‘It really isn’t good enough’: crime novel of the year award criticised for entirely white longlist

Authors including Dreda Say Mitchell, Harriet Tyce and Sarah Pinborough have expressed disapproval of the Theakston Old Peculier award – the UK’s most prestigious crime-writing prize

Brotherless Night by VV Ganeshananthan review – heartbreak in war-torn Sri Lanka

Shortlisted for the Women’s prize, this epic account of a country and a family torn apart combines the intimacy of a memoir with the urgency of reportage

The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley review – a seriously fun sci-fi romcom

A bureaucrat in near-future London finds love with a Victorian Arctic explorer in a thrilling debut that takes a deep dive into human morality

Paul Auster obituary

Author of The New York Trilogy who conjured up a world of wonder and happenstance, miracle and catastrophe

Five of the best books about eating

From a pioneering 1940s ‘gastrography’ to a recent novel about a real-life 18th-century French peasant cursed with an appetite to eat just about everything

Manny and the Baby by Varaidzo review – dreamy debut of loss and unrequited love

A grieving son aims to connect with his late father through the cassette tapes he left behind, in a tale of jazz, black ambition and romance

‘Perhaps the great Australian novel’: Alexis Wright wins Stella prize for second time with Praiseworthy

The 73-year-old has won the $60,000 prize for Australian female and non-binary writers for her ‘genre-bending’ 736-page novel

Enlightenment by Sarah Perry review – cosmic strangeness

This defiantly old-fashioned tale of two misfits, a ghost and a blazing comet showcases Perry’s unerring capacity to make the earthly new and strange

Brooklyn’s bard: Paul Auster’s tricksy fiction captivated a generation

Witnessing ‘murder by the gods’ as a child drove the novelist’s work, which used postmodern playfulness to delight readers

‘A literary voice for the ages’: Paul Auster remembered by Ian McEwan, Joyce Carol Oates and more

The critically acclaimed American writer has died aged 77. Here, contemporaries pay tribute to his life and work

‘Getting a book idea feels like a buzz in the head’: Paul Auster – a life in quotes

The author of The New York Trilogy, Leviathan and 4 3 2 1 has died at the age of 77. Here are some of the most memorable quotes from interviews he gave throughout his life

The Two Loves of Sophie Strom by Sam Taylor review – a sliding doors tale of survival

A Jewish boy’s life splits in two and follows two different paths in this novel of trauma and enduring love in Nazi Europe

This Is How You Remember It by Catherine Prasifka review – an innocent online

Told in the second person, this account of an everygirl growing up with the internet will be devastatingly familiar

Swearing, snogging and spying: Cherub’s cool teenage secret agents hit 20

Robert Muchamore’s series of novels about young undercover intelligence operatives with troubled lives shook up the sanitised world of early noughties YA literature

CJ Sansom obituary

Lawyer turned novelist who enjoyed huge success with his bestselling Shardlake historical mysteries