MORTAL COIL by Derek Landy.  Skulduggery Pleasant is back, and reunited with his original head. But all is not well in the magical world - for one thing, foreign powers are conspiring to take over the Irish Sanctuary, and for another thing, Valkyrie has discovered she might be the sorceress set to destroy the world. The problem is, she doesn't feel she can tell Skulduggery what she's learned... and that's how all the trouble starts.

With Valkyrie on a quest of her own, to seal her name and prevent her evil destiny from coming to pass, Skulduggery and the gang are even more vulnerable. Which is a shame, because remember those thousands of remnants, imprisoned in the Midnight Hotel? Well, now they're out. Not only that but they believe Valkyrie is their messiah. And that means thousands of wicked souls, desperate to get to Valkyrie, willing to kill anyone in their way... Oh, and because they can possess any body, they could be ANYONE.

Now Skulduggery, Valkyrie, Ghastly and Tanith can trust no one. Not even each other...

ATLANTIC by Simon Winchester.  In a narrative tour de force Simon Winchester dramatises the life of the Atlantic Ocean, from its birth in the farther recesses of geological time to its eventual extinction millions of years in the future. He brings to life key episodes in its history  - the age of exploration and the subsequent colonisation of the Americas; the flourishing of transatlantic commerce and the rise and fall of the slave trade; and the great naval battles that have left an indelible imprint on Atlantic history.

At the core of Simon Winchester's remarkable book is the story of mankind's complex relationship with this immense sea, which stretches for 9,000 miles from the North to the South Pole.

STARTED EARLY, TOOK MY DOG by Kate Atkinson.  It was a  day like any other day for security chief Tracy Waterhouse, until she makes a purchase she hadn't bargained for.  Suddenly her world is turned upside down, with fear and danger at every turn.  However her Faustian exchange is witnessed by an elderly actress teetering on disaster, as well as Jackson Brodie, who has just returned to his home County...

Kate Atkinson dovetails and counterpoints her plot with Dickensian brilliance, in a book filled with wit, wisdom and a fierce moral intelligence.

Room by Emma Donoghue.  Jack is five and, like any little boy, excited at the prospect of presents and cake. He's looking forward to telling his friends it's his birthday, too. But although Jack is a normal child in many ways – loving, funny, bright, full of energy and questions – his upbringing is far from ordinary: Jack's entire life has been spent in a single room that measures just 12 feet by 12 feet; as far as he's concerned, Room is the entire world.

He shares this world with his mother, with Plant, and tiny Mouse (though Ma isn't a fan and throws a book at Mouse when she sees him). There's TV too, of course – and the cartoon characters he thinks of as his friends – but Jack knows that nothing else he sees on the screen is real. Old Nick, on the other hand, is all too real, but only visits at night – like a bat – when Jack is meant to be asleep and hidden safely in Wardrobe. And only Old Nick has the code to Door, which is otherwise locked...

Told in Jack's voice, Room is the story of a mother's love for her son, and of a young boy's innocence. Unsentimental yet affecting, devastating yet uplifting, it promises to be the most talked about novel of 2010.  It has been longlisted for the 2010 Man Booker Prize.

Inheritance by Nicholas Shakespeare.  Andy Larkham is late. He is due at the funeral of his favourite school teacher, who once told him: ‘It’s hard work being anyone.’ It’s especially hard for Andy – stuck in a dead-end job, terminally short of cash and with a fiancée who is about to ditch him. When the funeral leads to unexpected consequences, Andy has to ask himself: how far will he go to change his life?

From early-twentieth-century Turkey to modern day London, Nicholas Shakespeare takes us on an extraordinary journey that explores the temptations of unexpected wealth, the secrets of damaged families and the price of being true to oneself.  At once a love story spanning many decades and a tragedy of betrayal and missed opportunities, it is a romance for our times.

True Spirit by Jessica Watson .  “When I was young I was pretty much afraid of everything. Somewhere along the way I learnt that if you truly want to live life you have to get involved, pursue your passions and dream big.  I came to understand what Helen Keller said far better than I can – ‘Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing’.”

These are Jessica’s words, taken from True Spirit. In it she details the extensive preparation she and her team made for the big voyage, her journey and the battles she fought along the way – against sleep deprivation, gale-force winds mountainous seas and the solitude most of us can only imagine. When she sailed back into Sydney Harbour on 15 May 2010, after 210 days at sea, she was cheered in by a huge crowd that included Prime Minister Kevin Rudd. To many, Jessica was our newest hero. She disagreed, saying she wasn’t a hero, “just an ordinary girl who had a dream and worked hard at it and proved that anything is possible”. This is her story.

Nomad: A Personal Journey Through the Clash of Civilisations by Ayaan Hirsi Ali .  Ayaan Hirsi Ali caused a worldwide sensation with her gutsy memoir Infidel. Now, in Nomad, she tells of coming to America to build a new life, an ocean away from the death threats made against her by European Islamists, the strife she witnessed and the inner conflict she suffered.

Hirsi Ali recounts the many turns her life took after breaking with her family, and how she struggled to throw off restrictive superstitions and misconceptions that initially hobbled her ability to assimilate. She writes movingly of her reconciliation, on his deathbed, with her devout father, who had disowned her when she renounced Islam after 9/11, as well as with her mother and cousins in Somalia and in Europe. Nomad is a portrait of a family torn apart by the clash of civilizations, but it is also a touching, uplifting and often funny account of one woman's discovery of today's America.

American novelist Barbara Kingsolver has won the 15th Orange Prize for Fiction for her novel, The Lacuna. The £30,000 prize is awarded for the best fiction in English written by a female author.

The Lacuna, tells the story of Harrison Shepherd, a young man growing up in the turbulent frontier between the U.S. and Mexico.

Daisy Goodwin, chair of the judges, praised The Lacuna’s “breathtaking scale and shattering moments of poignancy. We decided to go for the book which aroused the most passion in the most people….”

Kingsolver beat Hilary Mantel, whose novel, Wolf Hall, had won the Booker Prize and the National Books Critics Circle Award.

The Lacuna isn’t Kingsolver’s first brush with success, the Kentucky-born author had a massive hit when her 1998 novel the Poisonwood Bible, was nominated for the Orange Prize.

Other award winners included Irene Sabatini, who won the Orange Award for New Writers. Canadian novelist Anne Michaels also won a special honour, her book Fugitive Pieces was selected by a youth panel as their favourite from all the previous Orange Prize winners.