FORTY-FIVE years ago, my favourite books included story collections by M John Harrison and Christopher Priest and it's a testament to their craft and vision that both writers feature in my “best of” list for 2020.

Harrison’s The Sunken Land Begins to Rise Again (Gollancz) is a novel of quiet revelation. It dabbles with literary realism, sf and horror and transcends the limitations of all three. Crammed with conundrums, conspiracies and fleeting illuminations from the unconscious, it centres on a faltering relationship.

Shaw is living in London and recovering from a breakdown. Despite his aimless existence and inability to form lasting relationships, he begins an affair with Victoria, who has “bleak red hair” and works in a morgue.

After a couple of desultory sexual encounters, Victoria heads to the West Midlands to renovate her late mother’s house. As the relationship fades, the pair remain linked by their obsessions and experiences.

At this point we veer into stranger territory. There are allusions to a subspecies of people resembling fish, atavistic noises in the night, sudden disappearances, glimpses of other realities and groups of people knowing more than they will reveal.

Harrison’s vibrant landscapes and built environments are critical to the book’s atmospheres, ambiguities and shifts in perception. His weird set pieces are subtly developed and leavened with dark humour.

A witty and compelling reflection on the psychology of loneliness, economic decline and cultural corrosion, the book resists a definitive interpretation. Don’t let that put you off, it’s as entertaining as it is provocative.

Christopher Priest’s 19th novel The Evidence is a cold-case murder mystery with a hint of Kafkaesque paranoia and a trace of sf.

It opens on the frozen, forbidding and heavily industrialised island of Dearth, where an authoritarian society employing heavily armed police claims to be crime free. Crime writer Todd Fremde has been asked to give a keynote conference speech but the academic institution that warmly invited him is contemptuous when he arrives.

To add to his problems, Dearth experiences strange spatial and temporal distortions known as “mutability.”

Semi-retired cop Frejah Harsent is another enigma. As she drives Todd to a distant airport, she tells him about a baffling cold-case murder. It is clear she is exploiting Todd’s ability to craft a convincing crime narrative but is she also leading him into danger?

The Evidence fuses the tradition of police procedural mystery with that of literary inquiry, in which the story unfolds at a measured pace, with vivid and memorable set pieces. An elegantly written, stylishly structured and enthralling tale with deftly crafted characters, it playfully explores the mechanics of crime fiction and examines the reader’s contribution to the process of creating fiction. These metafictional meanderings, erudite and informative, are also terrific fun.

Piranesi (Bloomsbury) is the long-awaited successor to Susanna Clarke’s sweeping debut novel Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell (2004). Her new book is not about Giovanni Battista Piranesi, the 18th-century Italian archaeologist, architect and artist, but his etchings of vast subterranean prisons are certainly an influence.

Clarke’s narrator is referred to as Piranesi throughout the book but it is not his real name. He wanders “The House,” a labyrinth of immense flooded halls. There are lower levels with turbulent seas and stairs to upper halls where there are clouds and birds and the halls and vestibules are lined with statues of people and animals from outside the house.

Piranesi finds the remains of 13 other humans but the only other living being in his world is “The Other,” an enigmatic figure striving to acquire a “great and secret knowledge.” As the story unfolds, he uncovers unsettling truths about himself, “The Other” and the world he inhabits.

Clarke explores themes of memory, morality, isolation and the need to make sense of the world, and she is also preoccupied with the nature and implications of the creative imagination.

The book is freighted with mystery, striking imagery and philosophical speculation. Clarke’s sharply honed prose is a delight and the weird but touching narrative is totally absorbing.

Tim Lebbon says his novel Eden (Titan) was influenced by the “green therapy” of his participation in endurance sports and his plot involves a group of runners attempting to cross a forbidden zone in record time.

Eden, the area in question, has been reclaimed by a coalition of world governments to undo some of the destruction people have inflicted on the planet. It is protected by aggressive border patrols and, terrifyingly, by nature itself.

Lebbon draws freely on the Gaia hypothesis to imagine a burgeoning natural environment defending itself from the corrosive behaviour of humanity.

An engaging and believable cast of characters, a vividly realised landscape and an ingenious marriage of plot elements make Eden a hugely enjoyable fusion of sf, horror and fast-paced adventure.