Cry, the Beloved Country review – utterly absorbing tale from the birth of apartheid
Zoltan Korda’s 1951 adaptation of Alan Paton’s crusading novel is filled with passion and moral fortitude
Comfort Eating by Grace Dent review – private passions
The restaurant critic’s exploration of the delicious things we snack on is shot through with nostalgia for childhood, family and home
Pet Sematary: Bloodlines review – pointless horror prequel
Stephen King’s small-town horror gets a competently made yet thoroughly unnecessary new chapter, an easily skippable Halloween time-waster
The Wolves of Eternity by Karl Ove Knausgård review – cosmic mysteries
Long-lost siblings are linked across time and space in this expansive novel of ideas from the author of My Struggle
The Postcard by Anne Berest review – an autofictional tale of family survival
The author sets out to discover what happened to her ancestors during the Holocaust in this gripping, poignant work
The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde review – menace on Edinburgh’s mean streets
Hope Dickson Leach’s atmospheric adaptation of the classic thriller looks good but in rewriting the story, adds an unnecessary element of distraction
Monica by Daniel Clowes review – a thrilling kaleidoscopic journey
A woman sets out to uncover the truth about her mother’s disappearance in this genre-hopping celebration of visual storytelling
Madonna by Mary Gabriel review – the definitive life of a pop colossus
The work of a cultural historian rather than a fan, this meticulous study puts the shape-shifting star in proper context
The best recent crime and thriller writing – review roundup
JK Rowling, as Robert Galbraith, is back with a cult classic, while elsewhere past crimes make for gripping reads
Penelope Unbound by Mary Morrissy review – masterly alternative life of Nora Barnacle
What if James Joyce and his great love had split up at the start? Morrissy’s reimagining is a stylistic tour de force that the man himself would have surely admired
Stone Yard Devotional by Charlotte Wood review – a masterful novel of quiet force
Set at a rural Australian monastery, with a minimal plot and a looming climate catastrophe, this is a book of introspection – and of despair
The World According to Joan Didion by Evelyn McDonnell review – bits and pieces of a literary pioneer
A ‘fangirl’’s fragmented study of the great US author has a disparate and magpie approach that never coheres into a satisfying whole
The Fall: The End of the Murdoch Empire by Michael Wolff review – Succession without a sense of humour
No one emerges with much credit in Wolff’s second study of Rupert Murdoch and his family – a gossipy story of power and greed peppered with endless layers of psychological insight
In brief: Withnail and I: From Cult to Classic; Light Over Liskeard; Hellish Nell – review
Everything you’ll ever need to know about Bruce Robinson’s 80s masterpiece; a wry modern fable from Louis de Bernières; and Britain’s wartime witch trial revisited
The Glutton by AK Blakemore review – a breathtaking tale of huge hunger
A French peasant with an insatiable appetite lives through revolutionary chaos in a vivid, beautifully written historical novel