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

Far From the Light of Heaven by Tade Thompson; The Cabinet by Un-su Kim; Femlandia by Christina Dalcher; When Things Get Dark edited by Ellen Datlow; The Workshop of Filthy Creation by Richard Gadz

Mary Beard: ‘Virgil was a radical rap artist of the first century BC’

The classics professor and author on being inspired by Mary Douglas and terrified by Beatrix Potter

Burntcoat by Sarah Hall review – love under lockdown

A sculptor considers the meaning of art, sex and disaster, in this masterfully achieved miniature epic set against a deadly virus

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow review – butchered plotting, bloodless horror

A scrambled script and an over-reliance on dry ice leave this version of Sleepy Hollow tired and empty

Wild Abandon by Emily Bitto – a thrilling, irreverent take on the great American road trip

Like the Great Gatsby – but less romantic and more woke – Wild Abandon follows a lonely outsider finding his place in a late-capitalism world

The Making of Incarnation by Tom McCarthy review – tech-industrial sublime

This densely woven novel of cyclegraphs, MI6 agents, special effects and cybernetics is implacable and intermittently tedious, but then isn’t the world, too?

‘I just wanted to write something funny for my friends’: Torrey Peters on Detransition, Baby

Her novel caused a storm when it was longlisted for the Women’s prize, and is one of the most talked-about of the year. She talks to a writer and trans dad about LGBTQ+ families and the ‘Sex and the City problem’

‘Bad art friend’: should fiction writers ever lift stories from other people’s lives?

Great writers have always been inspired by friends and lovers, but a viral article has revived the moral arguments around muses. In the age of the internet, does using someone else’s story feel like a violation?

The Book of Form & Emptiness by Ruth Ozeki review – a Zen chorus

Every object speaks in this tale of a boy coming to terms with loss, which investigates the real and illusory with calm good humour

Breakfast at Tiffany’s at 60: the sharp romcom that grows darker with age

Audrey Hepburn’s star-making turn as Holly Golightly remains as luminous as ever in Blake Edwards’ sweetened yet still bittersweet adaptation of Truman Capote’s novel

National Book Awards 2021: Robert Jones Jr and Lauren Groff among finalists

The winners of the prestigious US awards, in five categories, will be announced in a ceremony in November

Bernardine Evaristo picks black authors for London ‘short story stations’

Author teams up with Canary Wharf to distribute short works by five writers during Black History Month

The best recent thrillers – review roundup

Nicci French and Liane Moriarty keep it in the family, a deadly haunted house game for Halloween and rural Australia has a new cop on the block

Burntcoat by Sarah Hall review – sex on the eve of destruction

A sculptor recalls her fling with a restaurateur as the world succumbs to a deadly virus in Hall’s urgent lockdown tale

In brief: Love & Deception: Philby in Beirut; The Tale of the Tailor and the Three Dead Kings; Ghosts of the West – reviews

A fresh take on the Kim Philby saga, a chilling retelling of a medieval tale and the third of Alec Marsh’s colourful mysteries