2 h. ago Stormzy among stars reading from Booker Prize novels shortlisted for 2025

Pop star Dua Lipa and Pulp singer Jarvis Cocker are among previous stars to have read excerpts from Booker Prize-nominated novels.

Events

17 h. ago I've read 140 books this year but only 5 have left me guessing until the end

I'm pretty good at predicting how books will end, but these five had me guessing until the very end

Politics

42 h. ago I write bestselling cosy fantasy books — these are the 12 cosy books you need to read

With the days becoming chillier, pumpkin spice everywhere and just a matter of weeks before the clocks fall back, we're officially in cosy season

Politics

63 h. ago Tim Dowling: II love books – but can’t remember anything about the ones I’ve just read

In bed I lie awake, staring at the books on my nightstand, trying to remember a single salient fact about any of themThe oldest one is recommending the book he’s just finished to me.“You should read this,” he says, handing me a well-thumbed paperback, which I turn over in my hands. Continue reading...

Politics

63 h. ago Tim Dowling: I love books – but can’t remember anything about the ones I’ve just read

In bed I lie awake, staring at the books on my nightstand, trying to remember a single salient fact about any of themThe oldest one is recommending the book he’s just finished to me.“You should read this,” he says, handing me a well-thumbed paperback, which I turn over in my hands. Continue reading...

Politics

3 d. ago Best Betting Sites UK: New & Top Ranked Bookmakers for October 2025

Compare over 60 licensed and regulated betting sites in the UK and read our reviews of the best online bookmakers for October 2025

Politics

4 d. ago Read about the life and legacy of Jane Goodall in these books

The pioneering activist dedicated her life to the study of chimpanzees

Politics

5 d. ago ‘Bans are disheartening’: US author criticises Dorset school’s removal of her book about race

Angie Thomas’s The Hate U Give was taken off year 10 reading list at Budmouth Academy after parent complainedA bestselling black American author has condemned a Dorset school’s decision to drop her critically acclaimed novel from a reading list.Angie Thomas’s The Hate U Give was removed from Budmouth Academy’s year 10 reading list after a complaint from a parent. Continue reading...

Culture

6 d. ago Unions are handing Democrats a golden opportunity amid the shutdown battle | Judith Levine

Federal workers’ move offers Democrats a chance to win the budget battle – and their identityThe Federal Unionists Network (FUN) and 35 national, state and local unions have written a letter to the Democratic congressional leadership – Chuck Schumer in the Senate and Hakeem Jeffries in the House, urging them to hold out against Republicans in the budget negotiations, even if it means a government shutdown and halted paychecks. The signatories represent “tens of thousands of federal workers”, according to an FUN press release.The Democrats’ demands, the letter says, should include “adequate funding for critical public services” and a “guarantee” that funds appropriated by the Congress are spent.Judith Levine is a Brooklyn-based journalist, essayist and author of five books. Her Substack is Today in Fascism Continue reading...

Events

1 week ago I've read 15 books by the same author this year — they got me back into reading

I've always loved reading, but in recent years, I've found it hard to get into a book and have been in a reading slump. That was until I discovered this author

Culture

1 week ago This was my favourite read of the summer – now it’s been Booker 2025 shortlisted

Judge Sarah Jessica Parker described whittling down the list as “real agony”

Politics

1 week ago 'I'm a New York Times best selling author and everyone should read these 5 books'

The author of 'blend Da Vinci Code and Murder She Wrote' The Secrets of Still Waters Chasm has also written a trilogy of mystery novels

Culture

1 week ago 'I'm a best selling author and everyone needs to read these 5 books'

Patricia Crisafulli, 65, from Oswego, New York, is a New York Times best selling author and has shared her five favourite books of all time - and her list features all genres

Culture

1 week ago ‘Brilliantly human’: Kiran Desai and David Szalay make Booker prize shortlist

No debut novels are among the six finalists, with established authors including Ben Markovits and previously shortlisted Andrew Miller in the runningChris Power: ‘As a Booker prize judge I helped whittle 153 books down to a shortlist of six. Here’s why you should read them’No debuts appear on this year’s Booker prize shortlist, which is dominated by established authors including previous winner Kiran Desai and previously shortlisted writers David Szalay and Andrew Miller.Ben Markovits, Susan Choi and Katie Kitamura are also on the list, which was announced at an event at the Southbank Centre in central London on Tuesday evening. Continue reading...

Politics

1 week ago Will There Ever Be Another You by Patricia Lockwood review – long Covid from the inside

The cult author’s autofictional follow-up to No One Is Talking About This is the story of a breakdownIt sounds like the setup to a joke: a viral author and a global virus walk into a novel. The punchline is long Covid, an illness that defies narrative – dissolves it. Patricia Lockwood’s new autofiction, Will There Ever Be Another You, is the product of that cruel dissolution. “I wrote it insane, and edited it sane,” she explained in a recent interview. The madness is the method. But must you know the mind before you can know the madness?Lockwood is the literary Frankenchild of Dorothy Parker and Flannery O’Connor: a heretical wit fused with gothic strangeness, vintage quippery rewired for the digital age. She’s the kind of writer who inspires parasocial devotion and copycat haircuts. Even her cats are internet-famous. The sacred text of Lockwood lore is Priestdaddy, her glorious 2017 memoir, which introduced readers to the American author’s trouser-resistant father, an ordained...

Science

2 w. ago ‘A resistance to AI’: The author inviting readers to contribute to a mass memoir

Richard Beard says he’s got ‘better at telling the truth’ by arranging his life story on a grid – and invites others to do the sameRichard Beard, award-winning author of The Day That Went Missing and Sad Little Men, thought he was writing his next book, a whole life memoir. In the event, he has written his way off the page and into an entirely new publishing model. The Universal Turing Machine is the title both of Beard’s memoir and the mass memoir project he hopes others will help him to build.Organised as a chessboard, each of the 64 squares narrates one year of Beard’s life, in 1,000 words per year. (He’s 58, so the last five years are fictionalised.) The reader moves around the “board” as if they were a knight, picking the next year to read from options limited by the knight’s L-shaped ambulation.Contributions to The Universal Turing Machine can be made at universalturingmachine.co.uk Continue reading...

Culture

2 w. ago If Anyone Builds it, Everyone Dies review – how AI could kill us all

If machines become superintelligent we’re toast, say Eliezer Yudkowsky and Nate Soares. Should we believe them?What if I told you I could stop you worrying about climate change, and all you had to do was read one book? Great, you’d say, until I mentioned that the reason you’d stop worrying was because the book says our species only has a few years before it’s wiped out by superintelligent AI anyway.We don’t know what form this extinction will take exactly – perhaps an energy-hungry AI will let the millions of fusion power stations it has built run hot, boiling the oceans. Maybe it will want to reconfigure the atoms in our bodies into something more useful. There are many possibilities, almost all of them bad, say Eliezer Yudkowsky and Nate Soares in If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies, and who knows which will come true. But just as you can predict that an ice cube dropped into hot water will melt without knowing where any of its individual molecules will end up, you can be sure an A...

Events

2 w. ago I always thought narcissism was just a buzzword – until I read a book and realised I was a hapless victim

After reading a new book, ‘My Parent the Peacock’, Charlotte Cripps realised that narcissistic parenting may well have been at play in her large family. She explains how she was cast in the role of the ‘golden child’, and the impact of this on her later life

Events

2 w. ago Sally Rooney unable to collect award over Palestine Action arrest threat

The Normal People author can no longer safely enter the UK without potentially facing arrest, according to a statement read out by her publisher at the prize ceremonyIrish author Sally Rooney could not travel to collect a literary prize this week over concerns that she may be arrested if she enters the UK, given her support of banned group Palestine Action.Rooney won the Sky Arts award for literature for her fourth novel, Intermezzo. At a ceremony on Tuesday, audiences were told that Rooney “couldn’t be here”, before her editor, Faber publisher Alex Bowler, collected the award on her behalf. Continue reading...

Events

2 w. ago 'Martyn booked a hotel room. It was never going to happen...' Read what happened when a 'free bird' met an older woman in our Blind Date

Every week, Femail asks two singletons to report back from their blind date. This week, it was Kelly and Martyn's turn to see if there was a spark between them. Read on to find out what happened...

Politics