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War Over Dust is the second in Stuart Aken’s Generation Mars series. In this continuation from book 1, Blood Red Dust, two communities, one a democratic technical Utopia, the other an elitist commercial ghetto, compete to rule the future of mankind on Mars, cut off from Mother Earth. Who will win when violence overcomes diplomacy to let envy and self-interest propel both groups into war?

If you’ve encountered Walt Pilcher before, you’ll know to buckle up for a hair-raising ride. Everybody Shrugged is his Walt’s first novel with Fantastic Books Publishing.

Hold tight to your car, French fries, beer, cigarettes, fluoride toothpaste, sexy underwear, bacon, butter, coffee, and anything else that tastes good, feels good, or is fun to do because here comes Congress to ban it. Professor Gardy Lavager leads the government’s campaign to outlaw popular products deemed harmful to your health, and the military is stripped of guns because war is hazardous too. But Major Tony Farina of the Army’s clandestine MADCOM force sets out to serve his own nefarious ends by subverting Lavager’s research in the name of national security while shadowy foreign interests prepare to leverage the imminent chaos. The ensuing Harmful Substance Race spells the difference between peace and global bedlam as Gardy Lavager fears for his life from enemies at home and abroad.

This is the book our editors recommend.

In Melodie Trudeaux’s Sci-Fi short, The 93-E Contradiction, a journalist sits at the verge of his big breakthrough, an opportunity that will only come once.

Falling into Crime comprises the first three of Penny Grubb’s private investigator crime novels. This re-edited trilogy follows Annie Raymond from her first chaotic venture into her chosen profession, through her early struggles, to her emergence as a true professional. It’s a page-turning, fast and turbulent ride, leaving Annie no space to appraise the ambition that took her life on this particular course. Once forced to face it, she knows that a fundamental re-evaluation is long overdue, but the push comes from an unwelcome source that proves more of a threat than anything she has faced before.

The trilogy includes the winner of the 2004 international Crime Writers’ Association Dagger, The Doll Makers, along with John Creasy Dagger nominee, Like False Money, and The Jawbone Gang.

Rory Redman’s exploits might drive his contemporaries to rage and himself to insolvency, but he has never put anyone in real danger – before now. His desperation for money drives him to accept a commission that he knows has crossed a line.

Do the job, collect the fee, and don’t look in the envelope.

All he has to do is keep a lid on his curiosity and his troubles are behind him. But Rory Redman was never one to deny an impulse. There is a heart-stopping inevitability about the way his choices funnel him ever further from safety and ever further from home. The mutual attraction between him and Ariadne Sowerby might be the route to salvation except that both strive to hide their feelings and Rory’s suicidal curiosity focuses on Klarissa Alterleta, the strange woman whose antics escalated his minor troubles into the stratosphere.

Makeover by Barbara Lorna Hudson is a sharply observed and hard-hitting work of women’s fiction that explores the twists and turns of life and relationships as it follows the fortunes of Lucille, twice divorced and twice the victim of abusive marriage, and Oxford don Walter, still mourning the death of his wife.

In their own very different worlds, they both know that they have to move on and grasp new opportunities, but neither is prepared for the severe lessons they have yet to learn.

Mark Henderson’s novel, The Engklimastat (“that which prevents or stops crime or law-breaking”) weaves a fast-paced story of drama, treachery and love around the question posed by the title; what would happen to modern society if crime became impossible? The story weaves nail-biting drama into moments of laugh-out-loud hilarity as it follows Henderson’s unlikely protagonists, the hapless Solomon Threep and the dynamic Theresa Greene, who are both used and pursued by the demon Hypostates. As the drama unfolds it becomes only too clear, with the logical inevitability that is Henderson’s trademark, how much modern society relies on crime just to function, let alone to flourish.

Listen to Mark's interview with Talk Radio Europe's Hannah Murray on 'the book programme' here.