The Volunteer by Jack Fairweather review – the hero who infiltrated Auschwitz

This astonishing account of Witold Pilecki, a member of the Warsaw resistance who tried to incite rebellion in the camps, won the Costa biography award

Poetry book of the month: Arias by Sharon Olds – review

Sharon Olds’s brilliant new collection, an exploration of intimacy and estrangement, is her most moving yet

Dear Life by Rachel Clarke review – somewhere towards the end

A palliative care specialist offers a tender meditation on how people confront their final days

States of the Body Produced By Love by Nisha Ramayya review – a difficult beginning

Learning the Sanksrit of her forebears with a colonial English dictionary has inspired the poet to explore some challenging questions

Miss Austen by Gill Hornby; The Other Bennet Sister by Janice Hadlow – review

A convincing fictional account of Jane Austen’s relationship with a sibling and a Mary Bennet-inspired take on Pride and Prejudice

Pills, Powder and Smoke by Antony Loewenstein; Say Why to Drugs by Dr Suzi Gage – review

Two surveys of society’s relationship with illegal drugs

In brief: The Teacher; Ladies Can’t Climb Ladders; Liar – reviews

A fictional biography of a teacher shaped by trauma, Jane Robinson’s stirring hymn to trailblazing women and a nuanced tale about a moral dilemma

Grown Ups by Marian Keyes – one big happy family?

Marian Keyes shows superb skill at tackling tough themes in this tale of a clan with secrets

Adults by Emma Jane Unsworth review – trenchant satire of screen addiction

Emma Jane Unsworth unpicks the relationship between a thirtysomething and her phone

Threshold by Rob Doyle review – chasing intangible chemical highs

Eleven freewheeling pharmaceutically messy vignettes

Black Wave by Kim Ghattas review – insightful history of Middle Eastern conflict

An essential account of the ideologies that have shaped the region

A Very Stable Genius review: dysfunction and disaster at the court of King Donald

Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker, Pulitzer-winning Washington Post reporters, have produced a vital and alarming read

The Self Delusion by Tom Oliver review – how we are connected and why that matters

Forget the idea that humans are independent individuals. We need to grasp that we are part of ecosystems

The Shadow King by Maaza Mengiste review – remembering Ethiopia’s female soldiers

Set during Italy’s 1935 invasion of Ethiopia, this absorbing novel spotlights the African women who went to war

The Age of Illusions review: anti-anti-Trump but for … what, exactly?

Andrew Bacevich is right that America squandered victory in the cold war but curiously reluctant to offer ways it might atone