Selling romance and erotica books during my breakup taught me about heartbreak

I didn’t just think a happily ever after was far-fetched – it would have been hard to convince me of a happily ever occurring again

‘A certain pleasant darkness’: what makes a good fictional sex scene?

The novelist Niamh Campbell on why describing intimacy is so difficult and how creative writing about sexuality is changing. Plus, she picks 10 of her favourite examples

Run and Hide by Pankaj Mishra review – new India, old ideas

An admirable attempt to tackle class, bourgeois greed and nationalism is undone by cartoon characters and a fictional landscape that lacks credibility

Pure Colour by Sheila Heti review – a curious dance with death

The Canadian novelist’s tussle with life’s big binaries finally reaches to be or not to be, in a surreal, witty book that works an impressive spectrum of meaning and feeling

A Terrible Kindness by Jo Browning Wroe review – inside the hidden world of embalming

The 1966 Aberfan disaster triggers flashbacks a young man has tried to suppress in a thoughtful debut novel that offsets tragedy with uplift

Violets by Alex Hyde review – a daring debut

Two women named Violet negotiate loss, secrets and birth during the second world war in this intensely inventive novel

Francis Spufford: ‘I felt that to call myself a writer would be a boast’

The author of Light Perpetual on a childhood spent hiding in books, dropping a V2 on a fictional London borough and giving up church politics

On my radar: Caleb Azumah Nelson’s cultural highlights

The Costa first novel award winner on ​Dave, the jazz photography of Roy DeCarava, ​and his restaurant obsession

The Great Gapsby? How modern editions of classics lost the plot

F Scott Fitzgerald’s masterpiece is the latest title to appear in a cheap modern version after copyright expires

Sheila Heti: ‘Books by women still get treated differently from those by men’

After her controversial novel about motherhood, the Canadian author has turned the spotlight on her father. She talks about grief, honesty – and her decision not to have children

The Slowworm’s Song by Andrew Miller review – failure and redemption

An alcoholic former soldier is tormented by his role in the Troubles in this beautifully written apologia for our common frailty

The best recent science fiction, fantasy and horror – reviews roundup

The This by Adam Roberts; All the White Spaces by Ally Wilkes; The Embroidered Book by Kate Heartfield; The Leviathan by Rosie Andrews; Echo by Thomas Olde Heuvelt; and They by Kay Dick

The Grass Hotel by Craig Sherborne review – immersive and poetic portrait of dementia

Sherborne’s latest work is comprised of a mother’s bitter and turbulent internal monologue to her son, as her mind – and her language – collapses

Anonymous Sex review – a teasing game of guess-the-author

Each erotic short story was written by a well-known writer – but which one? This coy anthology wants things both ways

Mercia’s Take by Daniel Wiles review – a brilliant debut

The hand-to-mouth life of a 19th-century miner in the Black Country shows the human cost of the industrial revolution