Book of the month

British Crime Book of the month – January

Andrew Martin – The Yellow Diamond is our british crime book of the month for January. India, 1923. On the broiling Night Mail from Calcutta to Jamalpur, a man is shot dead in a first class compartment. Detective Inspector Jim Stringer was sleeping in the next compartment along. Was he the intended target?

Book of the month for December

Jenni Fagan – The Sunlight Pilgrims is our book of the month for December. Set in a Scottish caravan park during a freak winter – it is snowing in Jerusalem, the Thames is overflowing, and an iceberg separated from the Fjords in Norway is expected to arrive off the coast of Scotland – The Sunlight Pilgrims tells the story of a small Scottish community living through what people have begun to think is the end of times…

Book of the month for November

Susan Abulhawa – The Blue Between Sky and Water is our book of the month for November. Spanning generations and continents, The Blue Between Sky and Water is a story of powerful, flawed women; of relocation, separation and heartache; of renewal, family, endurance, and love. Susan Abulhawa brings a raw humanity and delicate authority to the story of Palestine in this devastatingly beautiful tale.

Book of the month for October

Jonathan Coe – Number 11 s our book of the month for October. This is a novel about the hundreds of tiny connections between the public and private worlds and how they affect us all. It's about the legacy of war and the end of innocence. It's about how comedy and politics are battling it out and comedy might have won. It's about how 140 characters can make fools of us all. It's about living in a city where bankers need cinemas in their basements and others need food banks down the street. It is Jonathan Coe doing what he does best ­- showing us how we live now.

Book of the month for September

Paul Beatty – Sellout s our book of the month for September. Longlisted for Man Booker Prize 2016. Born in Dickens on the southern outskirts of Los Angeles, the narrator of The Sellout spent his childhood as the subject in his father's racially charged psychological studies. He is told that his father's work will lead to a memoir that will solve their financial woes. But when his father is killed in a drive-by shooting, he discovers there never was a memoir. All that's left is a bill for a drive-through funeral.

Book of the month for August

Melissa Harrison – At Hawthorn Time is our book of the month for August. Shortlisted for the Costa Novel Award 2015, Longlisted for the Baileys Prize 2016.

Book of the month for July

Kate Clanchy – Meeting the English is our book of the month for July. A bright debut novel about dark subjects, by an acclaimed poet and non-fiction and short story writer. 17yr old Struan goes south for the first time, leaving his Scottish town to spend a life-changing summer in London caring for a paralysed literary giant, in response to an advert.

Book of the month for June

Viet Tanh Nguyen – The Sympathizer is our book of the month for June. Finalist for the Edgar Award for best First Novel 2016! Winner of the 2016 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction! Winner of the 2016 Pulitzer Prize! The Sympathizer is a Vietnam War novel unlike any other. The narrator, one of the most arresting of recent fiction, is a man of two minds and divided loyalties, a half-French half-Vietnamese communist sleeper agent living in America after the end of the war.

Book of the month for May

A. D. Miller – The Faithful Couple is our book of the month for May. California, 1993: Neil Collins and Adam Tayler, two young British men on the cusp of adulthood, meet at a hostel in San Diego. They strike up a friendship that, while platonic, feels as intoxicating as a romance; they travel up the coast together, harmlessly competitive, innocently collusive, wrapped up in each other. On a camping trip to Yosemite they lead each other to behave in ways that, years later, they will desperately regret.

Book of the month for April

Nell Zink – Wallcreeper is our book of the month for April. The Wallcreeper is nothing more than a portrait of marriage, complete with all its requisite highs and lows: drugs, dubstep, small chores, anal sex, eco-terrorism, birding, breeding and feeding.