Susie Goldsbrough

An neurodiverse teen befriends two lonely teachers in this cosy but vanilla tale

I’m going to cast you away to a desert island. How long do you think you’ll last? Perhaps you could fashion a fishing line from a palm frond and live in barbecu

Jacques Testard has a peculiarly literary strain of the Midas touch: everything he publishes turns to a Nobel prize. Almost ten years ago, he set up a tiny ind

Back from the trenches, a shell-shocked soldier can’t remember his wife but is obsessed with his lost first love. Rebecca West’s 1918 novella is a devastating tale of life after tragedy

Shakespeare, spies, monstrous men, books in battles and some very angry wives: Laura Hackett and Susie Goldsbrough pick their favourite literary non-fiction books. Plus Graeme Richardson curates the year’s best poetry

Johanna Thomas-Corr, Robbie Millen and Susie Goldsbrough recommend the year’s most colourful and compelling literary fiction, including novels by Salman Rushdie, Zadie Smith and Ann Patchett

As another Irish author wins the Booker, Susie Goldsbrough explains why she’s not surprised

Londoners can be suspicious of the English countryside. “It is my belief, Watson, founded upon my experience, that the lowest and vilest alleys in London do not present a more dreadful record of sin

We select some of the finest memoirs of the past three decades — some touching, some witty and some utterly devastating. Why not enter our memoir competition and win a publishing contract? Details at the end. By Susie Goldsbrough

The pick of this month’s paperbacks feature drunken elephants, the bizarre true story of an 18th-century shipwreck and riotous Glaswegian memoir