The Three Graces by Amanda Craig review – trouble in paradise

The novelist’s comedy of manners about three friends’ retirement in Tuscany is an enjoyable, incident-packed study of ageing, poverty and discrimination

The Swimmer: The Wild Life of Roger Deakin by Patrick Barkham review – straight in at the deep end

Barkham conjures the life of the wild swimming champion and author of Waterlog in a bravura act of creative memoir

The Scent of Flowers at Night by Leïla Slimani review – a writer’s lot

The French-Moroccan author’s slightly precious meditation on literary creation is strongest when examining its limitations and reflecting on her own childhood

The Land of Hope and Fear review: vivid portrait of Israel in ferment

Isabel Kershner of the New York Times has written an absorbing account of a country at war with itself

End Times by Peter Turchin review – can we predict the collapse of societies?

By examining history through complex mathematics, the ‘collapsologist’ aims to show – somewhat persuasively – that there are cyclical trends in the narratives of human hope and failure

King: The Life of Martin Luther King by Jonathan Eig review – a story that speaks to our times

The author of a monumental biography of Muhammad Ali uses new material to flesh out the civil rights giant

The Movement Made Us: true story of family and the civil rights struggle

David Dennis Sr and his son have written a compelling and vitally human tale of the fight for justice and the toll it took

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

A concrete garden; a funny, uncompromising portrait of disability; an epic of ancient Greece; and the pick of new YA fiction

Conquest by Nina Allan review – alien invasion, coding and Bach

A science fiction story from the 50s propels this brilliantly digressive exploration into art, ecology and the psychology of conspiracy theories

Sleeping on Islands by Andrew Motion review – candid stories from the former poet laureate

A revealing memoir illuminates the conflict between wordly success and creative freedom

The Story of the Forest by Linda Grant review – 20th-century journeys

A brother and sister leave Latvia for Liverpool in this impressive family epic, an intimate history of Jewish assimilation

On Women by Susan Sontag review – the reluctant feminist

Susan Sontag’s mixed feelings towards the movement that propelled her career

The Taste of Things (aka The Pot-au-Feu) review – Juliette Binoche foodie romance is an invitation to drool

Binoche and Benoît Magimel serve this Belle Époque tale of meaningful meals very well, but some may wish for a pinch of salt

The Guest by Emma Cline review – a stylish follow-up to The Girls

A young escort searches for security among the leisured wealthy in Cline’s clever study of precarity and excess

Johnson at 10 by Anthony Seldon and Raymond Newell review – the great pretender

A howl of scholarly frustration at a prime minister out of his depth