Wild Dark Shore is set on the fictional Shearwater Island (inspired by the real-world Macquarie Island) between Australia and Antarctica. Its sole inhabitants (aside from thousands of penguins and seals) are Dominic Salt and his three children. Following the departure of a group of research scientists as sea levels rise to dangerous levels, the Salt family are the sole caretakers of the world’s largest remaining seed vault. Their isolation is shattered by the arrival of the battered and barely alive body of Rowan. While the family nurse her back to health, there are evidently secrets on both sides. Rowan is both drawn to Dominic and his children and repelled by a succession of discoveries that raise suspicions.

Pod is a distinctive novel in that it takes as its focus the lives of a series of marine creatures, notably dolphins. Its primary focus is on Ea, a spinner / ‘Longi’ dolphin who becomes detached from her peaceful and ‘civilised’ pod and finds herself among a boorish, violent pod of bottlenose dolphins, known in the book as Tersiops. Along the way we meet an array of other creatures, all with their own characteristics, including a wise old whale, a gender-switching Wrasse, giant clams and a fugu or two. Memorably, there’s also the captive bottlenose dolphin Google, who has been enslaved by humans (or ‘Anthrops’ in the novel’s parlance) for horrifying military purposes.

Life of Pi is the story of Piscine Molitor “Pi” Patel, an Indian Tamil boy who grows up in Pondicherry as the son of a zookeeper. The novel is divided into three sections, framed by an author’s note which unusually is also a fiction. The longest middle section sees Pi cast adrift in the Pacific Ocean as his Canada-bound ship sinks without explanation. He recounts his tale of survival, adrift on a lifeboat in the company of Bengal tiger called Richard Parker, for 227 days.