The author and columnist on her powers of concentration, the importance of Pilates and the trials of co-existing with an inquisitive tabby cat

Past and present merge in this psychological twister set in a picturesque country cottage

From AJ Lees’s extraordinary memoir Mentored By a Madman to Fiona Melrose’s Midwinter and Julie Myerson’s chiller The Stopped Heart, our critics recommend the reads that slipped under the radar

From gripping fiction to history, brilliant poetry to biography, our guest contributors offer their recommendations for the beach and elsewhere

Authors, critics and philosophers tell us which books they will be reading on the beach

From The Handmaid's Tale to Anna Karenina, novelist Bethan Roberts picks the best portrayals of an experience that is rarely portrayed in fiction

Petite Mort by Beatrice Hitchman, Gone Again by Doug Johnstone, The Quickening by Julie Myerson, We Are Here by Michael Marshall and The Catch by Tom Bale