The Western Wind by Samantha Harvey review – a priest turns cop

A man of God is tasked with finding a murderer in this rich and urgent 15th-century mystery

The King Is Always Above the People review – moving tales of migration

Peruvian-American author Daniel Alarcón tells his beautifully intimate short stories with economy and style

Political Tribes review – an unreliable guide to the American Dream

Tiger mother Amy Chua is adept at spotting tribal behaviour, but less clear about what it all means

Nigella Lawson’s At My Table by Felicity James

This year’s £3,000 Observer/Anthony Burgess prize for arts journalism goes to Felicity James’s reflection on 20 years of sharing her kitchen with the self-styled domestic goddess

The Long Hangover by Shaun Walker – review

This account of how Putin’s new Russia rose from the ruins of the Soviet Union is judicious, humane and highly entertaining

A Philosophy of Dirt review – what does it mean to be clean?

Philosopher Olli Lagerspetz considers being dirty, and the fashion for filth in art

Building and Dwelling by Richard Sennett review – how to build people-friendly cities

The answer isn’t regimental planning or an abhorrence of plans. Stimulating ideas from a veteran of urban thinking

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

From insect adventures and alien invasions to the fate of 10 hapless chipolatas

The Fountain in the Forest by Tony White review – alternative social history

An avant-garde take on the pulp crime genre becomes a paean to liberty and a secret history of the 1980s

Rainsongs by Sue Hubbard review – healing and loss

Memories soak through the landscape of the Kerry coast in a widow’s elegiac story

Inglorious Empire by Shashi Tharoor review – what the British did to India

A timely book that addresses the need to temper British imperial nostalgia with post-colonial responsibility

The Wife’s Tale by Aida Edemariam review – portrait of a mother goddess

Edemariam deftly traces her grandmother’s life in Ethiopia, taking in Haile Selassie’s feudal reign and Marxist dictatorship

Nefertiti’s Face by Joyce Tyldesley review – the creation of an Ancient Egyptian icon

Why did the bust of a queen carved more than 3,000 years ago achieve such fame when it was exhibited in 1924?

Hard Times review – Northern Broadsides make Dickens a laugh factory

Deborah McAndrew adapts the classic novel about facts and feelings but comedy drowns out subtlety

Brighton Rock review – ingenious staging curtails Greene’s Catholicism

Bryony Lavery’s adaptation underplays the classic novel’s religious theme and focuses on the pleasure-seeking Ida