8 h. ago ‘Something playful’: celebrating the art of endpapers in children’s books

New exhibition in Amherst, Massachusetts, looks at the unsung art that exists on the pages that bookend much-loved kids booksOnce upon a time, endpapers – those little bits of real estate connecting the inside covers of hardcover books to the pages within – were a site of pure decoration, or maybe, as in the case of The Chronicles of Narnia, a map of a fantasy realm. More recently, illustrators have been reimagining just what endpapers can be – far from decorations or maps, they are now used to bookend and compliment the stories told in books in fascinating ways.“The illustrator Shaun Tan described them as like quotation marks or parentheses around the story,” said Bruce Handy, a journalist and children’s book author. “In his mind it’s a way of setting the story off. Kind of like an anteroom to the story, or like a transition into the story.” Continue reading...

Culture

11 h. ago Chopping Onions on My Heart by Samantha Ellis review – can you save a culture?

A woman tries to cling on to her parent’s Judeo-Arabic language – and the food, feeling and history that goes with itSamantha Ellis yearns to eat the nabug fruit that her Iraqi-Jewish parents recall from Baghdad back gardens. Yet when she asks for it in London’s Iraqi shops, she’s met only with blank looks. It took much effort for her to find the English name for the nabug – the Christ’s thorn jujube – and even then she’s unable to source seeds online. Eventually an Iraqi Muslim friend brings her a bag of the fruits. She shares them with her mother, who lights up: “It’s nabug!”. She tells her grandson she hasn’t eaten one in 50 years, and despite wanting a Haribo, he joins his grandmother and mother in enjoying the taste, “like a cross between an apricot and a date”.This story in Ellis’s memoir is, like the book itself, about many things – loss, the distance between generations, nostalgia for a place one has never been, and the power of food to evoke memory – but perhaps most fundam...

Politics

65 h. ago The 'most sickening book in the world' has been found in a museum office

The book tells the story of the murderer William Corder who was hanged at Bury St Edmunds in 1828 for killing his lover Maria Marten and burying her beneath the floor of a barn.

Culture

3 d. ago Autobiographical ‘life story’ books helping Renfrewshire dementia patients

The life stories are said to help keep precious memories alive for patients

Science

3 d. ago Lanarkshire musician's Makaton choir for people with Down’s syndrome to star at Paisley Book Festival

Choir 21 will perform as conductor and author Katy Lironi shares a book telling her family’s story.

Culture

5 d. ago Nova Scotia House by Charlie Porter review – a headlong rush through the turbulent Aids era

Porter’s urgent prose propels the reader into the gay scene of the 1980s and early 90s as his protagonist’s life is torn apart by the HIV crisisThe humble comma, normally so easily overlooked within a page of text, is clearly Charlie Porter’s weapon of choice for his debut novel. Here, he wields it to propel his narrative forward in the kind of urgent, endless staccato rush that sometimes requires the reader to look briefly up and away, if only to gulp at some fresh air.Nova Scotia House, the 51-year-old journalist’s first work of fiction after two books on fashion, tells the story of living through the Aids crisis of the 1980s and early 90s, and how those who survived it will be forever accompanied by the ghostly presence of those who didn’t.Nova Scotia House by Charlie Porter is published by Particular Books (£18.99). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply Continue reading...

Politics

9 d. ago Thomas Pynchon announces new novel Shadow Ticket, his first in 12 years

Like his previous two novels, Pynchon’s next book is a noir detective story

Politics

1 week ago Children of Radium by Joe Dunthorne review – complicity, courage and cowardice examined in a slippery marvel

The Submarine author employs that novel’s warmth and wit in his investigation into whether his great-grandfather knowingly helped to make chemical weapons for the Nazis Joe Dunthorne tells us he originally envisaged this book as a story of his grandmother’s childhood escape from the Nazis; the reality turned out to be more complex. Narrated with the twists and turns of a detective story, Children of Radium is a family memoir that records the mazy path by which the prize-winning Welsh novelist discovered just how little he knew of his German Jewish heritage. His journey begins with “a foot-high block of A4”: a 2,000-page unpublished memoir by his great-grandfather, Siegfried, a Jewish scientist who worked at a secret chemical weapons laboratory near Berlin before he and his family left for Turkey – not the panicky flit Dunthorne imagined, but a relocation bankrolled by employers with plans for what he could yet do.Hunches, tip-offs, false trails and dead ends abound in Dunthorne’s qu...

Events

1 week ago The Faber/Observer/Comica graphic short story prize 2025 – enter now!

The annual award for aspiring cartoonists – which now boasts its own evening event – offers the chance to be published in the Observer and win £1,000, with past winners landing book and film dealsThis year, we have decided to launch the annual Faber/Observer/Comica graphic short story prize with an event as well as an announcement: an evening that will hopefully be highly enjoyable for anyone who has followed the progress of the award, as well as helpful to those who might be thinking of entering this time around. On 9 April, then, come along to the Bindery in Hatton Garden, London, where a panel will discuss graphic novels in general and our prize in particular – tickets are still available. On stage will be last year’s brilliant judges, Luke Healy and Posy Simmonds, as well as Lesley Imgart, who won the 2024 prize for her charming, funny comic Witch Way?. The event will be chaired by me, and I hope to see you there.But back to the details of 2025. As ever, the winner of the prize ...

Politics

2 w. ago Story of a Murder by Hallie Rubenhold review: the real Cora Crippen

The author of The Five, about the Ripper murders, turns her attention to another tragically misunderstood victimIn the canon of British true crime, the case of Dr Crippen routinely gets billed as the first “modern” murder. It wasn’t that there was anything particularly original about the doctor’s motives or methods: in January 1910 he slipped poison into his wife’s bedtime drink so that he could marry his secretary instead. Rather, it was the way that Crippen was caught that turned this run-of-the-mill suburban love triangle into an international cause célèbre.Realising that it would only be a matter of time before his wife’s dismembered remains were discovered in the cellar of the marital home in north London, Crippen and his secretary Ethel Le Neve fled to Canada in disguise. Such was the media hoopla surrounding the case that the sharp-eyed captain of the SS Montrose quickly spotted the runaway lovers among his passengers. This was despite their unconvincing cover story...

Events

2 w. ago Story of a Murder by Hallie Rubenhold review – engrossing retelling of ‘the crime of the century’

This account of Dr Crippen’s notorious Edwardian-era killing shifts the focus to the women at the centre of the sordid taleOn the evening of 31 January 1910, two couples dined together at a house in Hilldrop Crescent, on the borders of Holloway, London. The hosts, Dr Crippen and his wife, Belle Elmore, had been entertaining their friends, Clara and Paul Martinetti, until the small hours. After some difficulty fetching a cab, the visitors headed home around 1.30am. It was the last time they, or anyone else, would see Elmore alive. When her colleagues at the Music Hall Ladies’ Guild made inquiries about their friend – she was treasurer of the organisation – Crippen told them she had gone off to America to deal with a family crisis. Some weeks later they were informed she had died of double pneumonia in Los Angeles.Thus was sparked an international murder case, one of the most notorious in Britain, later called “the crime of the century”. But Hallie Rubenhold’s engrossing account begin...

Events

2 w. ago Maybe I’m Amazed by John Harris review – with a little help from John, Paul, George and Ringo

The Guardian journalist’s tender account of how music became a bridge between him and his autistic son, James, is full of wit and wisdomHalfway through Maybe I’m Amazed, there’s a photograph of John Harris’s son, James, with one of his heroes. James is a young-looking 10 in knee-length shorts decorated with stars. Ian Hunter of 1970s rock band Mott the Hoople stands beside him, a hand gently around his shoulder. “Sixty-nine years separate them,” Harris writes. “Here is proof of how songs and their creators find fans in the most unlikely of places.”Maybe I’m Amazed is the story of a growing child’s love of music, but it’s more than that: it’s also about how songs provided a whole world for James, and his family, after his autism diagnosis. It marks a departure for Harris, whose previous journalism, aside from his political work for the Guardian, has involved editing magazines and writing columns, reviews and other books about music. Continue reading...

Politics

2 w. ago The Five author Hallie Rubenhold: ‘I really hate true crime’

The award-winning writer turned the Jack the Ripper case on its head. Now she is giving Dr Crippen the same treatment – and questioning how we tell stories about murderous menIt was called “the crime of the century” and “the north London cellar murder”, and more than 100 years after it happened, the name of the murderer is still widely known. Dr Crippen has been the subject of multiple books, movies and TV shows and had a waxwork made of him at Madame Tussauds. But the story of his crimes, writes Hallie Rubenhold in Story of a Murder, remains one “predominantly about women but told almost exclusively by men”. As such, Crippen’s victim is long forgotten. Her name was Belle Elmore, and in Rubenhold’s book she is brought back to life.Rubenhold and I are in a cafe in Muswell Hill, north London, a 10 minute walk from where Elmore is buried, and where the 53-year-old author lives with her barrister husband, Frank. Writing Story of a Murder was nerve-racking, says Rubenhold, partly because...

Events

3 w. ago Your House review – scavenger hunt through a delightfully difficult puzzle

iOS, Android, Mac, PC (version played); Patrones & EsconditesInspired by a remarkable true story, this book-like journey through a deserted house filled with secret panels and hidden passages presents some ingenious conundrumsYour House is inspired by a remarkable true story. Back in the 2000s, a rich New York couple paid architect Eric Clough to renovate their new apartment, with the slightly odd request that a poem about their family should be hidden away in one of the walls, like a time capsule. Inspired by this, Clough took it upon himself to make a few unorthodox modifications to the dwelling without his clients’ knowledge.Just over a year after the couple and their children had moved in to their home, Clough sent them a cryptic note. This clue led them to a hidden panel, behind which was a book, which in turn led them on a scavenger hunt through their own apartment. Clough had crammed the rooms with hidden messages and complex puzzles that it took the family weeks to solve...

Politics

3 w. ago Not one person shows up to man's book signing – then something amazing happens

The power of social media helped one man change his life after he was left sat alone at a book signing, despite "pouring everything" into the book. It's a story that's melted book lovers hearts

Culture

3 w. ago Ayrshire care worker sanctioned after telling dementia patient his TV programme was "f*****g rubbish"

Gary Wakelam caused ‘distress’ to the service user after refusing to take him for a walk.

Science

3 w. ago John & Paul: A Love Story in Songs by Ian Leslie review – let it be the new gold standard in Beatles studies

The author’s brilliant account of Lennon and McCartney’s songwriting relationship challenges myths, finds new meanings in their music, and even throws up a few surprisesIt is a strange and beguiling experience to find music you have had in your head since childhood reveal new and unsuspected shades of meaning 50 years later. Beatles songs aren’t like most pop songs; instead of fading, they take on a richer colour and nuance, not least because new generations of fans inquire more deeply into what previous listeners might have overlooked or simply misunderstood. One twist of the kaleidoscope and a song we thought we knew suddenly sounds even better than it did the first 100 times we heard it.This is the effect of reading Ian Leslie’s brilliant study of the Beatles’ music, a book that offers not only a lesson in listening (again) but an enthralling narrative of friendship, creative genius and loss. At its centre is the songwriting partnership of John Lennon and Paul McCartney, and the ...

Events

4 w. ago Happy Face review – Dennis Quaid is a grinning caricature in this shoddy, half

This (sort of) true-crime series about a real-life serial killer’s daughter is deeply disappointing TV – even before you factor in the terrible script and flat actingPerhaps, like politicians’ careers, all intellectual property must eventually end in failure. You begin in one medium – a viral video on social media, perhaps, which brings your story to the attention of the masses and the makers of a podcast; then on to a streamed drama or documentary, maybe knocking out a book on the subject as you go. But eventually it hits a wall. The new translation doesn’t work, it’s running on empty, it doesn’t capture interest, the moment has passed. People get bored, they move on, and that’s the end of your IP’s journey.The new true-crime drama Happy Face, created by Jennifer Cacicio and executive-produced by the mighty Robert and Michelle King (The Good Wife, The Good Fight, Evil, Elsbeth), began life as a book – Shattered Silence, the 2009 autobiography of Melissa Moore, in which sh...

Politics