The Shadow in the Garden: A Biographer’s Tale – review

In his obsessive pursuit of Saul Bellow, biographer James Atlas found his own compelling story to tell

The People vs Democracy review – blood, soil and Trump as strongman-lite

Yascha Mounk argues that democracy and liberalism are not synonymous and counsels Americans to look to the examples of Hungary, India and Turkey

As the internet giants run amok, a visionary critic calls for governments and citizens to tackle a crisis of historic proportions

The president of the Front National is a skilful operator who pretends to represent something new. This book looks closely at her words

What it means to be an intelligent, political woman two generations after Lessing

With time loops, body swaps and a psychopathic footman, this is a dazzling take on the murder mystery

A lyrical and moving account from a third-generation Mexican-American who spends four years seeing for himself the horrors endured by ‘crossers’

Are wealthy baby boomers undermining younger generations? Or is the real enemy the politics of austerity and privatisation sponsored by an elite?

From the black soil of Iceland to a harem in Algiers – this historical tale of slavery echoes the current refugee crisis

Samantha Harvey’s fourth novel is a richly immersive detective story set in a 15th-century Somerset village

Islamic calligraphy and whistling statues – we’ve come a long way from the Kenneth Clark’s patrician worldview

This intriguing collage novel is built out of sentences from other books. But does it add up to more than the sum of its parts?

From Jesus Christ Superstar to The Phantom of the Opera, a king of the humblebrag recalls how he conquered musical theatre

This thrilling novel about a relationship between an ageing writer and a young woman explores the uses of creativity

This celebration of children’s literature excels in capturing the sense of wonder we find in our earliest books