January

• In the early 60s, Victor “Lucky” Johnson arrives in London from St Kitts, with dreams of becoming a journalist. Lucky finds work at an Irish pub in Notting Hill, then as a rent collector for an unscrupulous slum landlord. Caryl Phillips’ Another Man in the Street (Bloomsbury) explores loss, displacement, belonging, and the triumph of black resilience in immigrant London.

• In How to Sleep Like a Caveman: Ancient Wisdom for a Better Night’s Rest (William Collins) Dr Merijn van de Laar investigates the origins of sleep based on archaeological findings and anthropological studies in contemporary hunter-gatherers. He looks at the discrepancies between our primordial bodily needs and our current sleep-inhibiting behaviour, and offers advice on how to sleep better.

• The story of modern dance is a story of subversion. In Wild Grace (Faber), Sara Veale profiles nine pioneering women at the heart of this movement from Isadora Duncan and Loie Fuller’s rejection of 19th-century paternalism to Katherine Dunham and Pearl Primus’s battles to recentre marginalised histories in the wake of the Second World War.

February

• In Kelly Frost’s debut The King’s Head (Atlantic Books), set in 1957, a gang of girls called the Kings rule the bomb-struck streets of Finsbury Park. When Harry, their unpredictable leader, encroaches on the territory of the Seven Sisters gang, the Kings know they’re in for a fight. Bound by wild friendship and brutal competition, these young women carve a space for themselves in the ruthless city.

• Steve Cranshaw’s Prosecuting the Powerful: War Crimes and the Battle for Justice (The Bridge Street Press) blends eyewitness reporting and history with stories from the front lines of justice in Ukraine, Israel/Palestine and at The Hague, as well as earlier accounts of war criminals like Slobodan Milošević.

• Set in the contemporary art world, James Cahill’s The Violet Hour (Sceptre) explores power, deception, authenticity and desire. We follow the fortunes of reclusive queer artist Thomas Haller, who appears at the top of his game. But the vision he presents to the world is a lie.

• Victoria Smith’s (Un)kind (Fleet) argues that traditional beliefs about women’s “kind” nature have been repackaged for an age that remains dependent on female self-sacrifice. Looking at how kindness culture is sold to women and girls – from play to self-help, social justice activism to empowerment – Smith analyses how this distorts relationships, harming those coerced into performing “kindness work” and the supposed recipients.

• Vivaan, a teenager in India’s silicon plateau, has discovered love on his smartphone. His parents know he is gay and Vivaan can count on their support. For his uncle, born 30 years earlier, things were very different. Mambro’s life changed forever when he fell for a male classmate in a country where homosexuality was criminalised. Santanu Bhattacharya’s novel Deviants (Fig Tree) examines the histories we inherit and the legacies we leave behind.

March

• As the horrors of fascism took root in 1930s Europe, tens of thousands of central Europeans, sought sanctuary on this island. The émigrés brought with them new and radical ideas that transformed Britain forever. In The Alienation Effect: How Central European Émigrés Transformed the British Twentieth Century (Allen Lane), Owen Hatherley shows how the clash between European modernism and British moderation realigned our culture and our imaginations for the better.

• In Stephen May’s novel Green Ink (Swift) David Lloyd George is at Chequers with his mistress Frances Stevenson. He is worried that his involvement in selling public honours is about to be revealed by Victor Grayson, a former socialist MP. Grayson vanished in late September 1920. Was he murdered by the British government, by enemies in the Socialist movement or did he fall in the Thames drunk?

• The eponymous protagonist of Shams (Salt) by Meike Ziervogel is a young Syrian woman who lives in Shatila, one of the world’s oldest refugee camps. She dreams of education and living a better life in Europe. But there are no schools in the camp, and her family opposes her dreams. Mr Tony, a poet running a charity, seems to offer a way out.

• John Lennon and Paul McCartney poured their feelings into their songs. After the break-up of the Beatles, they maintained a musical dialogue at a distance, in songs full of recrimination, regret, and affection. In John & Paul: A Love Story in Songs (Faber), Ian Leslie traces the twists and turns of their relationship through their music and offers insights into the nature of creativity, collaboration and human connection.

• In 1943, German SS officers in charge of Auschwitz-Birkenau ordered that an orchestra should be formed among the female prisoners. Almost 50 women and girls from 11 nations were drafted to play marching music, as well as giving weekly concerts for Nazi officers. In The Women’s Orchestra of Auschwitz (W&N), Anne Sebba explores their story and the response of other prisoners.

• Barbie Latza Nadau’s Every Body Counts: Money, Lies, and the Hidden Trade in Human Lives (Ithaka) looks at human trafficking, the fastest-growing criminal industry in the world, and reveals a secretive world where lives don’t matter, but every body counts. The flow of desperate people generates billions of pounds annually, not only for smugglers who get them across borders, but also for traffickers.

April

• Dis Poetry (Bloodaxe Books) brings together the poems from Benjamin Zephaniah’s three Bloodaxe collections, City Psalms, Propa Propaganda and Too Black, Too Strong, as well as several from The Dread Affair, together with previously unpublished work and lyrics from various recordings.

• In Twelve Post-War Tales (Simon & Schuster) Graham Swift sets the personal and the ordinary against the harsh sweep of history. His stories cover the aftermath of the Second World War, the Cuban Missile Crisis, 9/11, and the pandemic lockdown.

May

• At the heart of Robert Macfarlane’s Is a River Alive? (Hamish Hamilton) is the idea that rivers should be recognised as living beings in both imagination and law. The book flows to northern Ecuador, where a cloud-forest and its rivers are threatened by goldmining, through the wounded rivers, creeks and lagoons of southern India, to north-eastern Quebec, where the Mutehekau is being defended from death by damming in a river-rights campaign.

• Claire Adam’s novel, Love Forms (Faber), is set in Trinidad in 1980. Dawn Bishop, aged 16, leaves her home and journeys across the sea to Venezuela. She gives birth to a baby girl, and leaves her with nuns to be given up for adoption. Forty years later, a woman gets in touch with Dawn, now living in England, claiming to be her long-lost daughter.

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