The books you should be reading this March

August 1938, Paris. British actress Clara is in town to film her latest movie, having left Berlin under a cloud of suspicion - fuelled by Joseph Goebbels who sees her as a spy. In Paris, her German connections lead to an approach by a British operative for her to befriend Eva Braun, Hitler’s girlfriend. One for fans of Upstairs Downstairs.

(Simon & Schuster, £7.99)

I’m a big fan of Matt Haig’s open, witty, vulnerable style. This is a wonderful manifesto about surviving life, whatever your demons, by a man who suffered from chronic depression in his mid twenties.

(Canongate, £9.99)

From the author of This Is Where I Am (BBC Radio 4 Book At Bedtime) comes a beautifully written novel about freedom and forgiveness. A group of strangers come together at Kilmacarra in the Scottish Highlands, all facing questions about where they belong in the world. Heated, political and lyrical, Campbell also takes on the issue of Scottish independence here. An excellent topical novel.

(Bloomsbury, £16.99; out March 26th)

Jon Ronson is one of the funniest writers we have, as George Clooney will tell you. (He bought the rights to Ronson’s book The Men Who Stare at Goats and then starred in the film.) His latest investigation uncovers a world of Twitter trolls and idiot celebrities in his quest to understand what it’s like to be publicly ridiculed.

(Picador, £16.99)

In California in 1993 two young men meet at a hostel. They go on a camping trip. On that trip they lead each other to behave in ways that, years later, they will come to regret. An excellent story of friendship and betrayal.

(Little, Brown, £13.59)

Rosamund Lipton, author of Sister, is a fan of this page-turning literary thriller. When eight-year-old Carmel disappears into the crowd at a festival, her mother Beth is forced to examine the strange forces that she realises must be at the heart of her daughter’s disappearance. 

(Faber, £12.99)

A heart-wrenching scrutiny of relationships and the bonds which hold family together. Julian marries Julia, eight years his senior, blinded by love and against his family’s advice. Much later they’re proven irritatingly right as she struggles to conceal the secret she has kept from all the time she has known him. 

(Bloomsbury, £12.99; out March 12th)

An exciting and innovative debut novel which features various generations across the course of 150 years of life on the Shore - a community of outsiders who are all somehow connected. An intricate and ambitious book for fans of David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas.

(William Heinemann, £12.99; out March 26th)

For years Rachel has turned her back on her English background and immersed herself in her work monitoring wolves on an Idaho reservation. Suddenly she is called home by a scheme to re-introduce the Grey Wolf to the English countryside. An original and exciting novel about the fundamental nature of wilderness and wildness.

(Faber, £12.99)

When police officer Theresa Gray is called to a New Zealand town on Tasman Bay, she uncovers a horror story. Locals are turning on each other in a murderous rage - and she’s next. One for fans of Stephen King.

(Corsair, £12.99)