Communion by Jon Doyle review – a charged debut about sin and solace

A man who meant to be a priest is faced with a moral crossroads in this ambitious and affecting first novel

All Them Dogs by Djamel White review – murderous desires in the badlands of Dublin

Sparks fly in this homoerotic dance of desire and betrayal, from a powerful new voice in Irish literature

My Year in Paris With Gertrude Stein by Deborah Levy review – wonderfully entertaining

Biography mingles with fiction as Levy explores the avant-garde writer through the story of three female friends in Paris

Ghost-Eye by Amitav Ghosh review – a climate-crisis novel let down by its prose

A reincarnation mystery drives this exploration of spiritual interconnectedness in a globalised world

Too hot to handle? Why it’s time for straight male authors to rediscover sex

It’s a high-wire act and the risk of an embarrassing failure can weigh heavily – but that’s no reason to avoid writing about sex, argues Black Bag author Luke Kennard

From Peepo! to Middlemarch: 25 books to read before you turn 25

An unmissable book for every year of your early life – with recommendations from Jacqueline Wilson, Michael Rosen, Katherine Rundell and more

The Guardian view on dystopias for our times: the American nightmare

Editorial: Margaret Atwood’s The Testaments and the Oscar-winning film One Battle After Another are grim parables of today. But they are not without hope

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

Loss Protocol by Paul McAuley; Night Babies by Lucie McKnight Hardy; Honeysuckle by Bar Fridman-Tell; Japanese Gothic by Kylie Lee Baker

Go Gentle by Maria Semple review – a joyfully clever New York romcom

A Stoic philosopher navigates midlife in this madcap comedy from the author of Where’d You Go, Bernadette

Circle of Wonders by Kathryn Heyman review – solace and healing in an acid-etched portrait of a dysfunctional family

Heyman’s story about women struggling to put aside their hurts and do right by one another is all about rage, vulnerability, forgiveness and a bit of woo-woo

You Are the Führer’s Unrequited Love by Jean-Noël Orengo review – Hitler, Speer and beyond

This unconventional exploration of Albert Speer’s duplicity during his Nazi years and into his rehabilitation is a masterful forewarning of the post-truth era

Rebecca Hall obituary

Other lives: Writer, campaigner and a determined advocate for animals

Two for two? Stella prize winner Evelyn Araluen nominated again for second poetry collection

The Rot is nominated for the $60,000 prize for Australian women and non-binary writers, alongside books by Geraldine Brooks and Miranda Darling

My Lover, the Rabbi by Wayne Koestenbaum review – as fierce and strange as anything you’ll read this year

With echoes of Balzac and Proust, this tale of obsessive love evokes the dangers and delights of forbidden desire

Upward Bound by Woody Brown review – extraordinary debut from a non-speaking autistic author

This garrulous, charming story of a young man stuck in a daycare centre for disabled adults offers a vital insider’s perspective