Fiction
The Hive: 'The most hyped release in fiction this spring' which has kick-started the school gates mini-genre
We’ve had it up to here with the wizards-and-magic fiction genre. Ditto the romantic-vampires-and-werewolves one.
Guardian children's books podcast: Michael Rosen follows Emil to Berlin
Michael Rosen goes to Berlin to follow the trail of one of his favourite children's books, Emil and the Detectives. He is giving the book pride of place for a City Read at the Brighton Festival. Michael Rosen Kate Connolly Tim Maby
The Write Stuff: Mark Twain
With guest panellists John O'Farrell and Jane Thynne. Author of the Week is Mark Twain.
Kate Clanchy: Scot free among the English
Unlike Kate Clanchy, you may not remember the summer of 1989 as being particularly stifling. Maybe you need to have Celtic skin for that. You might, however, remember the enormous cellphones, the big hair and Lloyd Cole and the Commotions.
We're Flying, By Peter Stamm. Granta,
Here is a double treat for aficionados of Peter Stamm's small canvases of precision as he maps the imprecision of human emotion. Two collections of short stories are published together in Michael Hofmann's taut translations. Stamm's mood pictures...
Cities Are Good For You: the Genius of the Metropolis, by Leo Hollis, review
Can urban living be good for us? Or would it be more inspiring if it wasn't, asks Jonathan Glancey.
The Hope Factory by Lavanya Sankaran - review
There are strong echoes of Dickens in this vibrant portrait of ambition and struggle in Bangalore Anand and Kamala are both dreaming big. He's the hardworking boss of a car factory in Bangalore with his eye on a lucrative Japanese deal; she's his...
The Trundlers: Underrate Them at Your Peril... By Harry Pearson
Cricket's quickies and spinners tend to get far more attention than the medium-pace men, but the pantheon of seamers, swingers and off-stump naggers celebrated here by Harry Pearson reminds us what an integral part of the game bowlers operating largely...
Review: And the Mountains Echoed, By Khaled Hosseini
The Afghan-American Khaled Hosseini's career as a novelist has not been prolific - this is only his third book in the course of 10 years - but he has made up for it in impact: sales for the first two, The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns ,...
This House is Haunted, by John Boyne - review
A Victorian governess confronts ghosts as she tries to come to terms with her father's death in a wonderfully creepy novel It is 1867, London, and Charles Dickens is giving a reading near the house of 21-year-old Eliza Caine and her ailing father. As...