IF YOU ENJOY POLITICS MOST when the Government is in trouble or if you just miss Tony Blair, then you absolutely mustn't miss Robert Harris's sparkling return to the world he knows best, The Ghost (Hutchinson, £18.99/offer £17.09).

The nameless ghostwriter hero gets more than he bargained for when he takes over writing memoirs of a former Prime Minister after his predecessor apparently commits suicide. Harris insists — with tongue so far in cheek that it's a wonder he didn't choke — that all the characters are invented, so the hilarious parodies of Tony and Cherie Blair, the late, lamented Robin Cook and others are clearly figments of your imagination. Brilliant, witty, gripping, opinionated and scarily near the nub, The Ghost is the one book this year I read at almost a single sitting. Guaranteed to keep you awake and chuckling after Christmas dinner.

Also set in a world only slightly removed from our own is the latest novel by William Gibson, the man who gave us “cyberspace” and these days is in constant danger of changing the future by writing about the present. Spook Country (Viking, £18.99/£17.09) ties in the Iraq war, political corruption and shipping piracy with PR agencies, virtual art that you need a GPS system to find and secret codes hidden on iPods.

To give you the flavour, the two key characters are Hollis Henry, the former woman singer with a cult rock band turned art journalist, and Tito, a Havana-born Chinese-Cuban who worships crossover voodoo-Catholic gods called orishas and texts in Volapuk — Russian spelt in Latin lookalike letters rather than Cyrillic.

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• The Times Christmas choice: crime

For an entirely different take on reality, The Painter of Battles by Arturo Perez-Reverte (Weidenfeld, £12.99/£11.69) is the austere, moving and thoughtful tale of a war photographer-turned-painter who is visited by a man whom he accidentally made famous during the war in the Balkans, rather like the “Marlboro Man” US soldier photographed in Iraq. But here the photograph has destroyed its subject's life, identifying him as a Croatian fighter and leading to the rape, torture and murder of his family. He comes for revenge but, as the two get to know each other, they trade philosophies and life histories in a tense psychological dance to the death.

Robert Lewis's Swansea Terminal (Serpent's Tail, £7.99/£7.59) is another tale of doom and destruction, told in a Chandleresque first person by a private eye with a Welsh accent, a drink problem and a terminal illness. Set in the seediest parts of Swansea, it is the story of Robin Llewellyn, nicknamed “Magnum” with bitter irony by other low-lifes, and his slow decline while trying to sort out his life, pull a fast one on the local mobsters and scrape together enough for a few cans of Carlsberg extra strength. Black humour at its bleakest, but oddly life-affirming.

There is another quirky hero in Thobela Mpayipheli who is a black South African former freedom fighter-turned-vigilante in a country going to the dogs. On not quite the other side is Benny Griessel, an Afrikaner detective whom Llewelyn would recognise as a soulmate. In Deon Meyer's Devil's Peak (Hodder, £14.99/£13.49, translated by K.L. Seegers) the target for both are drug cartels and the sickos who think that raping a child can cure Aids.

For something half a world away, Matthew Klein's Conned (Orion, hardback £18.99/£17.09; paperback £9.99/£9.49) features Kip Largo who is trying to make a killing selling vitamins on the internet and get out of his day job in a dry-cleaner's after his previous career, as a conman, landed him in jail.

Unfortunately his estranged wife thinks he has a fortune stashed away and his son Toby's huge gambling debts are being called in by Russian mobsters. Kip's only answer is to go back to the job he knows best, trying to take a Las Vegas casino owner for millions. His team includes a porn star-turned-director — but who is conning whom? And who will be the fall guy? Once you've finished you'll be tempted to start again.

And that is exactly what you will be tempted to do with The Lying Tongue by Andrew Wilson (Canongate, £10.99/£9.89), the story of a young graduate who goes to Venice to be a tutor to a rich family but finds himself amanuensis to an ageing reclusive writer with a dark past.

Adam describes his own slow metamorphosis as their relationship turns sour and becomes a game of blackmail and counter-intrigue that will have fatal consequences. But things are not what you will probably be expecting.

Bestsellers 2007

1. Relentless by Simon Kernick
Corgi, £6.99
Man hears friend being murdered down the phone. As you do. Race-against-time from rising star.

2. The Last Testament by Sam Bourne
Harper, £6.99

3. Next by Michael Crichton
Harper, £6.99

4. Cross by James Patterson
Headline, £6.99

5. The Afghan by Frederick Forsyth
Corgi, £6.99

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