Summer reading: the 50 hottest books to read now
From dazzling debuts to unmissable memoirs, prize-winning novels to page-turning histories … Plus our pick of paperbacks and children’s fiction
Walk on the wild side: Gillian Anderson and Jason Isaacs on their epic hiking movie The Salt Path
Raynor Winn’s bestselling memoir about her and her husband’s 630-mile trek around England’s south coast has become a film. Its stars, makers and Winn talk floods, fog and forgiveness
Who Wants Normal? The Disabled Girls’ Guide to Life by Frances Ryan review – countering the stereotypes
The journalist’s second book offers positivity in the face of the obstacles confronting disabled girls and women
The Leopard in My House by Mark Steel review – finding the funny side of living with cancer
The comedian reflects on mortality and the new course his life has now taken in this warm account of his cancer diagnosis and treatment
The Inherited Mind by James Longman review – a moving memoir of mental illness in the family
The TV reporter’s struggles with depression and the suicide of his father, whose own father killed himself, prompt this incisive, highly personal investigation
Alone by Daniel Schreiber review – me, myself and I
A moving insight into the joys and anguish of solitude – and the value of friendship
The Best Minds by Jonathan Rosen review – when hope fails
A remarkable meditation on friendship, success, madness and violence that refuses to oversimplify
‘I’m eternally fascinated’: confessions of a ghost writer
Storyteller, nosy neighbour, bad therapist… a friendly ghost must be all these things, says Alexandra Heminsley
In brief: Motherthing; Night Terrors; Looking for Trouble – review
A gripping, darkly humorous horror novel; the strange world of sleep; and the reissue of a dazzling wartime memoir
And Finally: Matters of Life and Death review – humility lessons from Henry Marsh
The ever candid neurosurgeon reflects on his own mortality, as well as the failings of his profession, in this enthralling third volume of memoirs