Ruth & Pen by Emilie Pine review – a tale of two lives

Set over one day in Dublin, this gentle, empathetic debut explores love and loss through the stories of two women

I used to read novels for pleasure, then for exams – now I read them for their little jewels of wisdom

Reading Anne Brontë’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, I found her lines about living in London resonating intensely, so many years later

Changing the narrative on disability: is representation in books getting better?

As Amazon meets campaigners’ demands for a ‘disability fiction’ section, adult literature still has much work to do

My Name Is Yip by Paddy Crewe review – a consummate debut

This rollicking adventure set in gold rush America features an unforgettable protagonist

Either/Or by Elif Batuman review – adventures in literature and life

The further chronicles of a Turkish-American student in the 1990s showcase a wonderfully idiosyncratic comic voice

Thrillers of the month – review

This month, in clever, tense tales by Gillian McAllister and Jack Jordan, two mothers are on a mission to save their sons

Lacuna by Fiona Snyckers review – a heavy-handed response to JM Coetzee’s Disgrace

This muddled feminist reworking of Coetzee’s celebrated novel fails to grasp his book’s ambiguities

The Time Traveler’s Wife review – far too much ick factor to be truly great

Steven Moffat’s adaptation of Audrey Niffenegger’s 2003 bestseller is witty and well done, but it can’t overcome the novel’s depressingly old-fashioned and iffy implications

Bad Relations by Cressida Connolly review – deaths in the family

Spanning three generations, this novel deftly navigates the emotional minefield of a clan at war

In brief: Hell’s Half Acre; The House With the Golden Door; Great Circle – review

A grim study of a family of 19th-century US serial killers; a thrilling drama set in ancient Rome; and a vivid drama about a female aviator and the actress who wants to play her

Sea of Tranquility by Emily St John Mandel review – a time-travelling triumph

The Station Eleven author’s brilliant novel flits between disparate lives past and future, and the detective patching them together

Ruth & Pen by Emilie Pine review – a world of joy and pain

The Notes to Self author’s uplifting debut novel follows the fate of two women over the course of a transformative day in Dublin

I Never Promised You a Rose Garden by Joanne Greenberg review – rock bottom in a ‘rest home’

First published in 1964, this striking account of Greenberg’s years in a psychiatric hospital reveals her boredom and fear – and the ignorance of the era

William Brewer: ‘The Red Arrow isn’t a drug book, but…’

The American author on how his own experience of psychedelic therapy sparked his debut novel, and his poems about the opioid epidemic

Harry Potter and the missing sketches: JK Rowling’s first drawings of boy wizard

Author’s original drawings for her first Hogwarts novel to appear in print – alongside the return of a mysterious wizard