Damon Galgut is ‘all the rage’ favourite to win 2021 Booker prize

Bookmakers place South African novelist at 2/1 to take Wednesday’s award with his novel The Promise, closely followed by Richard Powers’s Bewilderment

The best recent thrillers – review roundup

Hillary Clinton makes her debut with a tightly plotted tale of political intrigue, plus new work by Julia Dahl and astronaut Chris Hadfield

Treacle Walker by Alan Garner review – the book of a lifetime

Myth meets modern science in a late masterwork brimming with ideas and imagination

In brief: The Secret Royals; Learwife; D: A Tale of Two Worlds – review

A gripping history of the monarchy’s relationship with the security services, a startling reinvention of Shakespeare, and a rich Dickens-inspired fantasy

Blue Skinned Gods by SJ Sindu review – a moving tale of the allure of superstition

This simply told story of a boy exploited by his father in an Indian ashram conceals a rich emotional register

Second-Class Citizen by Buchi Emecheta review – fresh and timeless

This fine 1974 novel, about a Nigerian woman’s struggle to make a life in London, gets its due at last

Keisha the Sket by Jade LB review – ‘the literary version of the Black nod’

A viral sensation in the early 00s and now in print, this raw, groundbreaking tale of a teenager’s sex life revels in the language of Black Londoners

Halloween shows us you can’t keep a good spook down. And nor should you

The ghost story is enjoying a revival. No wonder – we’re hardly short of repressed fears to turn into fiction

Treacle Walker by Alan Garner review – a phenomenal late fable

A convalescent young boy is visited by a mythical wanderer in a deeply evocative exploration of storytelling and time

The best recent translated fiction – review roundup

Prizewinning short stories from Denmark; plague in Russia; a French bestseller; and a mid-century classic of hedonistic wanderers

Chapter and curse: is the horror novel entering a golden age?

The writers responsible for today’s vengeful spirits, talking cats and haunted escape rooms discuss the genre’s startling rebound

Sarah Moss: ‘The rhetoric during lockdown was terrifying’

The British author on isolation, community and writing a novel set during the coronavirus pandemic

Greek Myths: A New Retelling by Charlotte Higgins review – gloriously interwoven tales

The classical stories of eight weaving women are depicted on their looms’ warp and weft in this thoughtful, dazzlingly illustrated collection

7½ by Christos Tsiolkas review – sumptuous but unsettling autofiction that eschews the political

Responding to rolling catastrophes, the Australian author turns inwards, with a celebration of eroticism and beauty that occasionally undermines itself

Life Without Children by Roddy Doyle review – stories about lockdown and loss

Tender and humorous tales explore our need for connections with others in a world made strange by Covid