Non-fiction
Under the Devil’s Eye: Britain’s Forgotten Army at Salonika 1915-1918, by Alan Wakefield and Simon Moody (2006)
The Republic, by Plato (2007)
Stepping Stones: Interviews with Seamus Heaney, by Dennis O’Driscoll (2019)
Non-genre
The Red Badge of Courage, by Stephen Crane (2006)
The Old Man and the Sea, by Ernest Hemingway (2009)
Lucy, by Jamaica Kincaid (2012)
And Then There Were None, by Agatha Christie (2013)
The True Deceiver, by Tove Jansson (2015)
Diary of a Wimpy Kid, vol 1, by Jeff Kinney (2016)
Diary of a Wimpy Kid, vol 2, by Jeff Kinney (2016)
Poetry
The Knight in the Tiger Skin, by Shot’ha Rust’hveli (2005)
SF
The Afterblight Chronicles: Kill or Cure, by Rebecca Levene (2007)
Misspent Youth, by Peter F. Hamilton (2009)
Fantastic Voyage, by Isaac Asimov (2013)
City of Lies, by Sam Hawke (2020)
Riding the Unicorn, by Paul Kearney (2021)
Appliance, by J.O. Morgan (2023)
Doctor Who
Doctor Who [The Novel of the Film], by Gary Russell (2007) [Eighth Doctor, novelisation]
Conundrum, by Steve Lyons (2011) [Seventh Doctor, spinoff novel]
Wonderland, by Mark Chadbourn (2012) [Second Doctor, spinoff novel]
Vanishing Point, by Steve Cole (2013) [Eighth Doctor, spinoff novel]
Millennium Shock, by Justin Richards (2014) [Fourth Doctor, spinoff novel]
Graphic story
Napoleon Bonaparte for Little Historians, by Bou Bounoider (2014)
The best, also the one you haven’t heard of
A hidden jewel from the Clarke submissions list: Appliance is a great collection of themed short stories about the invention of a teleporter and its consequences. I felt that it was not a novel, and therefore not eligible for the award, but it was great all the same. (Review; get it here)
Honorable mentions
Reading The Old Man and the Sea, somehow you are out there in the Gulf of Mexico, struggling against the forces of nature. Brilliant stuff. (Review; get it here)
I met Seamus Heaney only once, a chance encounter in a pub (the Foggy Dew in Temple Bar in Dublin, some time around 1989); he offered to buy me a drink on the basis of having known my parents in their mutual QUB days, but I was too shy to accept. I wish I had. I learned a lot from Stepping Stones: Interviews with Seamus Heaney, and I would have learned something from even ten minutes’ conversation with him. (Review; get it here)
The one you haven’t heard of
Alliance, by J.O. Morgan; see above.
The one to avoid
Even worse than The Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Bou Bounoider’s childrens’ book about Napoleon is rambling and poorly written. Readers will be startled to learn that “Wellington was an Englishman, a bit like Paddington Bear.” None of those things is quite like the other. Wellington was born in Ireland, and Paddington Bear was a) from Peru and b) a bear. The book is aimed at the 6-12 age group, and they will like the illustrations but may not learn much from the text. (Review; get it here)