Book

The rise of Queer Studies and Black Lives Matter has led to renewed interest in Baldwin — who was exasperated in life with being categorized by color or as ‘gay’

Max Boot’s contention that Reagan was a lightweight pragmatist who played little part in reviving America or winning the Cold War is absurdly revisionist

Her latest unsettling collection of stories loosely connected by the theme of hunger contains graphic descriptions of violence and cannibalism

Box Office Poison is a riotously entertaining read, packed with illuminating tales of egos run amok

Edwin Frank’s Stranger than Fiction aims to cover the twentieth-century novel

Emmanuel Carrère knows when to let the horrors speak for themselves in his moving, hard-hitting account of the trial of the perpetrators

Though well paid as a screenwriter, Parker lampooned Hollywood’s moguls, dubbing MGM Metro-Goldwyn-Merde as she slipped further into alcoholism

With Bush, the unexpected is about the only certainty, having the bravado to do what she wants rather than pandering to the public’s longing for hits

Nicholas Fox Weber’s portrait of the artist is unlikely to be challenged

The history that Amrith covers is uncompromising

It explores the strange phenomenon of the black metal music scene in socially balanced Norway

Nexus argues that it is stories which are fundamental to shaping the world

Timothy Snyder’s On Freedom is fascinating in places

In contrast to Rumaan Alam’s wildly successful, lockdown-resonant Leave the World Behind, the latest book is set in 2014

The Golden Road is William Dalrymple’s attempt to piece together the story of India’s transformative influence on the world around it

There are potentially twenty full-length novels here, but you’ll romp through them in a happy afternoon