Little Boy by Lawrence Ferlinghetti review – unleashing the word-hoard

In this novel-cum-memoir-cum-grand finale, the centenarian US author and friend of the beats takes a wild journey through his lifetime in literature

The Fate of Rome by Kyle Harper review – climate, disease and the end of an empire

The collapse of the Roman empire has long fascinated historians

This powerful debut maroons the reader in a polluted future, on a rusting turbine in the middle of the North Sea

Rivalry, tragedy and a fairytale escape: an impressive account of a medieval warrior’s quest to be England’s first regnant queen

McEwan returns to his subversive early style with this dystopian vision of humanoid robots in a counterfactual 1982 Britain

The dehorned battler is reconfigured into a franchise figurehead – and loses all his devilish excitement

The tales of Mowgli, Baloo and Bagheera are inventively staged with integrated sign language and a community cast

An obsessive fan offers sharp insights into the hip-hop quartet that even his jazz-loving parents liked

Fabulous elements are mixed with everyday life and references to Brexit in an intriguing mother-daughter story about origins

Going through a crisis? Why not head off into the mountains in the footsteps of a great German thinker

Chocolat’s author revisits her heroine in south-west France

The Irish writer’s debut story collection is a highly addictive mix of deadpan drollery and candour

Tales from the classroom to the ghetto

A traveller’s meditation on the appeal of remote places is clever and funny

Two very different books make us question what we eat