Crux by Gabriel Tallent review – a passionate portrait of teenage climbers

The follow-up to My Absolute Darling, this tale of best friends who dream of a better life features exquisite sports writing and a lovable heroine – but the plotting is unconvincing

White River Crossing by Ian McGuire review – colonial greed drives a doomed hunt for gold

The author of The North Water vividly captures bleak beauty and brutish appetites on an 18th-century expedition into the frozen wilds of Canada

Rebel English Academy by Mohammed Hanif review – a sure-fire Booker contender

This funny and subversive novel reckons with life under martial law in late-70s Pakistan

The best recent translated fiction – review roundup

White Moss by Anna Nerkagi | The Old Fire by Elisa Shua Dusapin | The Roof Beneath Their Feet by Geetanjali Shree | Berlin Shuffle by Ulrich Alexander Boschwitz

Susan Choi: ‘For so long I associated Dickens with unbearable Christmas TV specials’

The Booker-shortlisted novelist on the seismic effect of Sigrid Nunez, and wanting to write like Virginia Woolf

Lost Lambs by Madeline Cash review – clever comedy for our conspiracy theory age

This tender satire of a dysfunctional American family’s search for moral guidance is precisely what our times need

The Puma by Daniel Wiles review – a visceral tale of cyclical violence

A father and son move to the Patagonian woods – but intensity wanes when a search for home becomes an obsessive quest for revenge

Glyph by Ali Smith review – bearing witness to the war in Gaza

This second novel in a sharp duology offers a powerful interrogation of language in the age of mechanical mass destruction

A Guardian and a Thief by Megha Majumdar review – survival in a climate-ravaged Kolkata

This moral thriller offers a perceptive account of specifically Indian anxieties

Green Dot author Madeleine Gray: ‘Chosen family is big in the queer community’

Madeleine Gray has followed her hit debut with a sharp take on complicated parenting. She discusses love, sex and famous fans

Children and teens roundup – the best new picture books and novels

Caring canines; daring donuts; a golden monkey; a boy from another planet; a dark take on Little Women and more

May We Feed the King by Rebecca Perry review – a dazzling puzzle-box of a debut

The plight of a reluctant medieval king is glimpsed through scattered pieces of the past, in an ingenious novel that asks how much we can really know about history

Workhorse by Caroline Palmer review – a Devil Wears Prada-style tale of ambition

Dark obsessions drive this debut about the golden era of magazines – but its vile and hilarious heroine is not someone you want to spend so much time with

A Single Man by Christopher Isherwood review – getting through the day

Alex Jennings’s performance hums with buried rage in Christopher Isherwood’s landmark exploration of grief

Vigil by George Saunders review – will a world-wrecking oil tycoon repent?

The ghosts of Lincoln in the Bardo return to confront a dying oil man’s destructive legacy – but this time they feel like a gimmick