19 h. 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

Politics

3 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.

Politics

6 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.

Politics

7 d. 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

Events

7 d. 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...

Politics

8 d. 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.

Events

8 d. 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...

Events

9 d. 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

Politics

9 d. 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

Politics

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...

Politics

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

Politics

2 w. ago Fern Britton names the 1 book she's planning to read this summer

Fern Britton has shared the one book she's determined to read this summer as she embarks on a Mediterranean retreat - and it's another Sunday Times bestseller

Politics

2 w. ago These are my 5 favourite books that can be read in less than a day

From Claire Keegan's ‘Small Things Like These’ to Vincenzo Latronico's ‘Perfection’, these novellas are less than 200 pages

Politics

3 w. ago A moment that changed me: I resolved to reduce my screen time – and it was a big mistake

I was looking for liberation from the apps, but quitting them only made my life harder and turned me into a man obsessedI unlocked my iPhone screen at the precise moment that my weekly screen time notification appeared – accidentally dismissing it before I could take a screenshot – and promptly erupted into a rage. I had spent an excruciating week resolutely not looking at my phone, part of a month-long effort to whittle my daily screen time down from more than four hours a day to less than an hour, with the hope of improving my mental wellbeing (and possibly carving out a career as an inspirational speaker). But my efforts felt futile without being able to post evidence online about how offline I had become. I frantically Googled how to retrieve notifications (you cannot) and – briefly – considered re-creating my screen time report in Photoshop.Over the past decade or two, my efforts at self-improvement have taken various forms: the year where I read 105 books; the period during wh...

Politics

3 w. ago Which books will Nationals English pupils read 2025? The Scottish texts teachers can choose

Scotland’s school reading list recently got a bit of a refresh 📚

Politics

3 w. ago My wife and I are in our 50s and haven't had sex for TWO YEARS. Today I'm revealing all about the desperate truth so many couples hide... by CHRIS TAUNTON

It feels like we wouldn't even know where to start because it's been so long. For two years we have got into bed together, read books or looked at phones, and then gone straight to sleep.

Politics

4 w. ago I read every day — this 'addictive' new book based on a Hollywood rivalry is a must

Ella Berman's latest novel is loosely based on an infamous Hollywood rivalry - and it's well worth adding to your summer reading list

Culture

4 w. ago I changed my mind on banning the bomb, but the threat of nuclear war is growing – and so is complacency | Polly Toynbee

Though the weapons I campaigned against remain terrifying, I doubt we can disarm unilaterally. That should be the stuff of vital debate: right now, it isn’t This week marks 80 years since the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as the few remaining witnesses tell of incinerated, melted and obliterated families. Soon there will be none left to remember. Survivors’ graphic accounts of “the noiseless flash” were captured by John Hersey in his book Hiroshima, read by my generation with shock and fear. Nevil Shute’s On the Beach taught us every gut-wrenching detail of the radiation sickness I fully expected to die of. Civil defence leaflets told families how to hide under the stairs with a radio and torch.I grew up expecting early death by nuclear war. My father was a 1957 founder of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament who didn’t expect us to survive inevitable nuclear holocaust. He carried a large bottle of suicide pills, enough to kill us all when the bomb fell, to save us from slowly ...

Events