The Latest Breaking News on Books

Ex-Wife by Ursula Parrott review – Bridget Jones in the jazz age

Reissued after a century, this lively, funny and harrowing debut follows a divorcee torn between sexual liberation and the compromised ‘safety’ of marriage in the 1920s

The Guardian - UK · Aug 5, 2024

There Are Rivers in the Sky by Elif Shafak review – water, water everywhere

The links between a 19th-century Londoner who escapes poverty and a Yazidi girl born 200 years later are gradually revealed in an absorbing novel that reflects on global inequality

The Guardian - UK · Aug 5, 2024

Earth to Moon by Moon Unit Zappa review – waspish, funny account of life as Frank Zappa’s daughter

This memoir about being fathered by the 70s rock oddball and ‘pagan absurdist’ is an extraordinary tale of survival

The Guardian - UK · Aug 5, 2024

Nathan Thrall: ‘The scale and brutality of the Israeli response in Gaza hasn’t surprised me, no’

The US journalist and author on his Pulitzer prize-winning book about a Palestinian father, the aftermath of 7 October and what it means to be a Jewish critic of Israel

The Guardian - UK · Aug 4, 2024

The Outrun review – ambitious staging of Amy Liptrot’s Orkney addiction memoir

Vicky Featherstone’s directing and Isis Hainsworth’s fine lead turn valiantly blur the wild and the urban to portray the writer’s introspective journey to sobriety

The Guardian - UK · Aug 4, 2024

Heart, Be at Peace by Donal Ryan review – old grudges die hard in rural Ireland

The Irish author’s follow-up to his 2012 novel The Spinning Heart revisits its characters 10 years on in a story notable for its rough-edged poetry

The Guardian - UK · Aug 4, 2024

‘She did not suffer a fool or hypocrite and loved a good laugh’: novelist Edna O’Brien

An email correspondence about Bosnian Serb war criminal Radovan Karadžić led to Ed Vulliamy’s unexpected bond with the Irish author, who died last week aged 93

The Guardian - UK · Aug 4, 2024

‘The obnoxious one’: new book by Trump’s nephew exposes a sordid past

Fred Trump III’s portrayal of the Queens-born former president shows him as volatile, uncaring and racist

The Guardian - US · Aug 4, 2024

The Gangs of New York review – politics and punch-ups in the land of opportunity

The streets could be meaner in this new stage adaptation, which is at its best when exploring the challenges of the immigrant experience

The Guardian - UK · Aug 4, 2024

Almost all nursery rhymes are utter doggerel and I loathe them, sadly my daughter doesn’t

My daughter must have nursery rhymes… It is one of her gravest crimes

The Guardian - UK · Aug 4, 2024