Crime and thrillers of the month – review

A luminous tale of abducted teens, a page-turning marriage to a mass murderer – and a deadly gameshow

Kafka: Selected Stories, edited by Mark Harman review – the master who never wasted a word

A Franz Kafka scholar’s perceptive annotation and translation highlights every subtle shade of humour and brilliant aphorism in these singular tales

I Will Crash by Rebecca Watson – family dynamics poisonously awry

A bullying brother’s death is the spur for an extraordinary and chilling portrait of sibling enmity in the second novel by the author of little scratch

The Material by Camille Bordas review – when life is one long joke

Students on a comedy course devote their every moment to mining material for their on-stage routine in a novel that relies on how much it can make the reader laugh

Goodlord by Ella Frears review – this email to a landlord is dark and dazzling

The poet’s stream-of-consciousness complaint to an estate agent is a witty and compelling reflection on the state of the housing market and young womanhood

In brief: CS Lewis’s Oxford; True Love; Loosely Based on a Made-Up Story – review

A fascinating study of CS Lewis’s years in his adopted city; an excellent gritty romance by Paddy Crewe; and James Blunt enters the music memoir hall of fame

Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah: ‘Satire is a way to make myself less depressed’

The US author on dystopian fiction, the experience of speaking to prisoners about his debut novel and why both of America’s major parties ‘love the war machine’

Is it time to turn the British Museum into the world’s great lending library?

With a new government will come grown-up conversations about our colonial history’s part in the acquiring of artefacts

‘You can write anything about sex, but you cannot talk about money’: Taffy Brodesser-Akner on life after Fleishman

Her bestselling debut, Fleishman Is in Trouble, became a hit TV series. Now Taffy Brodesser-Akner is taking on the American dream

Little Rot by Akwaeke Emezi review – a wild weekend in New Lagos

Dirty secrets abound in a feverish novel exposing the seedy underbelly of a Nigerian city

Shy by Max Porter audiobook review – tale of a ne’er do well, done well

Joe Gaminara’s narration pumps up the lyricism of Porter’s scuzzy odyssey of drugs, drink, youth violence and doomed romance

True Love by Paddy Crewe review – from the heart

Melancholy is deftly evoked in this sentimental portrait of young love and precarity, from the author of My Name Is Yip

Shadows of Winter Robins by Louise Wolhuter review – a masterful mystery that keeps you guessing

This writer’s tantalising second novel is packed with marvellous characters, whose unfurling stories examine generational secrets

Rosarita by Anita Desai review – a transcendent late gift

This profound and riddling novel follows a young Indian woman’s quest through Mexico to find out more about her mother

‘Radical’, ‘a headrush’, ‘insanely clever’: the best Australian books out in July

Each month Guardian Australia editors and critics pick the upcoming titles they have already devoured – or can’t wait to get their hands on