The Visionaries review – seers who were shaped by the shadow of war

Wolfram Eilenberger’s group biography of Hannah Arendt, Simone de Beauvoir, Ayn Rand and Simone Weil illuminates how the horrors of the 1930s informed the philosophers’ worldviews – with the ‘saintly’ Weil the star of the show

The Unfamiliar by Kirsty Logan review – motherhood, queered

Logan’s account of having a baby with her partner is searingly honest and doesn’t shy away from the visceral

Harlem Shuffle by Colson Whitehead audiobook review – New York’s criminal underworld

Actor Dion Graham narrates this noirish tale of a wise-cracking furniture salesman who struggles to stay on the straight and narrow

Children’s and teens roundup – the best new picture books and novels

A celebration of mixed heritage; a dog‑walker’s drama; a tiny adventurer; and a siren assassin with killer songs

Open Throat by Henry Hoke review – inside the mind of a queer mountain lion

This wild and witty takedown of 21st-century America is narrated by a big cat stalking LA

The Pole and Other Stories by JM Coetzee review – if this is his final book, it is a great one

The Nobel laureate’s new collection of stories is concerned with death, desire and old age, glinting with flashes of humour and grand, existential strangeness

The Infinite City by Niall Kishtainy review – a history of utopias

The dreamers and schemers who conjured up ideal futures, from Thomas More to Extinction Rebellion

Sanderson’s Isle by James Clarke review – a total trip

A fugitive seeks refuge in a 1960s commune in the Lake District, in an energetic novel that captures an era

The War Came to Us by Christopher Miller review – on the ground in Ukraine

A seasoned correspondent looks back at life in the run-up to invasion

Tom Lake by Ann Patchett review – homespun happiness

An American fruit farm is the setting for a bittersweet tale of family heartbreak and hope during the pandemic

The Visionaries by Wolfram Eilenberger review – four women who changed the world

The complicated lives and questing minds of Ayn Rand, Hannah Arendt, Simone de Beauvoir and Simone Weil

No One Prayed Over Their Graves by Khaled Khalifa – a Syrian epic

Set against the tumultuous backdrop of modern Syria’s birth pangs, this saga of friendship, freedom and tragedy celebrates Aleppo’s lost past

The Virgin Suicides review – Sofia Coppola’s debut rereleased with solemn trigger-warning

Sunlit suburban calm masks the shocking nature of the story itself: a horrendous tragedy in the guise of a teenage coming-of-age movie

Children of the Corn review – juice-free remake of Stephen King’s killer kids classic

The film starts with the interesting idea that kids today might want to slit their parents’ throats for leaving the planet in such a mess, but quickly gets unscary

Picture books for children – reviews

A joyful introduction to the power of art, plus doggy-popping delights and a Julia Donaldson jaunt