Checkpoint Charlie by Iain MacGregor review – Berlin’s secrets and spies

This rich collection of stories from cold war Berlin captures the city’s many complexities

The Gifted School by Bruce Holsinger review – astute and funny

Competition for places at an elite Colorado academy brings out the worst in pushy parents

The Man in the Red Coat by Julian Barnes review – out of the surgery, into the boudoir

A lavish study of society surgeon Samuel de Pozzi

All the President’s Women review: Donald Trump, sexual predator

Barry Levine, formerly of the National Enquirer, and Monique el-Faizy are well placed to write this alarming book

Emma Forrest: ‘I have a shelf just of the books my exes gave me’

The writer and director on how her new novel came to her in dreams, the three female artists who’ve influenced her most, and the restorative effect of Rachel Cusk’s trilogy

Book clinic: can you recommend titles to inspire me during my retirement?

The best authors to inspire new possibilities during retirement

Children’s and teens roundup: the best new picture books and novels

Halloween chills and a celebration of Africa; plus songs at sea, wild feasts, a Brexit picture book and more

How to Be a Dictator by Frank Dikötter review – the cult of personality

Charisma, a lust for power, an absence of principles … what links Mao, Mussolini, Stalin, Hitler and other 20th-century dictators?

Edison review: Edmund Morris biography gets things back to front

The final work from the author of the Theodore Roosevelt trilogy ends up, like its subject, a bit too clever for its own good

The Addams Family review – ooky animation can’t find a heartbeat

The latest incarnation of the mysterious and spooky household, from the directors of Sausage Party, is not creepy and not kooky – it’s bland

Trick or Treat by Lisa Morton review – a history of Halloween

A sparkling investigation of ‘the most misunderstood of festivals’

Hollow Places by Christopher Hadley review – dragons and the nature of history

This ingenious book, a compelling wild goose chase, begins with a tomb and traces a legend through a thousand years

Olive, Again by Elizabeth Strout review – triumphant return of Olive Kitteridge

These stories about an irascible yet winning Maine widow have the amplitude and emotional subtlety of the most comprehensive novels

Royals by Emma Forrest review – love, trauma and teen dreams

Wild ambition and 1980s hedonism in a tale of two damaged teenagers obsessed with Princess Diana

The Sea Cloak by Nayrouz Qarmout review – debut short story collection

A brutal rendering of daily life in Gaza is a picture of innocence corrupted