Wrestling with destiny

Peter Parker's biography shows while Christopher Isherwood's work faltered, his energy didn't

Queen of the higher schmaltz

Christopher Robbins moves Simon Callow with his funny, colourful story of a friendship, The Empress of Ireland

Hand to mouth

As the Observer's restaurant critic, Jay Rayner has put his stomach to good use over the past five years. Here, though, he reveals how the job has also given him food for thought.

All about darling Me

Peter Parker's searching, yet sympathetic, biography of Christopher Isherwood captures the contradictions of the complicated writer taking in 1930s Berlin and his time in Hollywood. Charming, gay and egotistical - he also wrote very creative diaries

Who Katie did

Katie Price's enhanced autobiography is compellingly tacky, but Being Jordan does speak for contemporary British culture, says Stephen Bayley

Clues and corpses

Clea Koff shows how forensic science can shed light on human rights abuses in The Bone Woman. Uncovering the truth can be a painful process, says Phil Whitaker

Ten out of Tena

Theatre: Susannah Clapp on Gone to Earth | Whistling Psyche | Cruel and Tender

The truth about Homer sexuality

It all began in Athens... Simon Goodhill's learned yet populist account, Love, Sex and Tragedy, tells how the facts got twisted along the way

Private dancer

James Joyce's troubled daughter spent much of her life in institutions. Carol Loeb Schloss brings Lucia Joyce back from the margins with a new biography

How Ken keeps his hair on

For more than 40 years film-maker Ken Loach has been an unswerving champion of the British working class. Anthony Hayward traces his devotion to the cause in his new biography, Which Side are You On?

From Russia with Lev

Antony Beevor tells the remarkable story of an actress and a Soviet spy sent to assassinate Hitler in The Mystery of Olga Chekhova

A god without a cloud

Alan Strachan's biography of Michael Redgrave, Secret Dreams, restores one of Britain's finest 20th-century actors to his rightful place, says Simon Callow

Keepers of the blame

Emma Gerstein deploys meticulous scholarship in her warts-and-all account of the Mandelstams, Moscow Memoirs. A literary spat is always entertaining, says Virginia Rounding

The rise and rise of little voice

Despite hostility from male critics in her native China, Xiaolu Guo's harrowing, intimate novels have made her one of the country's most successful literary exports. She tells Laura Barton why she came to Britain.