A homage to Islam
Bernardine Evaristo enjoys Camilla Gibb’s accomplished, if academic, treatise, Sweetness in the Belly.
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
Rentail and retail: The Goblet of Fire maintains Alfredo Cuarón's darkness quotient while losing nothing of its Dickens-meets-Stevenson Boy's Own adventure credentials.
The ideas interview: Julia Kristeva
Why is a great critic ashamed of being fashionable? By John Sutherland.
Martyr to himself
Two books on the life of Savonarola, Scourge and Fire and The Burning of the Vanities, draw very different conclusions from his fundamentalism - one sees him as a terrorist, the other as saviour of the faith, says Peter Conrad.
Read the original
In Van Rijn: A Novel, Sarah Emily Miano attempts to create a portrait of Rembrandt. Tim Adams can't help but feel that the old master's paintings do a far better job.
You must remember Denys thingummy…
Nicholas Best is impressed by Too Close to the Sun, Sara Wheeler's fitting memoir of Karen Blixen's lover, the nearly man of Kenyan colonial life.
Mammon vs movies
James Mottram's The Sundance Kids is a lively and well-informed book charting the emergence of a new generation of independent directors, says Philip French.
A light in time’s bottomless well
Amanda Vickery wonders if history books for children from Terry Deary, HE Marshall and EH Gombrich can spark a youthful fascination with the past.
Bad mutha
Jonathan Maitland's How to Survive Your Mother is further evidence of how a strange childhood can provide good copy, says Decca Aitkenhead.
Life on the front line
Linda Grant's The People on the Street should be obligatory reading on both sides of the Israel-Palestine divide, says Ian Black.
The joke is on you, slave
Barbara Ehrenreich goes from hope to despair as she joins jobseekers looking for a way back into corporate America in Bait and Switch, says David Jays.
My hero, the wizard of dribble
Subrata Dasgupta's Salaam Stanley Matthews is an illuminating story about collision and collusion between two utterly dissimilar cultures, says Soumya Bhattacharya.
Bedtime stories
Erotic fiction has been languishing on the top shelf for years, but a new generation of women writers is moving it from the fringes to the literary mainstream, with candid bestsellers such as The Sexual Life of Catherine M blazing a trail. Louise France meets five authors whose explicit prose is unleashing 'posh porn' on an ever-increasing market.
The queen of cuisine
Ruth Reichl isn't afraid to wield the (steak) knife in her memoir of being restaurant critic for the New York Times, Garlic and Sapphires, says Jay Rayner.
Midnight feasts make you grow antlers
Winsor McCay's pioneering weekly comic strip, Daydreams and Nightmares, was devoted to exploring the visions thought to be brought on by rich food.