The Pole and Other Stories by JM Coetzee review – a late love affair
Coetzee’s purist approach to storytelling strikes a chord in this novella and five tales
Starve Acre review – intelligent performances in sinister Yorkshire folk horror
Matt Smith and Morfydd Clark play an unhappy couple who have moved to the moors with their young son, and soon become entwined in the occult
A Day in the Life of Abed Salama: A Palestine Story by Nathan Thrall – review
With devastating clarity, the Jerusalem-based journalist shows how one family’s disaster illuminates the complex tragedy of Israel and Palestine
Lola in the Mirror by Trent Dalton review – a misguided bootstraps story drowning in sentimentality
The bestselling author has noble intentions but his third novel romanticises homelessness, perpetuating dangerous myths while charting nowhere new
Unruly by David Mitchell review – monarchs behaving badly
Sweary realism gives colour to these accounts of England’s most appalling kings and queens
Split Tooth by Tanya Tagaq review – coming of age in the High Arctic
An Inuit teenager faces nature’s power and the repercussions of colonialism in a compelling debut from a singer-songwriter
How to Say Babylon by Safiya Sinclair review – escape artist
A courageous memoir of breaking free from a father’s oppression – and how poetry can be a salve against chaos
Cassius X: Becoming Ali review – boxing legend’s story goes back to his roots
There’s a lot to enjoy, but nothing new, in this documentary that focuses on a key transitional period in Muhammad Ali’s life
The Secret Life of John le Carré by Adam Sisman review – the spy who loved me
A chronicle of the author’s many affairs unable to be published during his lifetime
Night Side of the River by Jeanette Winterson review – uneasy ghost stories
Winterson weaves her own thoughts on the supernatural with fictional explorations of apps, avatars and AI
Lies We Tell review – high stakes and heiresses in tightly laced gothic tale
An orphaned Irish teenager spars with her scheming uncle in this insightful reworking of Sheridan Le Fanu’s novel
Permacrisis by Gordon Brown, Mohamed El-Erian and Michael Spence review – road to nowhere
A call for growth from three veterans of the financial crisis rings hollow
A Stroke of the Pen by Terry Pratchett review – newly discovered early stories
A collection of comic tales published pseudonymously in the 1970s and 80s is slight, but shows sparks of the brilliance to come
Eve by Cat Bohannon review – long overdue evolutionary account of women and their bodies
The American writer traces the female form back to our ‘true ancestors’ in an epic combination of science and speculation that places women at the centre of history
Monica by Daniel Clowes review – pitch-perfect portraits of an ever scarier US
A prickly misfit connects nine dark tales in this sad and sharply funny new book from the author of Ghost World