Aya: Claws Come Out by Marguerite Abouet and Clément Oubrerie review – Ivory Coast’s comic soap opera
The latest instalment in Abouet’s brilliantly illustrated series about the lives of three friends in Abidjan is as funny and sharp as ever
Blue Giant review – electrifying animation captures the ecstasy of live music
A sublime score from Hiromi Uehara drives this coming-of-age-anime, which brings three young jazz musicians to life with spectacular imagery
Sex, Spies and Scandal by Alex Grant review – the cold war and an untold part of Britain’s LGBT history
This sympathetic telling of the John Vassall affair is strong on the homophobic paranoia that wrecked British lives in the 1950s – and a reminder that the Kremlin’s use of blackmail is nothing new
In brief: The Fury; Our Moon: A Human History; Wolfish – review
An unreliable narrator gives a locked-room mystery a fresh spin; a fascinating look at our relationship with all things lunar; and ranging far and wide culturally in the company of wolves
Day by Michael Cunningham; The Vulnerables by Sigrid Nunez review – tales from the Covid era
Two New York novels – one a melodrama of familial tension, the other musings from an unlucky housesitter – investigate life during the pandemic
Lovers in Auschwitz: A True Story by Keren Blankfeld review – a dangerous liaison in the shadow of death
A reconstruction of a Holocaust survivor’s secret romance in a Nazi camp – and a reunion 70 years later – is touching, if sometimes overheated
The Truce review: deep dive on Democrats’ dynamics and divisions
Hunter Walker and Luppe B Luppen examine the state of Joe Biden’s party as a rematch with Donald Trump draws near
Forbidden Desire in Early Modern Europe review – Christianity’s barbaric war against homosexuality
Historian Noel Malcolm’s survey of gay life in the 15th to 18th centuries debunks many myths, but mostly catalogues the extreme violence perpetrated against those judged to have broken religious doctrine
All of Us Strangers review – Andrew Haigh’s drama grabs you by the heart and doesn’t let go
This deeply personal portrait of newfound love and a traumatic past, starring Andrew Scott and Paul Mescal, is an emotionally wrenching masterpiece
The Men of 1924 by Peter Clark; The Wild Men by David Torrance review – Labour’s first taste of power
One hundred years since Ramsay MacDonald led his cabinet of workers into Number 10, two engrossing books illuminate the party’s extraordinary leading players and their achievement, largely unheralded, in making the country more civilised
The Color Purple review – off-note musical take on Alice Walker’s novel
Director Blitz Bazawule turns the Pulitzer prize-winning saga of rape and racism into a nostalgic, tonally jarring song and dance spectacle
Spent Light by Lara Pawson review – the dark side of everyday things
Domestic objects lead to intimate memories and troubled histories in this glorious, genre-bending book
None of This Is True by Lisa Jewell audiobook review – is she who she says she is?
Nicola Walker and Louise Brealey play the women whose fast-friendship develops into a something far darker
Children’s and teens roundup – the best new picture books and novels
A snail in space, dinosaurs on the beach, a fresh take on Jane Eyre, and a kebab-eating incarnation of Otis Redding
Northanger Abbey review – Janeites, be warned! Austen gets a fanfic makeover
Writer Zoe Cooper and director Tessa Walker reignite Jane Austen’s early novel with hilarious physical storytelling and a fizzing cast, though the romance sputters out too soon