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...
Death of Kings by Bernard Cornwell – review
The sixth of Bernard Cornwell's Saxon series taps into a particular kind of male fantasyThis book, the sixth in Bernard Cornwell's bestselling Saxon Stories series, is set during and immediately after the death of King Alfred the Great as the Saxo...
Fred Pearce on land grabbing
The science and environment author discusses a growing global threat• Read an extract from Fred Pearce's new book The Land GrabbersWhat inspired you to write The Land Grabbers?Over the last few years, I became aware of this hidden revolution taking p...
‘The Booker can drive people mad’
When Alan Hollinghurst's celebrated The Stranger's Child was omitted from the literary prize's shortlist, many questioned the award's credibility. Twelve months on, Britain's great stylist breaks his silence on the issue – and on what turns young peo...
Hitler and the Nazi Cult of Celebrity by Michael Munn
A ludicrous study of Hitler recasts the Führer as a precursor of Simon CowellMichael Munn has spent his life – at least as he implausibly tells it – schmoozing with the beautiful and the damned. He bonded with Steve McQueen while riding pillion on...
Debut author: Ros Barber
The poet's first novel brings to life the theory that Christopher Marlowe survived and penned Shakespeare's worksA theory dismissed in a documentary as the stuff of fiction sparked 48-year-old Ros Barber's engrossing first novel, The Marlowe Papers (Sc...
On the Front Line: The Collected Journalism of Marie Colvin 1986-2012 – review
The powerful reportage of a friend and rival is greater than the sum of its partsTo read a great newspaper reporter's work in a collected volume is entirely different from the cumulative effect of the articles over time. One gets a sense – perhaps a ...
The Man Within My Head by Pico Iyer
Pico Iyer's meditation on the great influences of his life is a book that deserves to be lovedThe last acknowledgement at the end of Pico Iyer's 10th book is to the man within his head, "to the author who, almost in spite of himself, taught me and so m...
Just Send Me Word by Orlando Figes – review
Drawing on a cache of smuggled love letters, Orlando Figes movingly charts a romance that blossomed in the unlikliest circumstances"Death solves all problems," declared Joseph Stalin, adding with his customary brutality: "No man, no problem." Anyone fo...
Bafta TV special/Abi Morgan: A golden year for television
As the countdown to next week's British Academy Television Awards begins, Abi Morgan, screenwriter of The Hour, Shame and The Iron Lady, reveals why it's been a golden year for televisionMabel is unimpressed. "What are you doing?" "Writing a piece abou...
Waterstones boss poised to join e-reader battle