Lin Utzon was a 17-year-old art student when Martin Sharp, the notorious young cartoonist of the satirical magazine Oz, arrived at a noisy Paddington party. She found him intelligent, charming and roguish.

Over that past 20 years pop-up has gone from being a children's book or type of toaster to a computer ad to a spectral emporium offering flavours of the month with maple syrup.

Antoine Leiris' response to his wife's murder in Paris is pointed: "Guns, bullets, violence: this is just background noise to the real tragedy taking place: absence."

Peter FitzSimons' Victory at Villers-Bretonneux tops this History & Military bestsellers list.

Nutshell is some version of the Hamlet backstory, told from the point of view of a virtuosically bright prince who just happens to be a foetus.

Paulo Coelho's novella about Mata Hari is too short and too slapdash to detain anyone interested in this fascinating woman for long.

When he is imprisoned by the Soviet authorities, Count Alexander Rostov determines to make the most of his circumstances in the best possible way.

A big-picture novel that may put readers in mind of Graham Greene.

It starts as a buddy story but The River at Night turns into something much darker and thrilling.

Maxine Beneba Clarke thought her memoir, The Hate Race, would be "a hard sell at the end of the day because it was a book about a little black girl". Booksellers proved her wrong.

The Future Library wants a new book from a different author each year over the next 100 years – and they won't be available to read until 2114.

When external forces bend us into someone we don't wish to be, we need leisure to restore us to ourselves, however fractured or incompetent, writes author Mireille Juchau. In this world, the art of letting go is more important than ever.

Override is an examination of the evolving science of neuroplasticity, a self-help book, a memoir and a quest.