Perdita by Paula Byrne (HarperCollins)

Blood and Roses by Helen Castor (Faber and Faber)

Like a Fiery Elephant by Jonathan Coe (Picador)

Mary Wollstonecraft by Lyndall Gordon (Little, Brown)

Will in the World by Stephen Greenblatt (Jonathan Cape)

Bury the Chains by Adam Hochschild (Macmillan)

Parallel Worlds by Michio Kaku (Penguin Allen Lane)

Stuart: A Life Backwards by Alexander Masters (Fourth Estate)

Salonica by Mark Mazower (HarperCollins)

Mutants by Armand Marie Leroi (HarperCollins)

Maximum City by Suketu Mehta (Review)

Leonardo da Vinci by Charles Nicholl (Penguin Allen Lane)

Istanbul by Orhan Pamuk (Faber and Faber)

In Command of History by David Reynolds (Penguin)

A Death in Brazil by Peter Robb (Bloomsbury)

The Command of the Ocean by NAM Rodger (Penguin Allen Lane)

Matisse the Master by Hilary Spurling (Hamish Hamilton)

Hawkwood by Frances Stonor Saunders (Faber and Faber)

A Little History of British Gardening by Jenny Uglow (Chatto & Windus)

The Italian Boy by Sarah Wise (Jonathan Cape)