TS Eliot’s wife Vivienne died in an asylum. Steven Carroll decided to free her

Over four novels, the award-winning Australian author has picked apart Eliot and his relationships with women – but felt moved to give the poet’s first wife a happier end

In brief: Constable: A Portrait; Wivenhoe; The Enemy Within – reviews

A revisionist biography of the English landscape painter; a murder mystery in Essex; and an inventive counterfactual detective story

Father May Be an Elephant, and Mother Only a Small Basket, But… by Gogu Shyamala – review

These rich and playful stories by a member of India’s lowest caste capture a childhood full of fun and games – and discrimination

Homesickness by Colin Barrett; Dance Move by Wendy Erskine – reviews

Colin Barrett deftly captures alarming violence and the richness of family saga, while Wendy Erskine frequently leaves the reader wrongfooted

Charlotte Philby: ‘We visited Kim in Moscow’

The spy novelist, whose latest book tells the story of her grandfather Kim Philby and the Soviet agent Edith Tudor-Hart, talks about the perils of writing about family, and why female spies get overlooked

Booker winner Ben Okri rewrites published novel to drive home message on slavery

The author tells why he spent five years on a new draft of his 2008 novel Starbook to give more emphasis to one of its key themes

NoViolet Bulawayo: ‘I’m encouraged by this new generation that wants better’

The Booker-shortlisted author talks about Zimbabwe after Mugabe - and drawing on Orwell for her brilliant new political satire

Booth by Karen Joy Fowler review – background to an assassination

This family epic about the man who shot Abraham Lincoln spotlights America’s national story and the horrors of slavery

The Guardian view on Middlemarch: a book for grownups

Editorial: George Eliot’s wise, empathetic book speaks to us eloquently of our own times

The best recent crime and thrillers – review roundup

Run Rose Run by Dolly Parton and James Patterson; Reputation by Sarah Vaughan; Lady Joker by Kaoru Takamura; Mouth to Mouth by Antoine Wilson; Hot Water by Christopher Fowler

The Power of the Dog by Thomas Savage audiobook review – quietly subversive

Sparks fly between rancher brothers in this audiobook version of the 1967 novel, read by Chad Michael Collins

When I Sing, Mountains Dance by Irene Solà review – the mushroom’s tale

Animals, ghosts, humans, mountains and clouds share the narrative in this playful, deeply felt portrait of Catalonia and its people

Hovering by Rhett Davis review – a very online climate collapse novel

Davis’s debut skilfully weaves the chaos of life online into a story about a dissolving city and a family on the edge – but is it all a bit too neat?

The Exhibitionist by Charlotte Mendelson review – the artist’s ego

A devastating, blackly comic portrait of middle-class dysfunction and a family with a monster at its centre

Vladimir Putin knows the power of stories. With a better one, we can beat him

I faced Russia’s wrath for my TV series, Occupied. The Kremlin knows art can tell the truth about war – and it fears that, says crime writer Jo Nesbø