The Road by Christopher Hadley review: an early contender for the year’s best history book
Hadley's immersive account uncovers an ancient Roman thoroughfare – and argues magnificently for a different way of writing about the past
Hadley's immersive account uncovers an ancient Roman thoroughfare – and argues magnificently for a different way of writing about the past
The gossipy details are amusing, but at its heart this memoir is a desperately sad tale of a boy who never recovered from his mother's loss
The trend for female characters to be passive and self-sabotaging can make for interesting fiction – but not in this TV writer's novel
Based on interviews with an American horse-trainer, Scanlan's new book captures the rituals of an insular, feverish world
The heroine of Zink's sixth novel may be living a life of Dickensian misfortune, but there's no asking for pity in this energetic romp
Driving across the US with an envelope full of banknotes, the protagonist of Jonathan Dee's novel Sugar Street starts a new life off-grid
Against the backdrop of the Oscar Wilde trial, two Victorian writers defend ‘Greek love’, in a debut novel of rare skill and promise
Neither a beautiful victim nor a hideous stereotype, the gap-toothed Wife of Bath is a woman for our times, says Marion Turner’s biography
Mario Vargas Llosa's The Call of the Tribe explains his conversion from Marxism to liberalism, via the ideas of Adam Smith and Isaiah Berlin
In Hallett's third novel, a cult leader convinces a young follower that her baby is the Antichrist, setting in motion a fast-paced mystery
We'll one day be working, shopping, and dating in virtual worlds, futurist Cathy Hackl argues in her eyebrow-raising book Into the Metaverse
David Howarth's book Adventurers shows how the Company rose from its rough-and-ready origins into a world-conquering power
The Shards, the American Psycho author's first novel in 13 years, revisits the scene of his debut Less Than Zero – with diminishing returns
Claire Harman's biography celebrates a brilliant modernist writer who died 100 years ago this month, aged just 34
Artorius, a new book by Linda A Malcor and John Matthews, makes some eyebrow-raising claims about the mythical English king
Death and violence arrive as sudden shocks in an atmospheric early work by the Hiroshima Mon Amour writer
Allan Kozinn and Adrian Sinclair's The McCartney Legacy, Vol 1, 1969-1973, hints at the darker depths behind Macca's smiley stage persona
In this wickedly funny novel, a man decides he can help women’s struggle – by trying to make their lives worse
Ludwig Bemelman's To the One I Love Best celebrates a woman who turned interior design upside down (when she wasn't standing on her head)
Kate Andersen Brower’s new biography of the film star offers incidental gossip, but too often ignores her films