Now She Is Witch by Kirsty Logan review – a quest for freedom

Cries of witchcraft greet any woman who dares threaten a cruel patriarchy in this richly drawn medieval world

On Savage Shores by Caroline Dodds Pennock review – a whole new world

In a reversal of traditional historical accounts, Dodds Pennock tells the story of indigenous Americans’ first steps in Europe

Spare by Prince Harry review – magical thinking in Montecito

The blockbuster memoir may be a literary success, but it represents an abject failure of insight, writes former Vanity Fair editor and author of The Palace Papers, Tina Brown

Balladz by Sharon Olds review – insights and elegies

From pandemic poems to homages to Emily Dickinson, the American poet’s new work is intimate and heart-stirring

That Time I Got Reincarnated As a Slime the Movie: Scarlet Bond review – high-spirited anime

This playful tale about an ogre samurai, a poisoned queen and a demonic pool of talking slime has a lot of confusing lore for the uninitiated to catch up on

The Birthday Party by Laurent Mauvignier review – riveting French thriller

Mauvignier sustains an almost unbearable tension as villagers in rural France stumble into a bloodbath

The Year of the Cat by Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett review – kitten heals

The author’s memoir about her acquisition of a pet in lockdown triggers an insightful exploration of womanhood, society and her own traumatic past

A Childhood: The Biography of a Place review – a classic of the deep south

Harry Crews’s unsparing portrait of his often brutal upbringing in 1930s Georgia is a window into a lost world

In brief: The Cloisters; My Trade Is Mystery; Sweat: A History of Exercise – review

A tense whodunnit unfolds in New York’s Metropolitan museum; poet Carl Phillips imparts life lessons for all; and a study of our need to keep in shape

The Circus Train by Amita Parikh review – magic and brutality in the shadow of war

The Canadian author’s debut novel, about a circus troupe travelling by steam train across war-torn Europe, is a vivid, uplifting page-turner

The Half Known Life by Pico Iyer review – peace and quiet in political hotspots

The travel writer’s quest for spiritual transcendence takes him from Iran to North Korea in a book that rarely illuminates the people he encounters

Avalon by Nell Zink – mad about the mansplainer

The author of The Wallcreeper delivers her most sincere novel yet in this hilarious and absorbing tale of a teenager’s search for love

The Holocaust: An Unfinished History by Dan Stone review – a timely corrective to a shifting narrative

An erudite account of the Nazi genocide reiterates neglected truths and exposes modern attempts to rewrite the facts

The Fight of His Life review: Joe Biden, White House winner

Chris Whipple’s assured account of the president’s first two years in power after beating Trump is fascinating and timely

Spare by Prince Harry review – dry your eyes, mate

For all he may have suffered, and despite his clear love for his wife, the Duke of Sussex’s misfiring memoir is not only tone-deaf to his privilege but at times downright bizarre