Taking on ancient traditions and contemporary issues, this selection is in turn humorous and poignant and illustrates China as it is rarely seen.

Bear Witness is a thought experiment about how brown bears, extinct in Britain for a thousand years, might return. The novel’s protagonist, Callis MacArthur, finds herself exploring all possible routes for the reintroduction of bears to her native country.

Ramshackle, a novel, published April 2012, Freight Books. Ramshackle was Shortlisted for the 2012 Saltire Scottish First Book of the Year Award and for the 2013 Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust Best First Book of the Year Award and was also long-listed for the 2013 Authors’ Club Best First Book Award.

When Rachel Roanoke sees Hal Fremont across a diner counter, she claims him as her own. Their first date takes place in the registry office, and they set out for the small, suspicious town Hal calls home.

There, in the crumbling hallway of that mock-antebellum house, Rachel and Hal consummate their marriage and start to build their rambunctious brood.

Against their parents’ ill-starred fairytale romance, the Fremont children fight for their territory within the shifting, bitter bonds of family. In this tale of prejudice, identity and desire, Fremont becomes a map of survival.

This book is not just funny (or sad) stories of campervan trips in Scotland; it is not just ‘Zen and the art of campervan maintenance’ (with stories of sweetness and light that will entertain or make you cry); and it is not just nature writing (with observations of wildlife in Kintyre, Assynt and other places on the western seaboard of Scotland).

This first anthology of essays by significant writers from minority groups in Germany — Turks, Afro-Germans, German Jews, Eastern Europeans and others — sheds new light on the diverse experiences of minority groups living in Germany today. It also introduces to English-speaking audiences innovative literary talents whose contribution to German culture has not yet received the attention it deserves.

I spent much of summer 2014 driving the motorways and country lanes of England and Wales with Luke Allan for there were our own there were the others, a project by Alec Finlay for the National Trust to mark the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War.

November, 2002, and sixteen-year-old Clare is travelling from Glasgow to Florence with her older brother Danny to be a part of the anti-capitalist demo. Amidst the crowds they meet Julian and Letitia, two alluring and seductive anti-capitalists from down south.