The Cost of Living by Deborah Levy review – a memoir and feminist manifesto

At the age of 50, the acclaimed writer was divorced and living in a new flat. In elliptical, allusive prose, she re-engages with the ideas of Simone de Beauvoir

Elizabeth I by Helen Castor review – a study in insecurity

Rages, flirtations, frustrations: this engaging study reveals the virgin queen as a complex, insecure figure

Happiness by Aminatta Forna review – love in the urban wilderness

From foxes to parakeets, London’s animal population is as closely observed as its human inhabitants, in this tale of connection and coexistence sparked by a chance meeting on Waterloo Bridge

Painter to the King by Amy Sackville review – a virtuoso portrait of Velázquez

This fictional account of the artist’s life at the court of Philip IV confirms its daring author’s extraordinary gifts

As Time Goes By by Derek Taylor review – life in the Beatles’ magic circle

A new edition of the memoir by the band’s amiable press officer who witnessed Beatlemania and took notes as the breakup happened

Overland by Graham Rawle review – the illusion of home

A Hollywood set designer plays God as he builds an ersatz town to hide an aircraft factory, in this beguiling story grounded in historical events

Shakespeare’s Originality by John Kerrigan review – what the Bard pilfered and changed

Shakespeare inhabited a literary culture in which imitation was applauded. This erudite study teases out his alchemical transformations of what he had read or seen

Happiness by Aminatta Forna review – in search of somewhere special

Nature meets London in all its multilayered glory in Forna’s vivid portrait of marginalised people

Astrid Lindgren: The Woman Behind Pippi Longstocking by Jens Andersen – review

A thoughtful biography of the children’s author reveals an exuberant nonconformist whose eventful life was touched by tragedy

Imagine Wanting Only This by Kristen Radtke review – an appetite for destruction

Kristen Radtke’s restless memoir of her search for abandoned places is like Planet of the Apes as told by Shelley

Searching for Stars on an Island in Maine by Alan Lightman review – at one with the universe

The physicist and novelist’s discursive essays on the mysteries of the physical world are full of wonder and insight

Ordeal By Innocence review – crime saga seamlessly sifts truth from lies

Careful choreography is the backbone of this Agatha Christie adaptation, which features a uniformly brilliant cast

In brief: Entanglement; A State of Freedom; MI5 and Me: A Coronet Among the Spooks – review

Katy Mahood’s wise debut about intersecting lives, five powerful stories by Neel Mukherjee, and Charlotte Bingham’s enrtertaining account of her time working for MI5

The Cost of Living by Deborah Levy review – short, sensual, embattled memoir

The author describes the end of her marriage and the death of her mother with compelling grace and candour

Macbeth by Jo Nesbø review – something noirish this way comes

Jo Nesbø’s retelling of Macbeth as a gritty crime thriller suffers from not pushing Shakespeare’s play far enough