Sophie Roell, Editor

If you love adventure stories, you’ll be delighted to hear that there’s a book prize fully focused on them. Novelist Emma Styles, one of the judges for the 2024 Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing Prize, talks us through the shortlist for best published novel, from pirates in the Caribbean to World War II Italy, from Victorian London to a dystopian future Britain—by way of Nigeria and Tbilisi, Georgia.

History is too complex to be an easy guide for navigating the present, but that doesn’t mean the experience of those who came before can’t shed valuable insights into our current dilemmas. In his latest book, History for Tomorrow, social philosopher Roman Krznaric looks at ten crises currently facing the world and how lessons from the past might be able to help.

Many of us view cancer as an enemy that we have to fight and look forward to the day it is eliminated by modern medicine. But that’s not going to happen, says Jarle Breivik, a professor of medicine at the University of Oslo. He argues for a more realistic approach to cancer as a fundamental part of life and what it means to be human.

From the Baroque painter who killed a man in Rome during the Counter-Reformation to the surrealist artist who left Britain and died in Mexico City in 2011, award-winning biographer Sue Prideaux talks to us about her favorite biographies of artists. Her new biography of Paul Gauguin, Wild Thing, is out this week and has been longlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize.

Historical novels are at their most compelling when they get the details of daily life in the past right, argues bestselling author Tracy Chevalier. She picks five of her favorite historical novels set in Italy, from 16th-century Florence to 1950s Naples, with a couple of stops in Venice, where her own latest novel, The Glassmaker, is set.

From a noir novel by Eric Ambler set in 1930s Europe to some of the great spy thrillers of the post-World War II era, British novelist Patrick Worrall, author of The Exile, talks us through five of his favourite espionage novels.

Ian Fleming wrote the James Bond novels late in his life, before dying of a heart attack at the age of just 56. Charlie Higson, author of the Young Bond series and a novella, On His Majesty’s Secret Service, introduces us to the man and his life and talks us through his five favourite Bond books.

It’s not often that a movie about something we know a lot about lives up to expectations, but when it came to the Oppenheimer movie, science writer Mark Wolverton—who has read almost every book he could find about the making of the atomic bomb—was impressed. As a bonus to his interview (on the history of physics), he shared some recommendations of books to read for others who enjoyed it, including a sci-fi novel in which Oppenheimer’s life takes a different turn.

Comics are a great way to read all sorts of stories, whether fiction, nonfiction, or a compelling blend of the two. Ivanka Hahnenberger, translator of more than 70 graphic novels, talks us through some of her favourites, from the history of the atomic bomb to the heartbreaking story of Olympic athlete Samia Yusuf Oman, from the ‘Rumble in the Jungle’ to contemporary Iran and Paris.

For an engrossing read, it doesn’t get much better than a good audiobook. Michele Cobb, publisher of AudioFile magazine, shares her favourite new audiobooks from the first half of 2024—from engaging memoirs narrated by their authors, to dark psychological thrillers and a post-apocalyptic novel set in New Hampshire.