I See Buildings Fall Like Lightning by Keiran Goddard review – growing up and apart

Tragedy severs five friends from their past in a subtly radical novel set in a working-class area of Birmingham

The Trading Game by Gary Stevenson review – cashing out

A former City trader looks back in anger in this darkly funny account of eye-watering bonuses and emotional detachment

The Night Alphabet by Joelle Taylor review – relentlessly inventive

In the poet’s dizzying first novel, one woman’s tattoos are portals to tales of female oppression and resistance across space and time

Spaceman review – Adam Sandler consoled by unscary giant spider in deep space

Adaptation of Czech absurdist novel finds Sandler on a trippy cosmic mission while his marriage breaks down on Earth

Dune: Part Two review – second half of hallucinatory sci-fi epic is staggering spectacle

Denis Villeneuve’s monumental adaptation expands its extraordinary world of shimmering strangeness. It’s impossible to imagine anyone doing it better

Byron: A Life in Ten Letters by Andrew Stauffer review – wrong but Romantic

An impressively rounded portrait of the raucous and manipulative poet, venereal scars and all

Fourteen Days co-edited by Margaret Atwood review – a pandemic tale

Dave Eggers, Celeste Ng, Atwood and others come together for a collaborative novel set during the New York lockdown that explores our need for connection

Keir Starmer: The Biography by Tom Baldwin review – steady as he goes

A new biography of the Labour leader offers fly-on-the-wall access and intriguing clues as to his motivation

Crime and thrillers of the month – review

An intruder strikes fear into a family in a brilliant debut, while a life of luxury turns very dark indeed. Plus, one of Nicci French’s finest novels yet

After a Dance: Selected Stories by Bridget O’Connor review – hilariously inappropriate slices of life and death

The Bafta-winning author’s posthumous collection finds laughter in appalling subjects and buzzes with hectic energy

In brief: A History of the World in Twelve Shipwrecks; Red Side Story; The Shadows of London – review

David Gibbins on the secrets revealed by sunken ships, Jasper Fforde’s enjoyable a novel about a world ruled by colour and another enjoyable historical romp from Andrew Taylor

Change: A Novel by Édouard Louis review – a knack for dramatising filial strife

The French writer’s latest work of autofiction, about the fallout from betraying his working-class roots, contains electric scene-making along with reckless hyperbole

No Judgement by Lauren Oyler review – modish observations from a rarefied world

Despite occasional displays of wit and insight, the buzzy US critic’s ironic essays can feel airless and small

The Crisis of Narration by Byung-Chul Han review – how big tech altered the narrative

From Instagram to health apps, the modern world no longer allows for rich and complex storytelling argues the philosopher in an entertaining polemic that’s short on humility

Alphabetical Diaries by Sheila Heti review – a radical fusion of linguistic experiment and philosophical inquiry

The Canadian author’s alphabetised restructuring of her journals is by turns illuminating, playful, poetic and frustrating