The Miniaturist, by Jessie Burton, Pan Macmillan, £7.99 paperback

In 1686, 18-year-old Nella Oortman arrives at a grand house in the wealthiest quarter of Amsterdam. She has come from the country to her new life as the wife of illustrious merchant trader Johannes Brandt. She is met by his sharp-tongued sister, Marin.

When Johannes arrives he gives her a cabinet-sized replica of their home, his wedding present. It is to be furnished by an elusive miniaturist, whose tiny creations mirror their real-life counterparts in unexpected ways.

One’s loyalties change throughout the book, sympathy for Nella, dislike of Marin and bafflement at Johannes behaviour are replaced with different understandings. The descriptions of 17th Century Amsterdam street life and interiors give it an authentic note.

The Narrow Road to the Deep North, by Richard Flanagan, Vintage, £8.99 paperback

This won the Man Booker Prize for fiction in 2014 and is unputdownable.

The hero, Dorrigo Evans, is a doctor who is reflecting on his life. He remembers the camp where he was expected to keep the prisoners fit enough to work despite the fact that they were starved, had no clothes and many diseases. As he considers how the time in the death camp has affected him, he sees the Japanese as pawns in a game that meant the prisoners were treated as ‘machines in the service of the Emperor’.

Richard Flanagan finished this book the day his father died. He had been a survivor of the death railway. This could have been a sad and gloomy novel but it is not. Instead it is a page-turning, brilliantly written story of the triumph of the human spirit over the worst of what man can do to man.

The Walker’s Guide to Outdoor Clues and Signs by Tristan Gooley, Sceptre, £20 hardback

This would be a great present for anyone but perhaps especially for Father’s Day if your dad loves the outdoors.

Tristan Gooley is known for his natural navigation techniques. Did you know you can tell the points of the compass from gorse and trees? There are 19 ways to navigate using trees: their shape, their pattern of growth, the algae that cling to the bark. You can tell how near you are to human activity by the presence of nettles and the butterflies that feed on them.

This is a great book to dip into and try some of the tips out next time you are out for a walk in the country, on the coast or even in a town. A completely fascinating read.

Sophia: Princess, Suffragette, Revolutionary by Anita Anand, Bloomsbury, £20 hardback

This is a biography of Sophia Duleep Singh, one of Queen Victoria’s godchildren and granddaughter of Ranjit Singh, the Lion of the Punjab.

The early chapters are a fascinating summary of the history of the Punjab. Sophia becomes a suffragette almost because she needs a cause to throw herself into to help overcome her tendency to depression.

Handing out fliers demanding votes for women outside Hampton Court Palace, she is desperate to get arrested like the other suffragettes but the police know what bad publicity they will get arresting her and do not detain her. This is a story of displacement and dispossession.

Anita Anand uses a novelistic approach to make the history live and be readable. It is a very interesting biography covering people and places that are not well known.

If I Should Die, by Matthew Frank, Penguin, £7.99 paperback

This is a thriller introducing a new recruit to the Metropolitan Police, Joseph Stark. He is a veteran of the Territorial Army who served in Afghanistan and his story is woven through the main story of the book. The Military Police are looking for him. He also has a psychiatrist who he is seeing once a week for post traumatic stress disorder.

As a trainee detective, he has an uncompromising boss who takes no prisoners. It starts with the beating up of a homeless man. Police suspect a local gang of young tearaways but cannot prove it. Then the man dies and it becomes a murder investigation.

The suspense is built slowly and carefully and the back story of Stark himself builds at the same time. It is well written, pacy and a good read.