In the mid-1930s, the novelist, then a controversial war correspondent, encouraged aspiring writers with frankness and humour

He cultivated a hard-drinking macho image, with a taste for big-game hunting and a love of bullfighting, but Ernest Hemingway had a generous and thoughtful side that is revealed in previously unpublished letters.

In the decade after he made his name with A Farewell to Arms , his 1929 war novel, his correspondence shows that he repeatedly offered advice and encouragement – as well as insights into his own craft – to aspiring young novelists.

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The award-winning Bristol-raised novelist on his new book about a teenage Rastafarian living in the city in volatile times , how he was influenced by The Catcher in the Rye - and being celebrated by a Tory politician

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With four million copies sold and three books in adaptation, The Beach Read author is riding high. She talks about hope, TikTok tropes and escapism

A few weeks after Emily Henry’s second romance novel, You and Me on Vacation, was published in May 2021, she noticed a “giant” spike in sales. Her editor and agent had noticed it too. They were all emailing and texting, trying to figure out what was happening, when someone finally cracked it: “It’s BookTok”.

Henry had already made it on to the New York Times bestseller list twice, first with her romance debut, Beach Read, then with You and Me on Vacation. But TikTok videos made by impassioned fans vaulted the American author to a new level of fame. Since then, videos tagged #EmilyHenry have been viewed more than 300m times, and her books have sold more than 4m copies. Three of her five romances are being adapted for film.

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Two teenage boys come of age in a divided and radicalised London in this politically charged debut

The perilous porousness between our online and offline worlds is the spark for Nicolas Padamsee’s tinderbox thriller about two teenage boys. Deeply astute and devastating in its commentary on immigrant communities, England Is Mine joins a new generation of politically charged novels – including Megha Majumdar’s A Burning and Priya Guns’s Your Driver Is Waiting – in exposing the power and pitfalls of online platforms.

Two youths, David and Hassan, whose intertwined tales are told by turns, are students at the same school in east London. David is a strict vegan and has few friends. He doesn’t plan on going to university (“There would be no reading novels anyway, he thinks. There would only be criticising novels for their heteronormativity, their whiteness, their Europeanness, their whateverness”). As an Anglo-Iranian, he perpetually feels the burden of the question “Where are you from?” His parents are divorced. Between caring for his vulnerable father on the one hand, and bickering with his overbearing but well-meaning mother on the other, he is forced to flit between two houses but rarely feels at home.

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The award-winning author of The Whitewash takes his readers on wild rides where facts and fiction are often indistinguishable. He’s back with a new novel, containing secrets only he knows

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Siang Lu’s writing is the work of a curious mind at play. His labyrinthine novels take the reader on wild rides as disparate threads collide in surprising, sometimes unhinged ways. When I imagine him writing them, I picture the meme of Charlie Day , maniacally connecting thoughts together with strings on a board.

“The meme is accurate,” Lu says, deadpan.

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An ungrammatical egg; a demystifying approach to death; 10 new poets to read aloud; and a stunning gothic mystery

My Mother’s Tongues by Uma Menon, illustrated by Rahele Jomepour Bell, Walker, £12.99
Written by a 16-year-old author, this richly textured picture book is a moving celebration of immigrant multilingualism: languages “woven together like fine cloth” until “the seams are invisible”.

We Are the Wibbly! A Tadpole’s Tail by Sarah Tagholm , illustrated by Jane McGuinness, Bloomsbury, £7.99
A hilarious, original picture-book account of one bemused (and ungrammatical) egg’s journey from frogspawn to frog.

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The British-Ghanaian author on having his mind blown by Malorie Blackman as a child, the allure of John Williams’s Stoner and why Zadie Smith made him want to write

My earliest reading memory
Reading Biff and Chip in my first couple of years of primary school. I loved those books and was always desperate for the next one.

My favourite book growing up
Noughts and Crosses by Malorie Blackman . Malorie was my local author – I grew up in Lewisham, south-east London, and she did too – it blew my mind, at 10 or 11, to have someone living near me who was writing fiction in which I could recognise some version of myself.

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From James Baldwin to Sarah Waters, writers have been telling rich, nuanced LGBTQ+ tales for decades – here are some good titles to try

Cinema listings seem to be stacked with films about queer relationships at the moment. From the eerie yet tender romance in All of Us Strangers to the electric sapphic fling in the forthcoming Love Lies Bleeding, these new offerings feel refreshingly nuanced, placing LGBTQ+ characters centre stage without pandering to reductive narratives or heteronormative taste.

If you want to find such stories in your reading, too, why not try some of the following books? Whether you’re looking for accounts of seedy sexual awakenings or reflections on tormented love affairs, here are five of the best.

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Do you love reading – but all too often find yourself just scrolling through your phone or watching TV? Here is how to get lost in literature again

In the age of digital distractions, it is easy to struggle to find the time and headspace to get lost in literature. How can you get back into the habit? Librarians share the best ways to rediscover reading, make it a regular habit – and their tips for the most unputdownable books.

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