Michela Wrong and Sara Wheeler

Clare Mulley Redwood (Viking, £25), Ben Macintyre’s latest compelling caper with consequences, tops my list this year. Set in 1980s Tehran, a city of nightingales and scattered gunfire, it reminds us that the Cold War was not just an ideological battle between communism and capitalism. Enter a disaffected spook, a few hardline clerics, many bloodthirsty terrorists and much weaponry, and you have a recipe for high drama and the potential end of the world as we know it.