The best recent crime and thrillers – review roundup
The Shadows of Men by Abir Mukherjee; Dolphin Junction by Mick Herron; Dog Park by Sofi Oksanen; The Russian Doll by Marina Palmer; and The Quiet People by Paul Cleave
Chouette by Claire Oshetsky review – a feminist fairytale explores mother-love
Full of dark humour, this enthralling debut furiously eviscerates society’s need for normality
Lily by Rose Tremain review – Foundling Hospital melodrama
There are wolves, kindly constables and suffering aplenty in this ‘tale of revenge’ set in Victorian London
Top 10 novels and stories of the 1970s
In a decade when feminism brought a new weight to the treatment and status of women in fiction, the best male writers began to take domestic life seriously
Harsh Times by Mario Vargas Llosa review – CIA secrets and breathtaking lies
The Nobel laureate’s tale of a coup in 1950s Guatemala speaks to our times
Costa prize 2021 shortlists highlight climate anxiety
Jessie Greengrass’s novel The High House, set in a flood-devastated Suffolk was one of several of the nominees to focus on global heating, said judges
The long and short-form of it: podcasts that will teach you how to write
Whether you are plotting, drafting, staring at a blank page, or keen to get tips from the pros … if you want to write, there’s a podcast for that
Outlander author Diana Gabaldon: ‘I needed Scotsmen because of the kilt factor’
She secretly wrote the first of her time-travelling novels while her husband slept. Now she’s published the ninth in the smash hit series. She talks explosive sex scenes – and where George RR Martin went wrong
Case Study by Graeme Macrae Burnet review – mind games as an artform
The fictional biography of a psychoanalyst and his pseudo-patient’s notebooks are expertly intercut in this tightly knit, hugely enjoyable mystery
In brief: Allegorizings; Chouette; Invisible Ink – reviews
Jan Morris conjures a remarkable life in her posthumous essay collection, Claire Oshetsky explores an unusual maternal love, and Patrick Modiano unravels a tantalising mystery
Look for Me and I’ll Be Gone by John Edgar Wideman review – inimitable storytelling
Fiction and real-life tragedy collide in the American’s inventive, melancholic stories addressing criminal justice and the concept of time
The Books of Jacob by Olga Tokarczuk review – a magical mystic tour
The Nobel prize winner’s intriguing account of Jacob Frank, an 18th-century Jewish religious thinker hailed as the Messiah
Diaries and Notebooks by Patricia Highsmith review – sex, booze and cold-blooded murders
These philosophical, sometimes grumpy journals, unearthed after the doyenne of suspense fiction’s death, shine a light on her dual identities, the contempt she felt for other people and her erotic misadventures
The Appeal writer Janice Hallett: ‘I wrote about bubble bath for 15 years’
The author of the bestselling whodunnit on co-writing a 2011 film about a pandemic, her love of suspense, and what Dickens has in common with Jackie Collins
What connects Drive My Car to Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood?
From Haruki Murakami to Paul Thomas Anderson via The Big Sleep, Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s latest film inspires a trip down the rabbit hole