Palo Alto: ‘Away from Emma Roberts, the film drifts’ – first look review

Tom Shone: Gia Coppola makes her directorial debut with a faithfully slight adaptation of James Franco's short story collection

The Testament of Mary review – Fiona Shaw’s five-star conjuring act

Fiona Shaw is brilliant as the mother of Jesus in an ingenious and powerful adaptation of Colm Tóibín's novella, writes Michael Billington

Stevie review – Zoë Wanamaker brings Smith’s poetry alive

Like the man in her most famous poem, Not Waving but Drowning, Wanamaker's Stevie Smith is all covert signals

The Three review – Sarah Lotz’s high concept thriller is a blast

Passengers of a nervous disposition may never fly again after reading the terrifying opening, writes Alison Flood

The Tyranny of Experts review – taking on the development technocrats

A timely book gives both barrels to those misguided gurus and governments who get into bed with despots in the 'war on poverty', writes Ian Birrell

Wilkie Collins: A Life of Sensation review – tales of the unexpected

Andrew Lycett's biography succeeds in vividly portraying this most contradictory of Victorian novelists, writes Natasha Tripney

Black Rainbow review – poetry in a moving account of depression

A journalist and mother charts her descent into illness and the slow rebuilding of her shattered self, writes Stephanie Merritt

The Spy with 29 Names review – enthralling tale of a wartime double agent

A pacy account of the life of Juan Pujol, the Catalan spy who tricked Hitler over the D-day landings, is enjoyed by Ben East

The Girl Who Saved the King of Sweden review – Jonas Jonasson’s unlikely but likable follow-up to The 100-Year-Old Man

Jonas Jonasson's latest sees an African girl and a Swedish king thrown together against all odds, writes Sophia Martelli

Fallout review – Sadie Jones at the peak of her powers

Sadie Jones's novel about the emotional entanglements of an aspiring playwright trying to make his name in 70s London is a tour de force, writes Elizabeth Day

Target: Italy review – Britain’s secret war against Mussolini

Roderick Bailey's pacy account of Britain's undercover role in fomenting anti-Fascist activity in wartime Italy grips Ian Thomson

Family Life review – Akhil Sharma finds a coming-of-age story in a calamity

Akhil Sharma deftly details the end of an American dream, writes Sukhdev Sandhu

I Put a Spell on You review – John Burnside’s path less travelled

Kate Kellaway finds prose full of wonders in a digressive but consuming memoir by one of Britain's foremost poets

Alex Through the Looking-Glass review – adventures with a maths demon

Alex Bellos brings the quirks and eccentricities of numbers wonderfully to life, says Simon Singh

Curious review – how the internet doesn’t help us understand the world

Ian Leslie argues that our future depends on developing a deep curiosity about the world – and he doesn't mean clicking on Twitter links, writes Ben East