The merry month of May
Quiz: With the promise of sun on the way, test your knowledge of literature's hymns to the month's traditional pleasures
Land grabbers: Africa’s hidden revolution
Vast swaths of Africa are being bought up by oligarchs, sheikhs and agribusiness corporations. But, as this extract from The Land Grabbers explains, centuries of history are being destroyedOmot Ochan was sitting in a remnant of forest on an old waterbu...
Ruby Redfort – Look Into My Eyes by Lauren Child – review
'It's not perfect, in fact there are a lot of painstakingly cliché bits but overall it is one fabulous story!'Wowsers. Yeah, sounds near enough something Ruby Redfort would say…Ruby Redfort…what a character! I tell you, Lauren Child has done it ag...
Operation Diamond: can you crack the code?
Helen Moss, author of the Adventure Island series of books, is kicking off a competition, Operation Diamond, here on the Guardian children's books site. She explains how a real life treasure trove inspired the mystery behind the first book in the seri...
Heist of the century: Wall Street’s role in the financial crisis
Wall Street bankers could have averted the global financial crisis, so why didn't they? In this exclusive extract from his book Inside Job, Charles Ferguson argues that they should be prosecutedBernard L Madoff ran the biggest Ponzi scheme in history, ...
Migraines: they are all in the head
They start with a spinning black penny, retch-inducing smells, impaired thought and speech. But migraines bring odd pleasures with their painThe first time it happened I was in bed with a book, aged maybe 10. And I remember going over the same lin...
The Pirates Next Door by Jonny Duddle – review
'A brilliant, funny and entertaining book about a pirates life'If I'm honest I was slightly unsure of this book, as Keeley has never shown an interest in pirates, but when I showed it to her she seemed excited by the front cover.As soon as we started t...
Little Dogs – review
Patti Pavilion, SwanseaThere's a lovely reading on YouTube of Dylan Thomas's short story Just Like Little Dogs. The text unfurls on the screen as the voice of – I think – Anthony Hopkins speaks the words. If you haven't come across it yet, it's wor...
In the Making by GF Green – review
First published in the early 1950s, Green's story of developing adolescent sexuality remains a brave work of fictionSet partly in an upper-middle-class English home and partly in a boarding school, GF Green's novel describes the early youth and adolesc...
Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn – review
This dark, disturbing story of a wife's sudden disappearance is a contender for thriller of the yearOliver and Barbara, the toxic married couple from The Wars of the Roses, have nothing on Nick and Amy Dunne, the co-narrators of Gillian Flynn's dazzlin...
Tom Phillips and A Humument: how a novel became an oracle
New print and digital editions of the painter Tom Phillips's extraordinary work mark the artist's 75th birthdayThursday marks the 75th birthday of the artist Tom Phillips and much celebration is in order. He is best known for his ongoing project A Humu...
John Donne, priest and poet, part 1: love, conscience and martyrdom | Roz Kaveney