Bookies' outsider follows in footsteps of Philip Pullman to become just the second children's author to claim the prize

This book is aimed at a musically literate – ideally, string-playing – readership, and as such it's full of insights

Kratz has become very vocal in the media since the Netflix documentary was released

Romance is seldom quite as starry-eyed as it can be at this level of teenage inexperience

Morgan tells the story in flashbacks through the first person narration of Helen and, in alternate chapters, through a third person narration in the present day

Helen Dunmore delivers a deceptively simple masterpiece, a new take on the lives of the men and – particularly – women caught up in the Cold War.

Barnes uses these dramatic events to frame a fictionalised biography, narrated from Shostakovich’s perspective

Before I moved to London, the city lay mostly underground. That’s how it seemed to me, anyway. On weekend visits I got around using the Tube, and avoided exploring on foot out of a quaint fear of getting lost. The city above-ground was consequently mysterious and flimsily unreal, pocked with blank spaces that I was only later to fill in.

Trio discuss their experiences for groundbreaking online course 'Literature and mental health: Reading for wellbeing'

Blass gives a captivating account of his travels around and across the North Sea, journeying by bus, boat, bicycle and train to the eclectic maritime borderlands of Britain, Belgium, the Netherlands and beyond

Blazing rows, bodily fluids and boys' own adventures (aka, a plan to rob an off-licence): Marianne Levy saw the lot on the school bus. But has anything changed in the two decades since her double-decker days?

After drink and drugs tore her apart in London, Amy Liptrot retreated to her parents' sheep farm on Orkney to start a new life of sobriety. But could bird-watching and the Northern Lights really save the writer from herself?

Hosseini's third novel is challenging and thought-provoking

A retelling of 'The Merchant of Venice' that, says Lucasta Miller, is supremely stylish, probing and unsettling

Pope Francis expounds on mercy - a notion at the heart of Christianity but one that somehow got lost in modern teaching of the faith

This is a far sadder book than the comedic elements might have suggested

The Long Goodbye, if not the best or most technically accomplished of the Marlowe novels, is without question Benjamin Black's favourite

Christopher Hirst reviews a must for Tolkien addicts, and a heartfelt portrait that offers revelations on every page

Thanks for minding the gap, Judith!