10 h. ago Best Agatha Christie books to read that spin a classic mystery yarn

It’s a murder on the dancefloor

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46 h. ago Books of the Month: What to read this September, from Arundhati Roy’s searing memoir to Ian McEwan’s sci

Martin Chilton shares his September reading highlights

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3 d. ago I read every day — these 8 books are the best I've read in 2025

Some are recent releases, others are classics but they're all worth reading

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3 d. ago Rumaan Alam: ‘Reading JD Salinger now is like running into that particular ex at a cafe’

The US author on his early love of Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye, the genius of Judy Blume, and finding perfection in Agatha Christie and Gustave FlaubertMy earliest reading memory I recall lying in the bath, age seven or eight, reading the final page of Judy Blume’s Starring Sally J Freedman As Herself, then turning to the novel’s opening and beginning again. Memory is untrustworthy, but Blume is a genius who has that effect on her reader.My favourite book growing up We’re always growing up; we’re always choosing a new favourite. For me, once, this was Louise Fitzhugh’s Harriet the Spy. Later I’d have said JD Salinger’s Nine Stories. Later, still, John Cheever’s Collected Stories, Lorrie Moore’s Self-Help, Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain, my favourite changing as I did. Maybe I’m finally old enough to understand that favourite is impossible to designate. Or maybe I’d say my current favourite is Don DeLillo’s Underworld. Continue reading...

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6 d. ago British children’s book Making Science Magical reaches #1 on Amazon in US and UK

A British children’s book that blends science and fantasy has climbed to #1 on Amazon in both the US and UK — being hailed as a bold new kind of children’s fiction.

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9 d. ago I read books for a living — these are the 10 best new books I think everyone should read

Whether you prefer romance, crime, fantasy or even just regular fiction, here are the 10 best new books for September I would recommend to anyone.

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1 week ago The Thursday Murder Club is now on Netflix – here’s how to read the books in order

‘The Impossible Fortune’ is available to pre-order ahead of its release on 25 September

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1 week ago Rebecca F Kuang: ‘A Tale of Two Cities is deeply silly camp – I love it!’

The US writer on being switched on to romance by Sally Rooney, the magic of David Mitchell and the joy of Jean-Paul SartreMy favourite book growing up Brian Jacques’s Redwall (and all its sequels). All I wanted was to be a squirrel in the Mossflower Woods!The books that changed me as a teenager I read China Miéville’s Perdido Street Station and The City & the City when I was in college. I had been falling out of love with fantasy – I felt too old for Redwall, and I thought I’d outgrown the genre – but Miéville’s work opened the door to the enormous world of adult fantasy literature that grappled with the problems I was now interested in. Continue reading...

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1 week ago Agatha Christie BBC adaptation that achieved 100% Rotten Tomatoes score

The Witness for the Prosecution, which aired on the BBC in 2016, is based on Agatha Christie's 23-page short story.

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1 week ago BBC Agatha Christie adaptation that has earned itself a 100% Rotten Tomatoes score

One Agatha Christie TV adaptation has proven immensely popular with fans and critics, earning numerous five-star reviews and ratings

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1 week ago 'As a Thursday Murder Club book fanatic the film was a huge disappointment'

For anyone who has read The Thursday Murder Club book, prepare to be left frustrated.

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1 week ago Seascraper by Benjamin Wood review – a story that sings on the page

A young shrimp fisher’s horizons are broadened by the arrival of a stranger in this atmospheric Booker-listed taleYou don’t think you need a novella about a folk-singing shrimp fisher living with his mother on a fictional stretch of isolated coast until you read Benjamin Wood’s Booker-longlisted fifth novel, Seascraper. Wood conjures wonders from this unlikely material in a tale so richly atmospheric you can almost taste the tang of brine and inhale the sea fog.As unexpected as his previous four books – which range from a campus intrigue (The Bellwether Revivals) to a sensitive study of a Glaswegian painter (The Ecliptic) – Seascraper follows the daily trials of Tom Flett, a “shanker” who scrapes the sand for its yield at low tide with his trusty horse and wagon, risking his life in a job that is simultaneously boring and dangerous. Tom is clearly in the Hardyesque tradition of unworldly young men who tend the land or work with their hands (Gabriel Oak, Jude Fawley), and it’s this t...

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1 week ago Mark Wright shares adorable new pic of baby Palma as he makes plea to Oxford University

Mark Wright has shared an adorable snap of his five-month-old daughter, Palma, appearing to read a book, as he jokingly asked Oxford University at what age do they accept applications

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1 week ago Mark Wright shares adorable snap of baby Palma as he issues plea to Oxford University

Mark Wright and Michelle Keegan's baby, Palma Elizabeth, is growing up fast as the proud dad shared an adorable snap of the tot appearing to read a book on Instagram

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2 w. ago ‘I’ll be Poirot’: the Orient Express is back – but what is it like to ride?

It comes at a steep price, but the remodelled luxury train from Sicily to Rome immerses passengers in the country’s culture as well as passing through stunning scenery‘If anyone mysteriously vanishes, I can be Poirot,” said the passenger from India, twirling his moustache. It felt as though the spirit of Agatha Christie’s most famous character – best known for solving the Murder on the Orient Express – was lingering in the breeze at Palermo’s sublime botanical garden, which had been transformed into a makeshift waiting room for the 40 or so travellers about to board an Italian replica of the fabled train.Sipping espresso and sampling cannoli, the classic Sicilian pastry, the curiosity and suspicion for which Poirot is famous was palpable as the passengers subtly sized each other up. But the only mystery waiting to be unravelled over the next couple of days was whether their Rome-bound journey on La Dolce Vita Orient Express would live up to their dreamy expe...

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2 w. ago ‘Reminded me of Agatha Christie’: the shocking true story behind Ron Howard’s Eden

Author Abbott Kahler, who inspired the film starring Jude Law and Sydney Sweeney, tells the stranger-than-fiction tale of mayhem on a remote island“Was Dr. Ritter, With His Steel Teeth, Poisoned in Paradise? Was ‘Baroness Eloise,’ Known as ‘Crazy Panties,’ Who Ruled the Island With a Gun and Love, Murdered by One of Her Love Slaves After She Had Driven the Other to His Death? And Why is Frau Ritter Going Back to What She Once Called ‘Hell’s Volcano?’ – the Mystery of the Galapagos Island Which Germany Covets, to Be Solved At Last?”This florid passage from a tabloid newspaper caught the eye of the author Abbott Kahler decades after it was published in 1941. “Basically it was the equivalent of a record scratch,” she recalls. “I was thinking: what the hell is the story?” Continue reading...

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2 w. ago ‘If I felt Zuckerberg and Sandberg were monsters, I wouldn’t have worked at Meta’: Nick Clegg on tech bros, AI and Starmer’s half measures

When Britain’s former deputy PM took a job at Meta, nothing could have prepared him for the ‘cloying conformity’ of the tech world. So why does he still think social media is a force for good?• Read an exclusive extract from Nick Clegg’s new book hereThe rain is just starting to fall from a grey London sky as Sir Nick Clegg arrives, duckingthrough the traffic and carrying what looks like his laundry. C lean shirts for the photoshoot, he says, before apologetically wondering if he might possibly get a coffee. Within minutes he has further apologised for wanting to swap the leather club chair he is offered for a hard plastic one; and then, in horror, for any impression inadvertently given that my questions might send him to sleep.Impeccable English manners should never be mistaken for diffidence – at 58, Clegg remains the only British political figure who could convincingly be played by the equally posh but self-effacing Colin Firth, whose old London home Clegg recently bought – but t...

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2 w. ago Harry Potter actress lands new role with Mamma Mia star in new Agatha Christie TV drama

BritBox has announced a star-studded cast for a new Agatha Christie TV adaptation, including Harry Potter star Imelda Staunton

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2 w. ago The Thursday Murder Club review – Richard Osman bestseller provides solid, star

There’s much to enjoy in this adaptation of Osman’s ingenious book, with Helen Mirren, Ben Kingsley, Celia Imrie and Pierce Brosnan as the senior-citizen X-MenRichard Osman’s phenomenal bestseller from 2020 was an ingenious, accessible, good-natured book, which helped rebrand the English detective novel as “cosy crime”, started a celeb-copycat publishing trend and, being about four elderly people in a retirement community rising above ageist condescension to solve crimes, spoke eloquently to the shut-in frustrations and escapist yearnings of the Covid age.Now it has been adapted as a funny and likable, if slightly bland, comedy-drama for Netflix, which as one character amusingly and pre-emptively comments, feels just like a Sunday teatime TV crime drama. There is nothing new about these nostalgist leanings: Agatha Christie has after all been a solid film and TV export for more than half a century. Screenwriters Katy Brand and Suzanne Heathcote adapt the novel and director Chris Colu...

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2 w. ago I’ve already read 35 books this year, but this is my standout favourite

This could be the best debut of the year

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