Greenfly by Tom Lee

Hardback published by Harvill Secker, £10, available now

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Lee's deceptively upbeat tone often belies the dark content of his stories. In this mesmerising collection of tales, he explores the human psyche.

Greenfly — the first short story — describes a woman who has quit work and spends her days playing computer games and fretting about a greenfly infestation, while her husband becomes infatuated with a glamourous new work colleague.

Final story Island 21 marks the meticulous routine of a marine stranded on a desert island, whose letters to his beloved reveal a state of mind which contrasts sharply with his organised behaviour.

The border between reality and imagination, sanity and insanity, fidelity and betrayal, and genius and obsession is consistently blurred throughout this book. But Lee's themes are so well-defined that three-quarters of the way through the stories begin to border on predictable.

But while each tale might be formulaic in theme, every one remains daring in setting and fearless in subject.

The Other Half Lives by Sophie Hannah

Hardback published by Hodder and Stoughton, £12.99, available now

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Ruth Bussey is a vulnerable, introverted, woman who works for framer, Aidan Seed.

But Aiden is also her lover and, while on a business trip, reveals to besotted Ruth that he once strangled a mutual acquaintance called Mary.

Yet while Ruth knows that Aidan couldn't possibly have killed this women, whom she saw just a few months ago, Aidan refuses to listen to Ruth and goes to the police.

Soon inspectors Charlie Zailer and Simon Waterhouse are unravelling a web of death, lies and murky pasts.

Sophie Hannah's latest thriller echoes her former books with its twisted, dark characters. From the first to the last page, she creates a sinister undertone of fear and impending doom. The outcome is so unpredictable that it leaves the reader squirming with curiosity until the final chapters. A must read.

UFO In Her Eyes by Xiaolu Guo

Hardback published by Chatto & Windus, £12.99, available now

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This tale of the unexpected from Orange Prize short-listed author Xiaolu Guo is set in a peasant village in China in the year 2012.

In Silver Hill Village on the 20th day of the seventh moon Kwok Yun is cycling through the rice fields when she sees what she thinks is a UFO hovering in the sky.

Spotting a distressed Westerner lying in its shadow she instinctively helps. In that instant her life changes forever.

When the stranger repays Kwok Yun's kindness with a large cheque she becomes a local celebrity, but a closely scrutinised one.

Soon UFO hotels are springing up and the village is crawling with officers from the national security and intelligence army, who all have questions for Kwok Yun.

UFO in Her Eyes is told through a series of interrogation scripts compiled by the various agents sent to investigate the strange sighting giving the reader a bird's-eye view from various standpoints. An original, if slightly underwhelming, novel.

Hitler's Private Library — The Books That Shaped His Life by Timothy W Ryback

Hardback published in hardback by The Bodley Head, £18.99, available now

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A hitherto neglected, but highly significant, aspect of Hitler's life is brilliantly explored in this book.

Its source material is the approximately 1,600 surviving volumes — many bearing the German dictator's book-plate and sometimes scribbled marginal notes — from his original private library of 16,000 books.

Ryback has focused on those which possessed either emotional or intellectual significance for Hitler. They provide a fascinating and often chilling insight into his mind.

To critical eyes, he appeared no more than a poorly-educated rabble-rouser who banned books and whose taste in art was often execrable but, surprisingly, he was also a voracious reader. His library covered a wide range of subjects from cowboy pulp novels to art, architecture and military history.

Liberal or humanitarian reading matter were clearly unwanted and the 'philosophical' volumes he enjoyed were mainly anti-Semitic or occult tosh. He favoured those that backed up his prejudices and he undoubtedly acquired some very nasty ideas in this way.