The king is dead. Long live the king. When power falls on the shoulders of a young man, only his slave can teach him how to be great, but power corrupts. Here is a novel of the ancient world in all its splendour and barbarity from a hotly-rated new author. Ten years after the fall of Babylon, Cyrus's Persian army is on the march again. His old slave Croesus accompanies him as always, as does the king's son and heir, Cambyses, who has inherited none of his father's diplomacy or charisma, and all of his vanity and violence. When the warriors of Persia are unexpectedly crushed in battle, Cyrus is put to death and Cambyses assumes the throne. Croesus, once a king himself, is called upon to advise the new emperor, but the young man cannot be guided and, after taking offence at an insult by an Egyptian ruler, Cambyses takes the full force of his father's army to Africa for bloody and brutal vengeance. A gripping tale of the perils of kingship and the relationships of the mighty with those who fear them. 278pp, paperback.

From an addictive series for fans of Patrick O'Brian and C. S Forester with a likeable hero and a huge cast of sharply drawn supporting characters. Alan Lewrie commands his own ship HMS Jester and takes part in the famous battle against the French known as The Glorious First of June. From there Lewrie is sent to join Admiral Hood in the Mediterranean. Under his inspired leadership he assists in the conquest of Corsica, but Hood is soon replaced by the maddeningly cautious Admiral Hotham. Only alongside one Horatio Nelson does Lewrie again find his chance to be of service in a series of fierce battles along the French coast. It is there that he hears once again of an old enemy, the French commander Guillaume Choundas. Lewrie knows that destiny will soon bring their ships together. 390pp, paperback.

Cutting between a courtroom trial and the events surrounding it, you will be racing through to the final tense pages, full of betrayal, revenge and shocking revelations in this Jack Parlabane thriller from the Scottish crime writer. It tells the potent story of a woman who thought she was too late for love, the man who falls for her ambition, and the secret selves that are poised at any moment to end everything. Diana Jager is clever, strong and successful, a skilled surgeon and fierce campaigner via her blog about sexism in medicine. Yet it takes only hours for her life to crumble when her personal details are released on the internet as revenge for her writing. Then she meets Peter, kind, generous, and knows nothing about her past - the second chance she's been waiting for. Within six months they are married. Within six more, Peter is dead in a road accident, a nightmare end to their fairy-tale romance, but Peter's sister Lucy doesn't believe in fairy tales, and tasks disgraced reporter Jack Parlabane with discovering the dark truth behind the woman the media is calling the Black Widow. Still smarting from his own relationship wounds after a turbulent divorce, Jack's investigation into matters of the heart takes him to hidden places, both online and off, where most would never dream of having to go. 422pp.

From Ireland's most lyrical crime fiction writer this is an addictive series setting a falling Irish angel Jack Taylor against a dangerous band of heretics. Bruen brings his elegiac talents to bear on a case involving a famously blasphemous red book and his equally profane anti-hero Jack Taylor. As well-versed in politics, pop culture, and crime fiction as he is ill-fated in life, Taylor is recovering from a failed suicide attempt. In need of money, and with former cop on his resumé, Taylor had been hired as a night-shift security guard. But his Ukrainian boss has him in mind for some unexpected off-the-books work. He wants Taylor to find what some claim to be the first true book of heresy, 'The Red Book', currently in the possession of a rogue priest who is hiding out in Galway after fleeing a position at the Vatican. Despite Taylor's distaste for priests of any stripe, the money is too good to turn down. M, the woman-of-many-guises who has had an eye on Jack's heart and mind for the past two years, reappears and turns out to be tangled up with the story of the Red Book, leading him down ever more mysterious and lethal pathways. The novel twists towards a violent end as Jack is increasingly plagued by ghosts and by the disposable and disposed of a city filled with as much darkness as the deepest corners of Jack's own mind. 330pp. Stylistically, very short sentences.

'Thriller of the Year, this is a Sunday Times Number One Bestseller by the TV frontman of SAS: Who Dares Wins and who has achieved the Holy Trinity of the UK's Elite Forces. Ant Middleton writes thrillers 'that can come only from boots-in-the-mud experience.' Mallory - he was the best of the best, a Special Forces leader and a hero, but then he made a fatal decision, gambling with the lives of his men with terrible consequences. Two dead and his young friend Donno left in a coma. Back on the streets with nothing to lose, Mallory has a darkness growing inside him, and a dangerous need to seek out trouble. Then Donno's mother asks him for help - her other son Scott has gone missing in South Africa and she wants Mallory to find him. Perhaps it's redemption, perhaps he's looking for revenge on the world, but suddenly Mallory has a purpose and nothing and no one is going to stand in his way. Large sized softback, 434pp with fairly large print.

One of the SF Masterworks Gollancz series by Arthur C. Clarke (1917-2008), who was the author of the scientific paper that established the principle of communications satellites and who collaborated with Stanley Kubrick on 2001. This delightfully written and exciting novel is set in the 22nd century. Visionary scientist Vannevar Morgan conceives the most grandiose engineering project of all time, and one which will revolutionise the future of humankind in space: a Space Elevator, 36,000km high, anchored to an equatorial island on the Indian Ocean. The novel was the winner of the Hugo and Nebula Awards for Best Novel. 256 page paperback facsimile reprint of the 1979 original.

A gold mine has been established 20 miles or so east of Lifford, County Donegal in the Irish Republic, just across the River Liffey which divides it from Strabane, County Tyrone in Northern Ireland. Preparations are in hand for the official opening of the goldmine to be performed by Cathal Hagan, a US Senator of Republican sympathies and doubtful reputation. Inspector Benedict Devlin is responsible for the associated security operation. A body is found at the mine which turns out to be an Iron Age 'bog body' of a young woman who was apparently sacrificed. This brings archaeologists hotfoot from Dublin and the professor in charge turns out to be a childhood neighbour and university drinking buddy of Devlin's. Meanwhile a man shot during an unsuccessful bank raid in Lifford proves to be an illegal immigrant from Chechnya. At the mine a shanty camp is growing on the banks of a nearby river after the discovery of a nugget in the riverbed triggers a mini gold rush. When the controversial US diplomat is attacked the gunman turns out to be a young environmentalist related to an old friend of Devlin's. Then Devlin's friend is found dead near the mine and he begins to suspect that the business is a front for something far more sinister than mere mining. 'A mystery of labyrinthine complexity' - Sunday Telegraph, it is a tale of big business, the new Europe and the dispossessed. 276pp, paperback.

Wilmet Forsyth is well dressed, well looked after, suitably husbanded, good looking and fairly young - but very bored. Her sober husband Rodney who works at the Ministry is slightly balder and fatter than he once was. Wilmet would like to think she has changed rather less. Her interest wanders to the nearby church where she can neglect her comfortable household in the more serious-minded company of three unmarried priests and of course Piers Longridge, a man of an unfathomably different character altogether. With an introduction by John Bayley who says 'The setting and the characters are perfectly aligned with each other. Mr Bason, for example, is an excellent cook and a bit of a kleptomaniac.' 277pp, paperback.

If Jane Cleveland and Prudence Bates seem an unlikely pair to be walking together at an Oxford reunion, neither of them is aware of it. They couldn't be more different - Jane is a rather incompetent vicar's wife who always looks as if she is about to feed the chickens, while Prudence, a pristine hothouse flower, has the most unsuitable affairs. With the move to a rural parish, Jane is determined to find her friend the perfect man. She learns though that matchmaking has as many pitfalls as housewifery. Set in the early 1950s with all the rationing and privation that entailed, the ghastly Fabian Driver is apparently another skewering of one of Barbara Pym's ex-lovers. 240pp in facsimile reprinted paperback.

Dulcie Mainwaring is always helping others, but never looks out for herself, especially in the realm of love. Her friend Viola is besotted by the alluring Dr Aylwin Forbes, so surely it isn't prying if Dulcie helps things along? Aylwin however is smitten by Dulcie's pretty young niece. And perhaps Dulcie herself however ridiculous it might be is falling, just a little, for Aylwin. Once life's little humiliations are played out, maybe love will be returned and fondly after all. Comic, brave, heartrending, this Virago Modern Classic edition has an introduction by Paul Binding. 288pp, paperback.