Top 10 books about long-distance relationships

The pleasures and perils of sustaining human connection while physically separated have inspired writers from Sally Rooney to Vladimir Nabokov

The Man Who Died Twice By Richard Osman review – relax and enjoy

The Thursday Murder Club foursome return in a comic crime sequel alert to the realities of old age

The best recent thrillers – review roundup

This month’s crop of crime and suspense fiction includes an engaging tale of government secrets by Robert Peston and a nail-biting new series from Val McDermid

In Moonland by Miles Allinson review – a dreamlike requiem for 70s utopianism

The Melbourne writer’s second novel traces three generations with a rolling, bittersweet sense of doom

‘An image came into my head of two little boys sitting on either side of a fence’ – John Boyne on The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas

The novelist on how it took him two days, writing through the nights, to complete a first draft of his famous Holocaust novel for younger readers, and how he remains ‘immensely proud’ of it

Tenderness by Alison MacLeod review – polite society’s rude awakening

Lady Chatterley’s Lover and US politics collide in an enjoyable widescreen novel comprising real and fictional characters over half a century

Harlem Shuffle by Colson Whitehead review – a zinging wiseguy noir thriller

A small-time crook in 1960s Harlem becomes embroiled in a heist as the double Pulitzer prize-winner confounds expectations once more

Mrs March by Virginia Feito review – super woman’s world unravels

An author’s wife sinks into paranoid fantasy after a social slight in an accomplished comedy-horror too arch for its own good

Michael Kohlhaas by Heinrich von Kleist review – a good man turned murderer

This 19th-century tale of injustice at the hands of authority and the chaotic consequences of revenge speaks to eternal truths

Beautiful World, Where Are You by Sally Rooney review – author of her own discontent

Despite the dazzling dialogue and familiar delights, Rooney’s story of a young prize-winning writer is her most demanding book to date

Damon Galgut: ‘The Booker pulls a nasty little trick on you’

The South African novelist on making a pilgrimage to Cormac McCarthy’s home, his youth in apartheid-era Pretoria and being shortlisted twice for the Booker prize

Richard Osman: ‘No one’s born a crime writer. I write crime because I read it’

The Pointless presenter’s debut crime caper sold millions, with movie rights snapped up by Steven Spielberg. Richard Osman talks to Alex Clark about growing up poor, meeting his estranged father and why he wrote his first book in secret

Legends of the fall: the 50 biggest books of autumn 2021

From new novels by Sally Rooney and Colson Whitehead to Michel Barnier’s take on Brexit, Bernardine Evaristo’s manifesto and diaries from David Sedaris – all the releases to look out for

Susanna Clarke’s Piranesi favourite to win Women’s prize for fiction

Bookmaker Coral makes Clarke’s second novel 5/2 favourite to take £30,000 award, followed by Brit Bennett’s The Vanishing Half

Rizzio by Denise Mina review – the men who took aim at Mary Stuart

The crime writer’s daring, hard-boiled take on the brutal murder of Mary, Queen of Scots’ private secretary