Water Ways by Jasper Winn review – a gentle journey along Britain’s canals
A year-long exploration of canal life takes in history, camaraderie and composting loos
Mussolini’s War by John Gooch review – fascist dreams of the 1930s and 40s
A meticulous, skilful account of the Duce’s erratic and ultimately disastrous attempt to make Italy a great power
The Australian book you’ve finally got time for: On the Beach by Nevil Shute
Ignore the poor fortunes of its Gregory Peck and Ava Gardner-led film. Shute’s apocalypse novel is a dynamite isolation read
Sing Backwards and Weep by Mark Lanegan review – touring, recording, drugs
Friendship with Kurt Cobain, spats with Liam Gallagher and a brutal chronicle of addiction … the Screaming Trees singer’s candid memoir
The Adventures of China Iron review – a thrilling miniature epic
Gabriela Cabezón Cámara’s International Booker-shortlisted novella is an elegy to Argentina’s lost cultures
The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes review – a sleek Hunger Games prequel
Fraught teenage love and plenty of violence – everything you’d expect of Suzanne Collins is here in the backstory of the ruthless President Snow
The best recent thrillers – review roundup
Another gem from John Grisham, two impressive debuts and a third outing for DI Manon Bradshaw from Susie Steiner
The Residue Years by Mitchell S Jackson review – a tale of mourning and loss
This sparkling debut about an African American’s perilous bid to buy back his family home crackles with startling insights
Rodham by Curtis Sittenfeld review – where would Hillary be without Bill Clinton?
The author of American Wife returns with a fantasy of what might have been, in which Hillary becomes her true self
Here We Are review – breathtaking storytelling from Graham Swift
The novelist turns the musty tale of a love triangle set in the postwar music hall into something complex and emotionally rich
Negative Capability by Michèle Roberts review – the novelist’s wisdom casts a spell
A publisher’s rejection of Roberts’s latest book prompted this candid, absorbing journal of her day-to-day life and search for inner peace
In brief: The World Aflame; The Last Protector; Beneath the Streets – review
Images of the world wars are given colour; Andrew Taylor’s latest 17th-century mystery; and what if Jeremy Thorpe got away with murder?
Barn 8 by Deb Olin Unferth review – riotous chicken rescue
A ‘screwball caper that wears its seriousness lightly’ is told with wry wit and invention
The Caravan: Abdallah Azzam and the Rise of Global Jihad review – recent history at its finest
Thomas Hegghammer delivers a meticulously researched account of a charismatic Islamist
Inferno; What Have I Done? – fearless accounts of postpartum psychosis
Catherine Cho and Laura Dockrill are painfully honest about the horrors they experienced as new mothers in the grip of a terrible illness