Emotions can be difficult things to define, yet we all recognise them when we feel them or see them in others. How we interpret those emotions and act on them has been heavily gendered. In Hysterical, Pragya Agarwal dives deep into the history and science that has determined the gendering of emotions to ask whether there is any truth in the notion of innate differences between the male and female experience of emotions.

The Judas Case by Nicholas Graham follows retired spymaster Solomon Eliades who is called back from his vineyard to investigate the death of his protegee, Yehuda from Kerioth who came to Jerusalem at Passover and pulled off his greatest coup. Two days later Yehuda was dead. What went wrong? But secrets from Solomon's own past – and the search for an inconveniently missing body – put him and his family in danger...

The Late Crew is an endearing middle-grade sci-fi novel centred on young carers by Rab Ferguson. Tyler cares for his mother with M.E. and his autistic brother Levi. When Tyler and other young carers are kept back in detention for being late, a spaceship crashes into the school! They meet a four-legged lizard-like alien who needs help looking after his egg. The only problem is a creature called The Slime has taken over their headteacher, and he wants the egg too…

Neglected by her parents, Izzy spends her time exploring the forest and beyond. The more she understand the history of the place and her own situation, the stranger things become. The most tantalising of these is the Green Man who inhabits the woods, and seems to know all about her, even those desires she has buried deep inside. A family story rooted in folk tale, The Green Man of Eshwood Hall by Jacob Kerr shows us the power that the wild still holds on our imagination, and the shocking nightmares to which it can give rise.

The Moon and Stars follows Matthew Capes, a classical tenor who struggles with chronic stage fright. When his old singing partner Angela offers him the chance to perform in a nationwide tour, Matthew hatches a plan: he will sing in the shadows while his handsome and charismatic friend Ralph takes to the stage with Angela. What could go wrong? Loosely inspired by The Phantom of the Opera and Cyrano de Bergerac, Jenna Warren's witty debut novel is perfect for fans of David Nicholls.

Based on a true story, The Call of the Cormorant by Donald S Murray is a fantastical tale of island life, and the many dangers of delusions and false identities. Having spent his whole life in the Faroe Islands, Karl Einarsson sets out for Copenhagen and beyond as soon as he can, styling himself as the Count of St. Kilda. But when his adventures find him in 1930s Berlin, he is forced to reckon with something much bigger than himself. As the Nazis rise to power around him, his wilful ignorance becomes unwitting complicity, even betrayal.

The North of England abounds with beauty, from unspoiled beaches in Northumberland to the dramatic Lakeland Fells, is famously celebrated by writers and artists in North Country: An anthology of landscape and nature. This essential volume edited by Karen Lloyd reminds us how and why Northern people have risen to the challenge of defending their open spaces, demanding action on pollution and habitat loss. Together, the voices in this one-of-a-kind anthology testify that North Country is a place apart.

A Little Resurrection, the debut full-length collection of Selina Nwulu, is the work of a questing sensibility. These poems are equally at home in the golden light of Senegal as they are in the harsh winds of Yorkshire. In these poems blackness itself is complicated, extending the resonances of being to reflect the self in a state of flux, a fugitive spirit battling the harm of erasure. There is a joy in these poems, all the more powerful for being hard-won. This book heralds the branching out of an important trajectory in Anglophone poetry.

In England’s Green, we are invited to look at the place and the language we think we know, and made to think again. With everything so newly set, we are alert, as the poet is, to the ‘dark missing / step in a stair’, entering this new world with bated breath. Zaffar Kunial has a genius for invoking absence, whether that be a missing father, the death of a mother or a path not taken. Fully formed, they share a centre of gravity: migrations, memories, little transgressions and disturbances, summoned and contained in small gestures.

Proof of Life on Earth is the much-anticipated debut by widely published poet Degna Stone. The poems in this collection deftly explore human existence and matters of the heart (both the metaphorical and medical kind), of race, the body and self, and of life and death. Degna Stone is a poet and poetry editor. They are co-founder and former Managing Editor of  Butcher’s Dog poetry magazine, a Contributing Editor at The Rialto, and an associate artist with The Poetry Exchange.