The Elements by John Boyne review – intertwined tales of trauma

Four novellas about damaged people weighed down by the crimes they have suffered draw you efficiently in, but the cumulative effect is numbing

Trent Dalton, Bri Lee and Melissa Leong’s ‘raw’ memoir: the best Australian books out in October

Each month Guardian Australia editors and critics pick the upcoming titles they have devoured – or can’t wait to get their hands on

Gravity Let Me Go by Trent Dalton review – ocker crime caper plagued by more than a beleaguered ballsack

The bestseller’s fourth novel could have tackled timely questions about true crime – but instead it offers a bleakly retrograde fable about being a good bloke

One of Us by Elizabeth Day review – the inner lives of Tory MPs

Driven by a whodunnit-ish plot, this state-of-the-nation sequel to The Party features a family at the centre of British political life

The 4thWrite short story prize winner — a British Museum statue that belongs to Sri Lanka

Read The Original Is Not Here by Piyumi Kapugeekiyana, this year’s winner of the Guardian and publisher 4th Estate’s award for unpublished writers of colour

Debut author Colwill Brown wins BBC short story award for ‘heartbreaking’ tale – read an extract here

Brown’s story of a teenage life ‘critically damaged in a moment’ was the ‘unanimous’ pick for the £15,000 prize

Shadow Ticket by Thomas Pynchon review – his first novel in 12 years tunes into rising fascism in the US

The 88-year-old’s jaunty whodunnit, set during the prohibition era, features clowns, Nazis and a missing cheese heiress

Prime Minister’s Literary awards 2025: Michelle de Kretser wins $80,000 for Theory & Practice

The author used her acceptance speech to call out the Australian government’s response to the war in Gaza, in a ceremony marked by political commentary

Half Light by Mahesh Rao review – a tale of forbidden love in India

A love affair between two men in Darjeeling comes to a violent end in this unfocused tale of heartbreak, secrecy – and the separate lives they return to in Mumbai

Amity by Nathan Harris review – perceptive portrait of slavery’s aftermath

This follow-up to the Booker-listed The Sweetness of Water charts the perilous journeys of a brother and sister in the Reconstruction era, from the deep south to Mexico

A friend’s advice to cut my tortured prose unlocked my career as a novelist

What he said was simple, but it achieved a kind of sorcery. For the first time, my dream of becoming a writer seemed possible, says novelist Andrew Martin

The Guardian view on the 2025 Booker prize: bringing posh bingo to the BookTok generation

Editorial: With this year’s shortlist announced live to the public, Britain’s most prestigious literary award is finding ways to engage new audiences

‘A cottage of one’s own’: Newly unearthed Virginia Woolf stories to be published

A chance discovery at a country house revealed the three funny – sometimes surreal – interlinked tales, written almost a decade before Woolf’s first book was published

Cannon by Lee Lai review – a meditative graphic novel laced with horror and humour

The author of Stone Fruit returns with the story of a young queer Chinese woman struggling to express her emotions and be heard

My Name Is Emilia del Valle by Isabel Allende audiobook review – portrait of a fiercely independent young woman

Sent from San Francisco to report on the war in late-19th century Chile, a young writer embarks on a journey of self-discovery in this tale of love, loss and liberation