The posthumous memoir Nobody’s Girl cuts through the tabloid stories about Jeffrey Epstein and Prince Andrew to reveal the stark reality of a lifetime of abuse
Cashing in on Harper Lee
The Land of Sweet Forever is a cynical, barrel-scraping trawl through the To Kill a Mockingbird author’s slight early works
Tangled up in Bob Dylan
In a quest to discover if Bob Dylan is his father, Sam Sussman’s Boy from the North Country reimagines his late mother’s affair with the musician
Who should pay the debts of slavery?
The Tory historian Nigel Biggar mounts a contradictory defence of empire, while in The Big Payback Lenny Henry and Marcus Ryder make the case for reparations
What to read to understand the body
Three books to illuminate the science, beauty and strangeness of the human anatomy
Giuliano da Empoli: ‘I’m the scribe of a dying civilisation’
The Wizard of the Kremlin author on tech conquistadors, threats to democracy, and his friendship with Emmanuel Macron
The hotel that tells the story of Kabul
Lyse Doucet's finely observed portrait of the Inter-Continental hotel opens a window on to years of upheaval in Afghanistan, from civil war to the return of the Taliban
Boris Becker and Björn Borg: Serving time
For the two tennis champions, retirement brought battles with drugs, adultery and prison. But only one man makes a triumphant story of his struggle
Bora Chung’s ghosts of the present
The South Korean author's The Midnight Timetable is a supernatural story collection fit for the modern age
Halloween books for kids to sink their teeth into
Vampires called Buffy and Bella, a haunted house, and a game of hide-and-seek feature among a spooky seasonal feast
Evan Dando’s chaotic, narcotic life
The Lemonheads frontman’s riveting memoir Rumours of My Demise reveals the reality of addiction and fame
Claire-Louise Bennett: ‘Mystery is an essential part of loving someone’
The Big Kiss, Bye-Bye novelist on the challenges of capturing romantic relationships and the appeal of the gothic
László Krasznahorkai’s European nightmares
The Hungarian novelist’s political dystopias bear the unmistakable imprint of his country’s communist past
How the World Cup shaped football’s gilded age
Books by Jonathan Wilson and Simon Kuper trace the tournament’s history through corruption, controversies and the fierce competition to host the lucrative game
What to read to understand espionage
Three essential books on spies and their secret world
The making of Tennyson’s radical mind
Richard Holmes’s The Boundless Deep shakes off the poet’s fusty image to reveal a young man grappling with the doubts of his age
How the west was stolen
The exploits of Calamity Jane and Wild Bill became wild west myth, as Peter Cozzens’s history of Deadwood shows. But behind them lay the venal, illegal settlement of Native American land
Patricia Lockwood’s diary of a madwoman
Will There Ever Be Another You, the novelist’s absurdist dispatch from Covid land, is a wild and singular pleasure
What to read to understand Wall Street
Three books that explain the ambitions and fears that power America’s financial world
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