Fragile Monsters by Catherine Menon review – a Malaysian family firework

A woman visits her grandmother and confronts the country’s violent past in Menon’s bravura debut novel

The End of the World Is a Cul de Sac by Louise Kennedy review – a dazzling debut

The Irish author explores themes of marriage, children, mortality and memory in vivid, heartbreaking tales

A Little Devil in America by Hanif Abdurraqib review – a celebration of black performance

From Josephine Baker to Aretha Franklin, Michael Jackson to Dave Chapelle … a freewheeling collection of essays explores black culture in the US

I Belong Here by Anita Sethi review – a healing journey

Racial abuse prompts a hike across the Pennines and a heartfelt examination of identity and place in a memoir of rare power

This One Sky Day by Leone Ross review – a magical Caribbean of the mind

This eccentric, capacious novel takes the reader on a surreal ride around a fictional archipelago

The Oak Room review – bar-room tales brew up a storm

A father’s legacy is in dispute when wayward son RJ Mitte decides to spar with the barman who guards the man’s ashes

The best recent thrillers – review roundup

From small-town America to ancient Rome, there’s plenty of dark drama in this month’s pick of crime fiction

The Dangers of Smoking in Bed by Mariana Enríquez review – a South American Shirley Jackson

Pushy demons, spirits and dead babies haunt a jet-black collection of short stories set in everyday environments

London, Burning by Anthony Quinn review – portrait of a divided country

Four strangers are united by the tensions of late 70s Britain in the latest of Quinn’s gratifying London novels

See/Saw: Looking at Photographs by Geoff Dyer review – how to really read a picture

In these seductively curious essays, Dyer scrutinises images and photographers, unearthing hidden truths and a sense of the uncanny

In brief: The World Before Us; Cunning Women; When Time Stopped – reviews

An accessible prehistory of humanity, a timely tale of 17th-century witch trials, and a gripping memoir of a family’s secret past

The Republic of False Truths by Alaa al-Aswany review – the personal cost of a failed coup

This fictionalised account of the Egyptian uprising of 2011 has an eye for telling detail in the choice between struggle and self-preservation

Chosen by Giles Fraser review – confessions of a priest

In this absorbing memoir-cum-history of the rift between Judaism and Christianity, the former canon of St Paul’s reveals how exploring his Jewish roots saved him from depression

In the Thick of It by Alan Duncan review – too much bile, not enough style

The former Conservative minister spews out the vitriol in his diaries, but lacks the self-awareness and wit to write a great political memoir

Monica Jones, Philip Larkin and Me review – a woman under the influence

John Sutherland makes a brave attempt to rescue the reputation of Larkin’s longstanding lover and muse