‘Queer, hilarious and full of joy’: the rise of LGBTQ+ romance fiction

Author Laura Kay is part of a new wave of authors releasing uplifting queer literature that casts its characters as the heroes of their lives – not the victims

Malorie Blackman’s ‘dynamic imaginary worlds’ win her the PEN Pinter prize

Noughts & Crosses author praised by judges for ‘challenging issues of injustice in a way that is totally engaging’

Minority Report at 20: Cruise and Spielberg test their limits in top-tier thriller

The director and star both played with their images in a knotty and exciting adaptation of Philip K Dick’s prescient short story

‘One publisher called my book repellent’: the first self-published author up for the Miles Franklin

Michael Winkler’s Grimmish has been embraced by judges of the $60,000 prize – and by readers, whose support has been ‘truly astonishing’

Talk to My Back by Yamada Murasaki review – feminist awakenings in 1980s Japan

The first English translation of these subtle stories of self-worth and domestic frustration is a revelation

In brief: I’m Sorry You Feel That Way; The Rise and Reign of the Mammals; The Glitter in the Green – review

A razor-sharp story of familial tensions; a paleontologist’s fascinating history of mammals; and a rich guide to hummingbirds across America

Ghost Lover by Lisa Taddeo review – in the company of men

The Three Women author once again explores female desire and sexual power dynamics in a collection of stories that often feel shockingly true

Sarah Hall: ‘I used to almost fear opening a book’

The award-winning author on the urgency she felt when writing her pandemic novel, how she relates to Sarah Connor from The Terminator and what Egon Schiele’s paintings make her feel

Briefly, a Delicious Life by Nell Stevens review – on holiday with Chopin and George Sand

A teenage ghost observes the erotic and creative bond between composer and author in Stevens’s playful debut novel

‘Can objects teach us about reality?’: Ruth Ozeki on her Women’s prize-winning novel

Voices of everyday things fill The Book of Form and Emptiness, rooted in how she experienced the loss of her father

‘Trust breached’: publisher distances herself from author John Hughes amid plagiarism claims

Upswell publisher Terri-ann White says she is distressed by controversy around former Miles Franklin prize longlist novel The Dogs

It’s Groundhog Day … again! Why TV can’t get enough of time-loops

Bill Murray’s movie wrote the playbook, but TV is playing catchup with a rich haul of time-loop shows from Life After Life to The Time Traveler’s Wife and now The Lazarus Project. So why do the writers curse themselves every day?

We Had to Remove This Post by Hanna Bervoets review – confessions of a content moderator

This Dutch novel takes aim at the depersonalising corrosiveness of the internet, but becomes laboured

Love and the Novel by Christina Lupton review – an intimate literary journey

An affair drives the author’s highly charged exploration of love in fiction, from marriage to adultery, parenthood to friendship

Yell, Sam, If You Still Can by Maylis Besserie review – Beckett’s last days

A remarkable debut that imagines the Irish writer communing with lost loved ones in a Paris nursing home