books
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Penguin Random House hold 'positive' meeting to resolve union rowFollowing widespread outcry after the publisher announced it was ending its relationship with unions, fresh talks suggest a new agreement is in the offing -
Escapes in literatureFrom Alexandre Dumas to Stephen King and John le Carré, these stories of nerve and endurance are perennially compelling
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Indie publishers pick their books of 2016Small and independent houses share the books they enjoyed and envied this year -
Empire of Booze by Henry JeffreysDid Britain invent lager and champagne? According to this entertaining book, the UK has had a greater influence on alcohol than any other nation
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Rosset by Barney Rosset – a publisher’s fight against censorshipThis memoir of the American publisher of Lady Chatterley’s Lover and Tropic of Cancer is full of landmark literary moments
news
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Colin Thubron and Tom Phillips join Lola Young on 2017 Man Booker juryThe two will join Sarah Hall, Lila Azam Zanganeh and chair Baroness Young to judge the UK’s premier literary prize, to be awarded in October 2017
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What are you reading this week?Your space to discuss the books you are reading and what you think of them
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What were your picks of 2016?Writers from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie to Jeanette Winterson shared their picks over the weekend – but it’s a very good time to be enthusing, so please share yours
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best books of 2016
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The best books you may have missedFrom AJ Lees’s extraordinary memoir Mentored By a Madman to Fiona Melrose’s Midwinter and Julie Myerson’s chiller The Stopped Heart, our critics recommend the reads that slipped under the radar
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Ali Smith, Paul Beatty, Don DeLillo and more...We thumb through a year that saw a US author win the Booker, the death of a short-story master – and the first Brexit novel
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Adam Roberts on his favouritesIn a year in which new and important voices from around the world made themselves heard, Adam Roberts reflects on SF’s ever-expanding universe
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Mark Lawson on his picks of the yearMark Lawson finds murder in the Scottish Highlands, terror in Paris and visions of war at the Vatican
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Margaret Drabble, Jonathan Franzen and more...From Zadie Smith’s Swing Time to horror in the Highlands and a brief history of tomorrow ...
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Best biographies and autobiographiesCocktails with Sartre and dark memories of Gaddafi … Kathryn Hughes explores extraordinary lives
regulars
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100 Best Nonfiction Books of All Time100 Best Nonfiction Books of All TimeThe 100 best nonfiction books: No 47 – Ten Days That Shook the World by John Reed (1919)The American socialist’s romantic account of the Russian revolution is a masterpiece of reportage
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Book of the dayBook of the dayEmpire of Booze by Henry Jeffreys – raising British spiritsDid Britain invent lager and champagne? According to this entertaining book, the UK has had a greater influence on alcohol than any other nation
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The first book interviewThe first book interviewSaleem Haddad: 'I put everything into this novel and it was a relief'Guapa portrays a gay man struggling with shame amid the wreckage of a failed uprising in an unnamed Arab country. The author explains how this ‘fluent and passionate’ debut is and isn’t his own story
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Top 10sTop 10sTop 10 escapes in literatureFrom Alexandre Dumas to Stephen King and John le Carré, these stories of nerve and endurance are perennially compelling
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A Yorkshire Tragedy by Anthony Clavane – sporting decline and fallThe story of how Yorkshire’s postwar glory in rugby league, cricket and football was destroyed by neoliberalism
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Meetings With Remarkable Manuscripts by Christopher de HamelTravelogue meets high scholarship in a hugely enjoyable series of encounters with the west’s greatest manuscript treasures
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Blood and Land: The Story of Native America by JCH KingThe resilience of Native people in the US, Canada and Greenland – as seen at Standing Rock – is a story that has been waiting to be told
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The Descent of Man by Grayson Perry – the masculinity problemIf we ask the right questions and answer them honestly, won’t the whole edifice of patriarchy come tumbling down?
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The Shipwrecked Mind: On Political Reaction by Mark LillaA controversial thinker targets the nostalgia behind our political moment – from Trump to Brexit, Putin to militant Islam
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A Woman Looking at Men Looking at Women by Siri HustvedtThe novelist’s smart essays on science and the arts bridge the gap between the disciplines, inviting us to look at the world anew
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Little Deaths by Emma Flint – murderer or good-time girl?Guilt, loneliness and trial by tabloid are explored in this fascinating debut based on the killing of two children in New York
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A Snow Garden and Other Stories – pictures of lives, broken and wholeRachel Joyce’s compelling excellent explorations of the short story form focus on emotional crisis and regeneration
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Midwinter by Fiona Melrose – grief, pride and familial loveFather and son farmers in Suffolk recall their past life in Zambia – and the events that now haunt them – in this vivid debut
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Severance/Intercourse by Robert Olen Butler – experiments in death and sexButler’s attempts to capture the thoughts of the recently decapitated, and of couples having sex, are formally adventurous but leave you wanting a story
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Tidings: A Christmas Journey by Ruth PadelThis unsentimental poem about a homeless man at Christmas evokes the true festive spirit
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Cousins by Salley VickersIn this scalpel-sharp novel, a dramatic accident leads to three women unearthing a dark family secret
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The best children’s booksFrom tales of migration and crime to wolves, bugs and the difficulty of sharing – Julia Eccleshare’s picks of the year
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The best new picture books and novelsMonochrome magic with Mary Poppins, a swooning YA romance and Winnie-the-Pooh returns
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Picture books for childrenA classic song leaps from the page while a baby bunny throws a monster tantrum… the pick of the titles for younger readers
people
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Beatrix Potter and the beginnings of my need to be a writerThis year’s Erasmus prize winner celebrates the transcendent use of language by Beatrix Potter, Magritte and Shakespeare
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Trump was elected because misogyny is alive and wellThe American author on feminism, the arts-science divide and misogyny in the presidential election
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Saleem Haddad: 'I put everything into this novel and it was a relief'Guapa portrays a gay man struggling with shame amid the wreckage of a failed uprising in an unnamed Arab country. The author explains how this ‘fluent and passionate’ debut is and isn’t his own story
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There is nothing so dangerous to good writing as having too much time'You need the filtration system of being kept from your work.’
A selection of our favourite literary content from around the world
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The Little Library CaféThe Little Library CaféFood in books: Christmas pavlova from Ballet Shoes by Noel StreatfeildDreaming of a hot, Australian Christmas, Kate Young puts together a pomegranate pavlova: a dessert as festive as a traditional English pudding
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Interview with a Bookstore by Literary HubInterview with a Bookstore by Literary HubInterview with a Bookstore: The King's English in Salt Lake CityOpened in 1977 as a space for two aspiring writers to pen their Great American Novels, The King’s English in Utah is now a full-time labour of love, home to knowledgeable booksellers and a children’s room in a treehouse
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pictures, video & audio
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Nadja Spiegelman and Alex WheatleHow life stories play out in memoir and fiction with the authors of family memoir I’m Supposed to Protect You from All This and YA award-winner Crongton Knights
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Margaret Drabble and the Ruby DollsThe challenges of ageing and the dark side of fairy stories examined in a novel, The Dark Flood Rises, and the cabaret Brides of Bluebeard
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Alan Moore talks to Stewart LeeThe comics legend tells the standup comic why his latest project is a small-town novel set in the Midlands, running to 1,280 pages and titled Jerusalem
you may have missed
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A history of booze in booksFrom Brideshead Revisited to James Bond, alcohol plays a key role in fiction. Henry Jeffreys distils the best sozzled scenes – and the worst hangovers
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How officers are making crime payPublishing has witnessed a crimewave this year, with coppers providing a rich stew of corruption, villainy and remorse
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Fewer people will say we live in a post-racist, post-feminist worldThe women’s rights activist plans to keep fighting against injustice beyond age 82 and uplift the ‘new burst of feminist energy’ ready to take on Trump’s presidency
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The nightmare before ChristmasForget seasonal cheer, Dickens’s A Christmas Carol takes greater pleasure in Scrooge’s ghostly visions than in his redemption
Books of defiance Y: The Last Man by Brian K Vaughan and Pia Guerra – a dystopia built by women