The Minstrels by Eva Hornung review – an audacious, confronting epic

The award-winning Australian author is at her most ambitious with this sweeping rural drama, tackling difficult topics with dazzling prose

Midwinter Break review – sad, spiky and brilliantly acted portrait of rupture and rapture

Polly Findlay’s barnstorming drama about interpersonal and religious tumult in late middle age is a triumph, swerving any sense of sentimentalism

A Queer Inheritance by Michael Hall review – the National Trust’s LGBTQ history revealed

It’s recently been accused of turning ‘woke’ – but the institution has been gay since the beginning, argues this deeply researched book

Mare by Emily Haworth-Booth review – profound story of a woman’s love for a horse

Where does it come from, this passion for an animal that isn’t even hers? An astonishing debut delves into deep truths about love, motherhood and care

Almost Life by Kiran Millwood Hargrave review – a will-they-won’t-they queer romance

Two women fall into and out of each other’s lives over decades, in a moving examination of love and choices

When the Forest Breathes by Suzanne Simard review – the Indiana Jones of trees returns

The author of Finding the Mother Tree is back with an inspiring call to the next generation of ecologists

Solidarity by Rowan Williams review – what does it really mean to stand by someone?

The former archbishop delves deep into a word that is easy to use on social media, but hard to follow through on

The Delusions by Jenni Fagan review – an afterlife of queues and bureaucracy

A witty metaphysical satire about what happens when the processes that help souls pass on begin to fail

Howl by Howard Jacobson review – a tragicomic portrait of a Jewish man’s despair

A suburban headteacher navigates antisemitism in Gaza-outraged London in Jacobson’s latest novel

The Infinity Machine by Sebastian Mallaby review – the story of the man who changed the world

A journalist charts the progress of AI pioneer Demis Hassabis from child chess prodigy to Nobel prize winner

Gatz review – the Great Gatsby performed in eight and a half hours of attentive, immersive joy

F Scott Fitzgerald’s novel – read aloud in full, on a stage set as a drab office – finds new life in this utterly transfixing show

The best recent science fiction, fantasy and horror – review roundup

The Library of Traumatic Memory by Neil Jordan; The Red Winter by Cameron Sullivan; Travel Light by Naomi Mitchison; Between Two Fires by Christopher Buehlman; Spoiled Milk by Avery Curran

Light and Thread by Han Kang review – a tantalising book of reflections

These essays from the Nobel literature winner open up her novels and offer beautiful imagery

Hooked by Asako Yuzuki review – follow-up to global hit Butter

A Tokyo high-flyer tries to befriend her favourite blogger in a novel that wears its aura of black comedy lightly, and its political statements more heavily

Strange Beach by Oluwaseun Olayiwola audiobook review – a debut that dances with passion

The dancer and author gives this collection clarity and warmth as he narrates poems about family, queer identity, hedonism and race