Strangers on a Pier by Tash Aw review – memories of a Malaysian outsider

Aw’s memoir subtly laments the gulf between him and his parents, the present and the past

On Freedom by Maggie Nelson review – a liberator lost in the thicket

The Argonauts author’s verbose reflections on freedom, culture and sexual politics offer slim pickings, ideas-wise

In brief: Vuelta Skelter; Anxious People; What Strange Paradise – review

Tim Moore completes his trilogy of cycling’s grand tours, a Swedish hostage drama proves funny and insightful, and a Syrian child refugee finds a friend

Loved and Missed by Susie Boyt review – a quietly heroic family drama

In her seventh novel, Susie Boyt sharply picks out the relationship between a grandmother, mother and daughter

A Sunday in Ville-d’Avray by Dominique Barbéris review – discreet charms of the bourgeoisie

This slim novel about sisters meeting in the Parisian suburbs elegantly conjures up an alternative world of possibilities

Metamorphosis review – playful spin on Kafka for the Zoom age

Gregor Samsa’s sudden bodily dislocation becomes a means of exploring digital-era dilemmas in Hijinx’s irreverent adaptation

The Women of Troy by Pat Barker review – a Troy story for the sisterhood

Moving from Homer to Virgil, Pat Barker’s second feminist reboot of the classics is a stirring adventure set amid a misogynist dystopia

Our Own Worst Enemy review: a caustic diagnosis of America after Trump

Tom Nichols quotes Abraham Lincoln – on how American democracy can only be brought down from within

The Turning Point review – how Charles Dickens built Bleak House

Robert Douglas-Fairhurst gives us a wonderful study of Dickens’s life in 1851, a momentous year for the novelist and Britain as a whole

Mrs March by Virginia Feito review – a brilliant psychological study

In this tense debut, essential reading for the social media era, the wife of a New York author becomes convinced her husband is writing about her

Life’s Edge by Carl Zimmer review – what does it mean to be alive?

This profound meditation on the science of life explores where it has come from and how it evolves

The best recent crime and thrillers – review roundup

1979 by Val McDermid; A Narrow Door by Joanne Harris; The Turnout by Megan Abbott; Of Fangs and Talons by Nicolas Mathieu; 56 Days by Catherine Ryan Howard; and These Toxic Things by Rachel Howzell Hall

This Dark Country by Rebecca Birrell review – Bloomsbury’s female artists

Whether painting apples or Staffordshire dogs, these British female artists saw a radical side to domestic life

The Women of Troy by Pat Barker review – bleak and impressive

In the sequel to her Iliad retelling The Silence of the Girls, told from the perspective of captured queen Briseis, Barker moves on from war to its aftermath

Empires by Nick Earls review – a novel plea to pay attention to chance and history

A soldier figurine unites characters across history and culture in this provocative if sometimes uneven new work of fiction from the prolific Brisbane writer