Shelves

Every book here has won or been shortlisted for a major literary prize in the past two years - but awards alone don't make a good present. So we picked the ones that are a pleasure to unwrap and to read, and sorted them by the person you're shopping for.

Some of the most celebrated books of the past fifty years are about slavery and its long aftermath. We picked fourteen prize winners - novels first, then history - so you can read your way from the stories into the facts behind them.

No event has inspired more great books than the Second World War. We picked fifteen prize winners - from occupied France to the Burma railway, from the Holocaust to the battle of Stalingrad - with the novels first and the history after, so you can read your way from the stories into the facts behind them.

A good book club pick needs more than a prize: it has to be a pleasure to read and leave everyone with something to say. These award winners do both - sorted by what your group is in the mood for, each with a note on what you'll end up talking about.

Fantasy can look daunting from the outside: maps, made-up languages, series that run to ten volumes. None of these books needs any of that. They're standalones or strong first books, they've won or been shortlisted for the genre's big prizes, and they're sorted by what you already like to read - so you can find your way in from familiar ground.

You don't need to know your warp drives from your wormholes to enjoy science fiction. Every book here has won or been shortlisted for one of the big prizes, none of them needs a sequel to make sense, and they're sorted by what you already like to read - from quiet literary novels to stories you won't be able to put down.

Long before anyone typed a question into a chatbot, novelists were imagining thinking machines - and journalists and scientists have been chronicling the real ones for decades. We picked sixteen prize winners: first the novels, from a self-aware lunar supercomputer to a robot girlfriend who starts to want more, then the nonfiction, from the birth of the computer industry to today's race for artificial intelligence.

Climate change is the story of our century, and some of the best writers alive have taken it on. We picked sixteen prize winners: first the novels, from a walled Los Angeles neighbourhood to a drowning Kolkata, then the nonfiction, from the Arctic ice to a burning oil town - and we end with a book about reasons for hope.