find a solution to the town’s vision problems. But when her mother starts acting out of character and her father goes missing it is up to Violet and her friend Boy to uncover the truth about Perfect.

This is the debut novel from Helena Duggan

Adopted from Vietnam at three days old but raised as a proud Kerrywoman in an Irish speaking household, Úna-Minh exquisitely explains what life is like in Ireland as a non-white Irish person. Úna-Minh’s mother is Noreen who raises her as a single mother in Tralee. Both Noreen and Úna-Minh’s grandfather Paddy are driving forces in her life from a young age. Noreen and Paddy’s support and especially Noreen’s willingness to listen to her daughter help Úna-Minh to grow up safe, secure and proud to be an Irish-speaking Kerrywoman. But racism in Ireland, like most places is an inevitable aspect of

This is a very atmospheric debut novel from Rachel Donohue, set in the claustrophobic location of an exclusive girls’ Catholic boarding school in the 1990s. The school is staffed mainly by nuns in a decaying country house, once belonging to an avid collector of curiosities who finished by hanging himself in the woods nearby. The grisly legend remains, as does his cabinet of curiosities.

Louisa, one of the two narrators has won a fourth-year scholarship to Temple House School as part of a push to include the wider community. It is clear that some members of the school’s population see the new

This documentary brings us to rural Macedonia where we meet Hatidze Muratova, a woman who has dedicated her life to wild beekeeping. The documentary originally started out as an environmental film about the river running through the centre of Macedonia, but plans changed when the film team discovered the beehives Hatidze tends in remote areas.

This immersive and visual documentary follows Hatidze as we watch her traditional methods of beekeeping, and follow her day to day where we see her relationship with her elderly mother in their remote village, and her trips to the market 4 hours away to

Fiction with a sense of place

Elif Shafak, as an author of both literary fiction and political/social commentary, has managed to create in her work, The Island of Missing Trees, a novel of great lyrical prose and beautiful imagery in her evocation of Cyprus, its history, landscape and culture.

The story packs a punch in covering a lot of ground in terms of combining personal and political themes with descriptions of nature and the interconnectedness between humans and the natural world. From the outset, the reader is introduced to the young lovers, Kostas, who is Greek Christian and Defne, of

This is the 8th instalment of the Slough House series so Herron could be forgiven for resting on his laurels somewhat, but instead he continues to refine his art, seamlessly blending the sublime with the ridiculous, the poetic with the utterly base. His hero, Jackson Lamb, is as revolting as ever, and the motley collection of disgraced spies who make up this remedial branch of MI5 as variously psychotic and inept as in past episodes. In fact it feels like the Falstaffian Lamb has taken on a life of his own, with Herron admitting he’s become unstoppable, saying “I look back at some of those