The Beast review – Léa Seydoux’s audacious drama throbs with fear

Disaster appears imminent as Seydoux and an impressive George MacKay meet across three different eras in what is maybe Bertrand Bonello’s best movie yet

Prophet Song by Paul Lynch review – a tale of Dublin’s descent into dystopia is crucial reading

With Ireland under tyranny, rebels must decide between family and liberty in this brilliant, Booker-longlisted story for our times

My Husband by Maud Ventura review – a passion victim

A sensation in France, this tale of a besotted wife who demands devotion from her husband has been likened to Patricia Highsmith and Gone Girl

Father and Son by Jonathan Raban review – salute to a complicated father

The late travel writer and novelist’s study of his dad – brave soldier, man of the cloth but also snob and antisemite – offers a beautifully written portrait rather than judgment

Pure Wit: The Revolutionary Life of Margaret Cavendish review – English eccentric and talk of the town

This peppy study of the 17th-century prolific author and ‘semi-mythical creature’ reveals a dramatic life that would make for a great film

The Abuse of Power: Confronting Injustice in Public Life by Theresa May review – blind to her own failings

The ex-PM casts herself as nobly championing victims of the powerful, but fails to properly confront her culpability in the shameful Windrush scandal

The Hidden Roots of White Supremacy review: necessary chronicle of US racist history

Robert P Jones vividly condemns America’s history of racist oppression – but risks misreading political realities today

The Farmer’s Wife by Helen Rebanks review – farm to fork

Food and family life in a grounded companion piece to the writer’s husband’s The Shepherd’s Life

Holly by Stephen King review – unlikely serial killers

King’s dogged private detective returns in this dark and lyrical thriller set during the pandemic

The Women of NOW review: superb history of feminist growth and groundswell

Katherine Turk has produced a must-read on the group which did so much for American women in the 1960s and 70s

The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar review – Wes Anderson’s short and sweet Roald Dahl tale

Anderson’s second Dahl adaptation is a droll 40 minutes of beautifully composed nested stories, with Benedict Cumberbatch as a gambler who learns how to beat the house

Poor Things review – Emma Stone has a sexual adventure in Yorgos Lanthimos’s virtuoso comic epic

Stone gives a hilarious, beyond-next-level performance as Bella Baxter, the experimental subject of a troubled Victorian anatomist, in Lanthimos’s toweringly bizarre comedy

I Could Read the Sky by Timothy O’Grady audiobook review – tender tale of an Irish expat

The author narrates his spare, poetic novel about a man recalling his past, with music from fiddler Martin Hayes

Lazy City by Rachel Connolly review – sex, drugs and ennui in Belfast

Melancholy permeates a sardonic tragicomedy in which the hangover of the Troubles is never far from the surface

What Went Wrong With Brexit by Peter Foster review – state of denial

A book that lays bare the absurd claims Brexit would reduce red tape – but leaves austerity out of the analysis