Parents, read this book – and let your teenagers take risks
In Coming of Age, Lucy Faulkes explains why teenagers should be allowed to take risks – and shouldn’t be overprotected
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In Coming of Age, Lucy Faulkes explains why teenagers should be allowed to take risks – and shouldn’t be overprotected
The author on why Jackanory should be revived, his own childhood favourites and the ‘invisible privilege’ that comes with access to books
From biohackers to ghostbots, William Gibson’s Neuromancer saw the future 40 years ago – why has Silicon Valley defied its warnings?
Self-publishing, once as reputable as pornography, is now the preferred – and most profitable – option for aspiring authors. Why?
Who said comics have to be comic? This year’s crop gave us haunted spas, apocalyptic visions – and the beauty of pastoral France
This Christmas, young readers can look forward to tales of His Majesty, three wily monkeys and a sumptuous reimagining of Peter Pan
Looking for a Christmas present for the music-lover in your life? Try Johnny Cash's lyrics, Sly Stone's memoir or Paul McCartney's snapshots
Our top thinkers turned the quest for hard truths into a mind-blowing funride
Year two of the war produced breathless tales of resistance, rebuttals to Russian propaganda, and the death of a promising young writer
This year, marriage went under the microscope in engrossing tales of mutual obsession, catastrophic union and doublethink
The Tory meltdown was a sign of the fractious spirit of the times. But consensus is possible – here are our politics picks of the year
In the 16 best poetry books of the year, readers meet Shakespeare's wife and Chekhov's sisters, a French comte and a wild London hyena
Trucks in the Garden of Eden follows Vitali Vitaliev as he scours these sceptred isles for ideal urban communities – with limited success
Ceaușescu, Gaddafi, Saddam – as Marcel Dirsus explains in his entertaining book How Tyrants Fall, they all sow their own graves eventually
Michael Nott’s unsanctimonious biography of Thom Gunn, A Cool Queer Life, draws out his complexities and contradictions
Ed Simon’s Devil’s Contract is a highly impassioned but overambitious attempt to unpack the Faustian bargain over 2000 years
Free speech is integral to good art
The author on why Jackanory should be revived, his own childhood favourites and the ‘invisible privilege’ that comes with access to books
He was allowed to keep writing because the communist dictator enjoyed the western attention and the image of Albania as a cultivated country
Self-publishing, once as reputable as pornography, is now the preferred – and most profitable – option for aspiring authors. Why?
The Fun We Had, a beautiful, gentle, rhyming story by Charissa Coulthard, sees a little girl visit her elderly grandmother, and reminisce
Time Runs like a River, Emma Carlisle’s latest book, uses gentle illustrations and lilting rhymes to foster a surprisingly deep message
Mayowa and the Sea of Words, Chibundu Onuzo’s debut novel, about a girl who takes on a Right-wing MP, sacrifices plot to preaching
How to Be a Genius Kid, by ‘Waldo Pancake’ (Jim Smith), sees two cartoon narrators whisk us through eight fascinating lessons
The Wonderdays, by Clare Povey, has a solid villain, a daring journey and a sensible, albeit overly emphatic, eco-message
In Mary Cathleen Brown’s haunting debut novel, The Tall Man, a 12-year-old boy must solve an old mystery and save an imprisoned child
‘Hyperbole’, ‘harried’, ‘onomatopoeia’ – Colossal Words for Kids, by Colette Hiller and Tor Freeman, will have clever young tongues wagging
Tom Percival’s novel, The Wrong Shoes, tells of a stoic young boy and his struggling father. It’s touching, albeit a little too spelled-out
Our Poetry Book of the Month reviews include an extraordinary posthumous collection from Gboyega Odubanjo and JH Prynne’s unlikely lullabies
Christopher Childers has spent 10 years on The Penguin Book of Greek and Latin Lyric Verse – and his translations sing from the page
From Raymond Chandler's slippery similes to a scene Austen hid, a new exhibition reveals great writers' early drafts and discarded ideas
As the Irish singer champions The Forgotten Yeats Sisters for Sky Arts, she talks about women in history and the thrill of rock'n'roll