Little Englanders by Alwyn Turner review – portrait of a poignant interlude in British history

An ‘empty patch’ in the national story, the Edwardian era – between the death of Queen Victoria and the start of the first world war – has many parallels with today

In brief: Malma Station; Grief Is for People; Ghosts in the Hedgerow – review

A train full of family secrets, a witty and poignant memoir about kinship and loss, and sniffing out the disappearance of our favourite prickly mammal

How to Be Somebody Else by Miranda Pountney review – a constant sense of slippage and precarity

This impressive debut lays bare the highs and lows of an Englishwoman in New York who abruptly abandons her life

The Price of Life by Jenny Kleeman review – the uncomfortable cost of living

The author’s vivid attempt to quantify the value of human life raises challenging questions and yields some unpleasant answers

Shadow Lines by Nicholas Royle review – buried treasure between the pages

The author’s avid hunt for notes and ephemera secreted in secondhand editions is warm-hearted and infectiously funny

Butter by Asako Yuzuki review – a tasty exposé of fatphobia and trauma

In this Japanese bestseller based on a real-life case, food unites a journalist and a cook turned murderer in a frequently thrilling tale of fatphobia

The Lede review: Calvin Trillin on the golden age of American reporting

A collection of work by a giant of New York journalism is both a joy and a lesson, particularly on objectivity and its limits

Madness by Antonia Hylton review – how racism created a mental health crisis in the US

A journalist’s impassioned and rigorous study of a 20th-century psychiatric hospital uncovers how Black Americans were institutionalised by a country still in thrall to the logic of slavery

Until August by Gabriel García Márquez review – his abandoned last novel

Posthumously published against the Latin American Nobel laureate’s wishes, this brisk and frisky tale of extramarital sex is better than he feared

The Lie Detectives: Trump, US politics and the disinformation damage done

Sasha Issenberg considers attempts to distort electoral reality on both sides of the great American divide

Clear by Carys Davies review – in search of a shared language

In this poignant tale set during the Highland Clearances, two men form an unlikely bond on a far-flung island

The best recent science fiction and fantasy – reviews roundup

The Mars House by Natasha Pulley; Annie Bot by Sierra Greer; The Warm Hands of Ghosts by Katherine Arden; Jumpnauts by Hao Jingfang; Alien Clay by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story by Bono audiobook review – unexpected humility

The U2 frontman narrates his own autobiography, using music to look back on his life - Band Aid hubris, iTunes regrets and all

Cloistered by Catherine Coldstream review – out of order

A vivid memoir of life as a nun in one of Catholicism’s strictest traditions, in all its piety and claustrophobic pettiness

The Silver River by Jim Moginie review – a Midnight Oil memoir tinged with sadness

Moginie’s book may not scratch every itch, but it is a sometimes lyrical and moving look at how one of Australia’s biggest bands became a beast of burden