Music Against the Night by Yiyun Li review – a virtuosic interrogation of the power of art

What does it cost, to live your life in the hope of immortality? Li examines the gulf between talent and genius through the marriage of two real-life musicians

‘Whimsical witch stuff’ and vintage radio shows: how horror novelists celebrate Halloween

Four horror novelists – Riley Sager, Leah Rowan, Rachel Harrison and Grady Hendrix – share advice for embracing Halloween, even if you’re a scaredy cat

‘Our third date was at Buckingham Palace’: Marlon James and Nicholas Boggs on life as a literary power couple

Shortlisted for the Booker and Baillie Gifford prizes respectively, the novelist and biographer talk about working and living together – and giving a voice to Black queer history

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

A sumptuous collection of fairytales; a dreamy Minotaur retelling; the explosive finale of the YA Torch Trilogy and more

Inter Alia by Suzie Miller review – an urgent play about rape and justice is undermined by its novelisation

Bogged down by extra padding and a poorly crafted narrator, Miller’s book dilutes the potency of the original and diminishes its scope

Black Bag by Luke Kennard audiobook review – brilliant Booker-shortlisted campus comedy

The author reveals his mastery of comic timing in his narration of this novel about a cash-strapped actor paid to live inside a black leather bag

Female Life on Planet Earth by Laleh Khadivi review – a mother’s secret past in the Iranian revolution

A woman living in California discovers her mother may have been a merciless enforcer of the Islamic revolution, in an intriguing novel of inheritance and identity

‘It feels quite frightening’: readers rush to snap up Sally Rooney books as stocks dwindle amid Palestine Action ban

Booksellers have reported selling out of the Irish novelist’s works after it was announced that her books would be withdrawn from sale in the UK

The Mystery of What Befell in the Ditch by Thure Erik Lund review – is this the greatest living Norwegian writer?

Translated into English at last, this portrait of a man appalled by modernity and desperate to get back to nature is brimming with Nordic weltschmerz

Life Out of Order by Audrey Niffenegger review – does this sequel measure up to The Time Traveler’s Wife?

More than two decades on, the passion that ignited Niffenegger’s debut has all but evaporated from this confused follow-up

‘Medieval romance overflowed with sexually active fairies’: the surprisingly long roots of romantasy

Critics mock romantasy as raunchy trash – but this enchanting genre has its roots in medieval literature, and is much older, and wilder, than you might imagine

Isabel Allende wins €1m Spanish literary prize under pseudonym

Chilean-American author awarded Premio Planeta for sequel to her 1982 debut novel, The House of the Spirits

‘Is there any value in writing a story in a time of chaos?’: novelist Elif Shafak on her creative crisis

The Turkish writer talks about her nomadic childhood, being targeted by the Turkish government and overcoming depression to write her latest novel

The best recent crime and thrillers – review roundup

The Heights by Ian Rankin; The Mortons by Scott Westerfeld and Justine Larbalestier; Murder Most Cryptic by Alys Cummings; The Deadly Inheritance of Everest Macdonald by AJ West; Inheritance by Gillian Slovo

John Green: ‘I devoured the Sweet Valley High books in the 1980s’

The American author on being inspired by Kurt Vonnegut, coming late to Jane Austen, and the brilliance of Robert Penn Warren