The Hidden Life Of Trees by Peter Wohlleben (William Collins, £9.99)

A bit of mental adjustment is required to start thinking of trees as sentient, social organisms, but German forester Peter Wohlleben’s enthusiasm and accessibility ensure that it’s not an impossible leap to make. Over millions of years, he explains, they’ve discovered the advantages of working together, just like other life forms. Indeed, lone trees have shorter lifespans than those in forests, and interactions between trees in man-made forests are very different from those which have grown together organically. His research has found them communicating with each other via scents, roots, fungal networks and, apparently, sound, as well as providing nutrients for neighbouring stumps for years, even centuries. He introduces concepts of maternal trees and forest etiquette, and is quite convinced that trees are, in their own way, capable of making decisions rather than blindly following predetermined processes. Admittedly, he anthropomorphises like mad, but it’s all in the cause of opening up an even more wondrous realm than we’ve previously imagined.

Anna by Niccoló Ammaniti (Canongate, £12.99)

This is far from being the first story in which all the adults in the world are killed off by a plague, leaving children to fend for themselves. But Ammaniti’s accomplished portrait of a young girl fighting to survive in a hostile world makes up for any lack of originality in the premise. It’s set in Sicily, where 13-year-old Anna scavenges for food, rarely meeting other children and scaring her little brother into staying at home with stories of monsters and diseases awaiting him beyond the garden gate. But a few days’ walk away a group of older kids runs a brutal community based on the promise of a cure for the disease, and it’s there that Anna must go when her brother is kidnapped to be one of their slaves. Anna, aware that she hasn’t long to live, is a sympathetic and vulnerable character behind her tough, pragmatic exterior, and Ammaniti has an enviable ability to keep readers thoroughly absorbed.

The White City by Karolina Ramqvist (Grove Press, £7.99)

In the first of the Swedish author’s books to be translated into English, young mother Karin is left high and dry when her husband John is convicted of some unspecified fraud and all his assets are seized, including their house. John’s former accomplices, who claimed they would watch each other’s backs, have closed ranks against her, leaving Karin literally holding the baby. Ramqvist makes it hard to know how to feel about Karin, given that she knew exactly what John was when she married him and had no qualms about enjoying the fruits of his crimes. However, the sight of a penniless, abandoned woman pushing a baby stroller around the more squalid parts of Stockholm, determined to get her rightful share, naturally arouses our sympathies too. It’s a short novel moving at a slow, suspenseful pace that matches Karin’s post-natal sense of disconnection, and does a remarkable job of conveying the physicality of motherhood and the desperation of her circumstances.