Converts by Melanie McDonagh review – the road to Rome Catholicism’s unlikely 20th-century resurgence

A thought-provoking examination of the literary stars who became Catholic – from Evelyn Waugh to Muriel Spark

Bowie: The Final Act review – moving and enjoyable tribute to music legend’s last stand

Singer’s final decades can’t really be called his creative golden years but there are touching contributions from his collaborators

Killing the Dead by John Blair review – a gloriously gruesome history of vampires

Shroud-chewers, lip-smackers and suckers populate this fascinating study of ‘the unquiet dead’ across the centuries

Capitalism by Sven Beckert review – an extraordinary history of the economic system that controls our lives

The Harvard professor provides a ceaseless flow of startling details in this exhaustively researched, 1000-year account

The Land Trap by Mike Bird review – ground down

A masterful introduction to the economics of land ownership

Palaver by Bryan Washington review – a remix of the author’s greatest hits

From exile to family dysfunction, street food to sex, this stylish novel about a mother visiting her estranged gay son in Tokyo explores familiar themes

Children and teens roundup – the best new picture books and novels

Anointing a new Santa; a child refugee’s tale; a dangerous journey across frozen wastes; a YA roadtrip romance and more

Making Mary Poppins by Todd James Pierce review – the musical brothers behind the movie magic

Bob and Dick Sherman take centre stage in this well-researched account of how Walt Disney created a classic

A Mind of My Own by Kathy Burke audiobook review – an honest and hilarious memoir

The no-nonsense comic actor and author further cements her status as a national treasure with her trademark gobby one-liners

Freezing Point by Anders Bodelsen review – a prescient classic of cryogenics

This resurrected Danish novel about a man who is ‘frozen down’, awaking in an Orwellian dystopia two decades later, is inventive, funny and all too timely

Bog Queen by Anna North review – a tale that could dig deeper

This story of a teenage druid whose body is discovered in a peat bog has memorable moments – but its evocation of time and place is unconvincing

The Divided Mind by Edward Bullmore review – do we finally know what causes schizophrenia?

A brilliant history of psychiatric ideas suggests we are on the cusp of a transformation in our understanding of severe mental illness

The Housemaid review – Sydney Sweeney takes the job from hell in outrageous suspense thriller

Amanda Seyfried and Brandon Sklenar co-star as Sweeney’s secretive bosses in an upstate New York mansion, and director Paul Feig ramps up the sexual tension with evident gusto

The Innocents of Florence by Joseph Luzzi review – how abandoned babies spurred a flowering of Renaissance art

The precarious, cruel but dazzling world of a foundling hospital is brought wonderfully to life by the author of Botticelli’s Secret

Noopiming: The Cure for White Ladies by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson review – startlingly original

The Indigenous Canadian author brilliantly captures the interdependence of humans and the natural world, in a darkly satirical critique of colonialism