The Adversary by Michael Crummey review – dark humour and depravity at the edge of the Earth
This prize-winning take on a biblical tale set in 1800s Newfoundland is grim, but has energy, empathy – and a wickedly colourful way with words
Peter Carey on Ned Kelly: ‘Did no one see what I saw, that our famous bushranger was a raging poet?’
Twenty-five years after his award-winning book was published, the Australian author revisits True History of the Kelly Gang
The best recent science fiction, fantasy and horror – review roundup
Where the Axe Is Buried by Ray Nayler; The Phoenix Pencil Company by Allison King; Hemlock & Silver by T Kingfisher; Secret Lives of the Dead by Tim Lebbon; The Course of the Heart by M John Harrison
Learned Behaviours by Zeynab Gamieldien review – murder mystery probes privilege and class politics
An ascendant lawyer from western Sydney is pulled back into his past in this pacy thriller interrogating the possibilities – and traps – of social mobility
The Names by Florence Knapp audiobook review – a Sliding Doors-style debut
What happens to a boy called Gordon, Julian or Bear? Irish actor Dervla Kirwan narrates this smart tale about a how a boy’s name influences his life
Great Eastern Hotel by Ruchir Joshi review – a panoramic view of India in flux
The political and emotional journey of a young communist revolutionary is brought sensuously to life, in a magnificent epic that took 25 years to write
Vulture by Phoebe Greenwood review – a caustic satire on war reporting in the Middle East
A journalist pursues headline-making scoops whatever the cost to those in the conflict zone in this astute and darkly humorous debut novel by a former foreign correspondent
Bryce Courtenay, conspiracies and campfire cooking: the best Australian books out in August
Each month Guardian Australia editors and critics pick the upcoming titles they have devoured – or can’t wait to get their hands on
TonyInterruptor by Nicola Barker review – satire that sees right through you
This brilliantly over-the-top comedy about an unworldly heckler explores art and authenticity – being tripped up by it is part of the fun
Dame Stella Rimington obituary
First female head of MI5 seen as a Whitehall street fighter whose most controversial role was countering ‘subversion’
‘I’ve seen tough, rugby-playing men cowering’: how we made theatre horror The Woman in Black
‘It’s rare to really frighten a theatre audience. So it surprised us when people said, “I didn’t sleep for three nights after seeing your show”’
Bloody Awful in Different Ways by Andrev Walden review – darkly funny Swedish autofiction
In this bleak, bestselling coming-of-age debut, the author evokes life with the seven dads he had in seven years
Lucy Foley: ‘Angus, Thongs and Full-Frontal Snogging didn’t talk down to teenage girls’
The crime author on rediscovering Edith Wharton, and the brilliantly twisted author who changed her ideas about writing
Martin Cruz Smith obituary
Novelist best known for Gorky Park and the series of thrillers that followed featuring the Soviet detective Arkady Renko
The Immigrants by Moreno Giovannoni review – family history fuels a novel of understated beauty
Blending fiction and family memoir, the author’s second novel pays tribute to the lives and labour of his parents and their community of postwar Italian immigrants in Australia