Books
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Much-loved retailer boasting ‘18 miles of books’ says city’s plans to legally recognise its status would entail expenses that might kill the business -
Following EU directive that allows governments to waive duty on digital publications, calls grow for the UK to end ‘illogical and unfair’ levy
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Exhibition will be largest on the comic books and graphic novels ever held outside Japan -
Correspondence from 1907 sees the 19-year-old poet advising college friend that ‘I am sorry you have placed me on a pedestal’ -
A writer who has swapped city life for sheep farming chooses reading attuned to the year’s cycles, from Rachel Cusk to Marcel Proust
Best books of 2018
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From Brexit satires to time-travelling murder mysteries and a former first lady’s wry observations on life in the White House, our critics pick the best novels, poetry, sports and children’s books of the year
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Tweedy recalls his musical obsessions, and opens up slowly about his drug addiction and begging to be institutionalised -
Bossy fridges are just the start. This is an ambitious study of how all aspects of human life are being transformed by tech -
This sparkling memoir, written with the Lebanese novelist Selim Nassib, brings the Gaza Strip to life, as a place of suffering but also of magic
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Jail-breaker and folk hero Jack Sheppard gets a postmodern makeover, in a zingy romp that is also a hard-won account of how it feels to change gender
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Murders in the art world, more villainy from Villanelle and mystery in frozen Montreal -
These 12 interlinked tales of passengers on a plane portray humanity at its most desperate
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An essential collection of prose poems from across the globe, by old masters and new, reveals the form’s astonishing range -
Jailed novelist Ahmet Altan is ‘living what he wrote’ in this tale of repression set in Ottoman Turkey -
Fear stalks the veteran writer’s 46th novel – a disturbing love story set in a totalitarian US
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Tom Gates writer and illustrator Liz Pichon enjoys drama in the jungle, Milligan’s silly verse and The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole -
A picture book dedicated to English’s strangest quirks has made the New York Times bestseller list with the publisher scrambling to reprint. How did the rapper behind it dream it up? -
A journey into the afterlife, a Doctor Who adventure, a boy in a blizzard, a cicada’s escape and more
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This week, it’s Claire’s birthday so she’s meeting with two of her favourite authors: crime author Paretsky and Call Me By Your Name writer Aciman -
Elizabeth Uviebinené and Yomi Adegoke are the co-authors of Slay in Your Lane: the Black Girl Bible. They talk to the Guardian's Iman Amrani about their experiences as black British women and why they wrote the book
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As her second novel, Normal People, is named book of the year, the 27-year-old Irish literary sensation talks about sudden fame, and why her characters don’t fit into contemporary patterns of sexual politics
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The Booker-winning novelist on how disgust for his national sport fuelled his novel Selection Day and why he’ll always love Somerset Maugham -
The US author behind Bored to Death and You Were Never Really Here on roaming New York sex shops and why he took his family for counselling before they read his book -
The American novelist on female power, watching The Wife go from page to screen – and the politics of book design
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This huge novel might be more of a hike in the woods than a walk in the park – but a reader has promised that it ‘will change the way you see the world’ -
Your space to discuss the books you are reading and what you think of them
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What to read
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The author on discovering Carter’s fairytales as a teenager, enjoying Proust, and her introduction to kinky historical fiction -
Tom Gates writer and illustrator Liz Pichon enjoys drama in the jungle, Milligan’s silly verse and The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole
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You may have missed
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Our favourite authors on the most outstanding books they read this year
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Have couples in their 30s sold out, choosing monogamy over sexual experimentation – and can artists and writers suggest a different way? -
When it was published in 1984 Staying Power vividly captured the struggle for black British identity. Nearly 35 years on it still has lessons to teach -
Early feminist science fiction, the last man on Earth and the memoir of a highly intelligent cat ... among the 1,200 titles in the Penguin Classics series are these forgotten masterpieces
Alba amicorum The original Facebook for Renaissance teens?