Little Spark by Jess Kidd (Canongate £18.99, 352pp)

Wildly imaginative and set in 1868 and 1881, it tells the thrilling story of Bodkin Bell, who, as a child, could pick pockets, summon storms and use the strange static charge in her body to great effect in the electrifying travelling act she perfected with her gaffer, the wayward Cornelius Bell.

But now Bodkin is in jail, Cornelius is on the run and her stuttering, unpredictable heart is behaving erratically.

Rescue comes in the shape of Lady Hesperia of Point Mote manor, an eerie mansion on the Kent marshes, which is famous for its wondrous automata.

But all is not as it seems, and Bodkin finds herself in grave danger as secrets are revealed and mysterious connections are discovered in this terrific steampunk tale.

This Door of The Seas by Val McDermid and Jo Sharp (Polygon £12, 160pp)

Inspired by the real-life tale of an ill-fated 17th-century expedition by Scottish settlers to establish a trading colony in far-off Darien – a seemingly idyllic coastal enclave.

The location was anything but – surrounded by jungle, and laid claim to by the Spanish, it was dangerously inhospitable and financially disastrous.

Brilliantly researched and written by life partners McDermid, the best-selling crime writer, and Sharp – Scotland’s Geographer Royal – the duo tell the enthralling tale in letters written by scientist Dr James Wallace to his wife Eliza and Sir Robert Sibbald, the first Geographer Royal.

Illness, lack of resources, bad leadership and lazy laird sons’ scupper the endeavour, with bitter consequences for settlers who left a famine-stricken home in search of a better life.

The Ruins by Becky Docton (HQ £16.99, 560pp)

Spanning 1937 Devon to 1956 Kandy, in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), Docton’s debut unfurls the life of Lucie, a lost and lonely child, who grows into a young woman overwhelmed by unexpressed anger. The locations change –from a ramshackle mansion in the English countryside, to the heat and clamour of cocktail hour in Colombo, but it’s Lucie’s emotionally harrowing journey that’s the focus.

Docton’s prose is elegant and exacting, beautifully cataloguing Lucie’s moods and feelings as her fractured family history takes its toll.

An unhappy marriage, marked by a series of miscarriages, adds to her misery, until her revelatory 26th year, where two unexpected encounters ignite her courage to escape and look to a future that promises freedom.