Author’s command of this turbulent saga is hugely impressive

In his protagonist, there are echoes of the novelist reconciled to the limits of artistic endeavour as a force for change

The Reformation history scholar’s judicious account of missionary endeavour combines academic authority with gripping readability

The author, a son of AA Gill and protege of Anthony Bourdain, balances struggles with addiction with a tender memoir about family

As in Crooks’s debut, Fire Rush, her expression of music here is spellbinding. There is a hypnotic lyricism to her prose that vibrates on its own frequency

Steve Feldstein charts global technological-military rivalry whose implications are not fully understood

Story of an orphaned boy connects the tectonic emotions of adolescence to the stormy tempers of the natural world

Sara Baume reviews novels by Marie Darrieussecq; Joanna Elmy; Clyo Mendoza; Ana Paula Maia; and Ibtisam Azem

A thought-provoking and lively account of scandalous survivalism and the murder trial that followed in 1884

Guy Walters does highly efficient job of reconstructing little-known episode from every side’s perspective

New books from Michael Bracewell, Avigayl Sharp and Ben Pester

Revealing book is the record of an encounter with a life that was important for many around the world

Cassandra Neyenesch’s novel is so funny and brutal it might make you get in a fight with your husband or start looking up roofers

Few novels of the 1970s were prepared to imagine a woman stepping outside the prescribed roles with such uncompromising seriousness

Chapters in Gary Wade’s book study clusters of collections by Heaney, with Station Island the pivot around which the whole turns

The work expands on Rankine’s American trilogy to consider a collapsing world beset by genocide and destruction

A debut novel full of heart with places and people that feel alive

The anthology is a radical account of how Irish literature, and Ireland itself, was changed

Ruskovich grapples with truth, memory, love, loneliness, grief and the fragility of long-held beliefs

Stefano Bizzotto adds emotional heft to tales previously told with judicious selections of archival writings and interviews

The author, a London Times reporter, imagines a chilling future for the UK under a Farage premiership

There is plenty of gore and retribution in new works by Joanna Wallace, K T Nguyen, Robert J Harris, Thao Thai and Akane Araki

Three great reads from Courtney Maum, Jayne Anne Phillips and Calla Henkel

Lieberman points out that losing weight is not simply the opposite process of gaining weight

Jeyamohan’s humanist story depicts how imperial wealth depended on invisible suffering during the British Raj

Thomas seeks to repair the broken king rather than to unking the broken world

Italian author’s Premio Strega winner examines what it means to leave parents behind

Thirty years on, what is clear from The Crossroads Conference 1996 is how important the occasion was

‘We can have billionaires or we can have democracy. We cannot have both,’ writes Gil Durán in his stunning new work

Societal reactions don’t always arrive when you expect them to

There are faint echoes of Donna Tartt’s The Secret History but Will Maclean expands his book into stranger territory

Buy this for the cat-obsessed youth in your life immediately

A howl of rage against the denial of freedoms, and a call for resistance

Book is essentially a 400-page charge sheet of blunders and scandals that resulted from identity crisis in organisation

Dogs on Dates, by Luke Healy; The Woodchipper, by Joe Ollman; Fault Lines, by Rob Cullen; Dear Historian, by Joff Winterheart; and Children of Light, by Jean Pleyers

Daring debut novel explores themes around publishing, identity and bland writing trends

Prolific author Elle Kennedy has published her first YA novel, Thornbird, a satisfyingly twisty and swoony mystery tale

As a foster kid who became a princess, the screen siren who would now be 100 is the embodiment of the American dream

Rather than tackle all of Morris’s books, author summarises just one-third of total collection

Riley is one of our clearest thinkers

Beckett’s youthful study illuminates the intellectual development of one of Ireland’s most formidable literary talents

Timely collection covers a range of topics from gothic fiction to poetry and women of the diaspora

Authors tactfully focus on Plath’s vital hard-won poems, while their introduction affirms how she ‘taught readers to love poetry’

New books by Tony Shaw, Alan McDougall, William Kennedy and Jim Thompson

Author notes, for example, that the superrich in France face an effective tax rate half that of the average French person

Final novel in two-time Pulitzer winner’s Harlem Trilogy traces evolution of its ageing crook characters and of New York itself

Washington prepared to interfere in European politics to influence policy towards Middle East and US tech interests

A nuanced narrative that exposes the tragic heritage novelist and protagonist share as Palestinians

Author expresses an unusual and emotive quality in this novel – pure, unabashed feeling

Collections by Stephen de Búrca, Nithy Kasa, Eamon Grennan and Rita Ann Higgins reviewed