W-3: A Memoir by Bette Howland review – postcard from the edge

The American writer’s account of her stay on a psychiatric ward is as dazzling and daring as when it was first published, in 1974

The Smartest Giant in Town review – a very tall tale

Nutty animals and witty puppetry liven up this at times bleak version of Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler’s picture book

In brief: The Cure for Good Intentions; Widowland; The Moth and the Mountain – reviews

An eye-opening memoir of leaving journalism for medicine; a gripping counterfactual novel about 1950s Britain; and the moving story of a daring attempt to climb Everest

Batlava Lake by Adam Mars-Jones review – Barry no mates

A beautifully constructed novella carefully reveals the failings of a hopelessly unperceptive British army engineer

How the Word is Passed review: After Tulsa, other forgotten atrocities

In his Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America, Clint Smith delivers a corrective both necessary and poetic

Second Nature by Nathaniel Rich; Under a White Sky by Elizabeth Kolbert review – Earth SOS

Two startling accounts of humanity’s devastating impact on the natural world make it clear that any potential solution will involve huge risk

The Divorce by César Aira review – ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated?

The lives of three characters collide outside a Buenos Aires cafe in a literary pile-up with precious little at stake

Consumed: A Sister’s Story by Arifa Akbar review – astonishing emotional integrity

In this fearless debut, the theatre critic attempts to come to terms with the death of her gifted but troubled sibling and make sense of their fractured relationship

Seven Ways to Change the World by Gordon Brown; Go Big by Ed Miliband review – what’s the new idea?

The former Labour leaders’ visions for a better tomorrow share a stubborn political optimism, but are they on ‘the credible end of desirable’?

The big picture: Niall McDiarmid’s world on a plate

The Scottish photographer’s shots of his breakfast table suggest planets in alignment at a moment when everything is in its right and proper place

The Great Dissenter review: a superb life of John Marshall Harlan, champion of equality

Ruth Bader Ginsburg is not the only great supreme court justice to have made her name with dissent in the name of progress

Let Me Take You by the Hand by Jennifer Kavanagh review – true tales from London’s streets

More than 150 years after Henry Mayhew’s revelatory survey of the capital’s poor, this collection of stories shows that too little has changed

Assembly by Natasha Brown review – a modern Mrs Dalloway

A sparsely written debut about a black woman preparing for a party examines the disorienting experience of assimilation

The best recent science fiction and fantasy – reviews roundup

Widowland by CJ Carey; Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir; This Fragile Earth by Susannah Wise; Rabbits by Terry Miles; This Eden by Ed O’Loughlin; The Colours of Death by Patricia Marques

The Startup Wife by Tahmima Anam review – a deft take on tech times

A witty investigation into the misogyny and bro culture of the world of startups and social media apps