Carnegie Medal longlist gives classics a fresh spin

From a modern Moby-Dick to a stepsister’s take on Cinderella, the UK’s top children’s book prize highlights stories of ‘hope, discovery and understanding’

Independence Square by AD Miller review – thriller in post-Soviet Ukraine

From Kiev to London by way of Greeneland … the Booker-shortlisted author’s protagonist searches for answers

Actress by Anne Enright review – the spotlight of fame

The Booker winner’s seventh novel investigates a woman’s memories of her starry, damaged mother

British Book awards balance art and selling power to decide best writer in 30 years

Novelists rub shoulders with presidents, chefs, comedians and thriller megastars on longlist to define the title with the biggest impact on the book world

New women’s fiction prize to address ‘gender imbalance’ in North America

The large prize, worth CAD$150,000, is ‘a statement of belief in the brilliance of women’s writing’ in the US and Canada

Michael Rosen condemns UK education system’s ‘fear of laughter’

Announcing the winners of this years Laugh Out Loud awards for the funniest children’s books, Rosen took aim at the ‘oppressive’ solemnity of today’s schools

Patti Smith pitches in to help burgled Oregon bookshop

Poet, singer and memoirist – honoured this week by PEN for ‘literary service’ – sends signed first editions after learning of thefts at Portland store

The publishing event of a lifetime? Prepare for more Mantel mania

Mark Rylance prepares to don Cromwell’s black cap again, Asian cinema continues to shine, and Ian McKellen helps out a north London theatre pub

The Office of Gardens and Ponds by Didier Decoin review – into a vanished world

This quietly gripping French novel follows a young widow through Heian Japan over 1,000 years ago

Counting and Cracking: Belvoir Street’s standout hit wins Australia’s richest literary prize

First-time playwright S. Shakthidharan and associate writer Eamon Flack share the $125,000 prize, while Christos Tsiolkas won for fiction

Dispatches from hell: the extraordinary story of the hero who infiltrated Auschwitz

This week Jack Fairweather won the Costa Prize for his book The Volunteer. It is the biography of Polish resistance leader and intelligence agent Witold Pilecki, who had himself deliberately interned in the death camp

Costa prize: Jack Fairweather wins book of the year with The Volunteer

Biography of Witold Pilecki, a Polish resistance fighter who infiltrated Auschwitz, hailed as extraordinary

Stephen King says Oscars are ‘rigged in favor of the white folks’

Novelist clarifies controversial comments about diversity, acknowledging that while in a perfect world ‘judgments of creative excellence should be blind’, we’re not there yet

Eimear McBride: ‘Women are really angry. I feel a deep, burning sense of injustice at the way women are treated’

Her modernist debut explored the trauma of a young woman, while her latest novel examines the loneliness of middle age. The novelist talks about powering fiction with fury

Story of woman who heads south takes prize for ‘evoking spirit of the north’

Jessica Andrews’ Saltwater praised by judges of the £10,000 Portico award for showing how northern identity is ‘a place within us’