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Nostalgia, By Jonathan Buckley

Wed, 22 May 2013 18:30:00 GMT

Get beyond the vaguer-than-vague title and this is some book: a minor-key masterpiece of restraint, invention and the fine art of keeping expectations deliberately low, then elegantly surpassing them. Nostalgia is set in the fictitious Tuscany town of Castelluccio, home to expat British painter Gideon Westfall, a successful but defiantly unfashionable exponent of neo-Neo-Classicism .

The Shining Girls, By Lauren Beukes. HarperCollins, £12.99

Tue, 21 May 2013 23:00:00 GMT

To begin with, Lauren Beukes had an idea so perfectly simple it sounds like an elevator pitch: "time-travelling serial killer".

We're Flying, By Peter Stamm. Granta, £14.99

Mon, 20 May 2013 23:00:00 GMT

Here is a double treat for aficionados of Peter Stamm's small canvases of precision as he maps the imprecision of human emotion. Two collections of short stories are published together in Michael Hofmann's taut translations. Stamm's mood pictures capture, claustrophobically, his characters' internal worlds, and his commitment to "making literature out of ordinary people's lives".

The Trundlers: Underrate Them at Your Peril... By Harry Pearson

Sat, 18 May 2013 23:00:00 GMT

Cricket's quickies and spinners tend to get far more attention than the medium-pace men, but the pantheon of seamers, swingers and off-stump naggers celebrated here by Harry Pearson reminds us what an integral part of the game bowlers operating largely in the 50-75mph zone have been down the years.

Paperback review: The Art of Leaving, By Anna Stothard

Sat, 18 May 2013 18:30:00 GMT

Eva Elliott no sooner starts a relationship than she is wondering how to get out of it, and worries that there is something odd about her tendency "to think so often about endings". That's until she meets the dashing barrister Luke, who would seem to offer her lasting happiness. But when an old friend of his, the glamorous Grace, arrives on the scene, Eva feels threatened – and her feet begin to itch once more.

Paperback reivew: Earthbound, By Paul Morely

Sat, 18 May 2013 18:30:00 GMT

Earthbound is part of a new Penguin series, in which authors discuss their favourite London Underground lines. Paul Morley's effort, which focuses on the Bakerloo, takes the form of an enjoyably meandering and opinionated essay – he recounts his own experiences as a bewildered commuter, weaving in digressions on Krautrock, modernist architecture and Impressionist painting.

Paperback review: Skio, By Michael Frayn

Sat, 18 May 2013 18:30:00 GMT

Michael Frayn's ingeniously clever, riotously silly novel is set on the eponymous Greek island, where a charitable foundation is preparing to host a gala dinner for an array of important guests. The keynote speaker, bumptious Dr Norman Wilfred – an authority in "Scientometrics" – arrives only to find that someone else has commandeered his luggage.

Paperback review: Diving Belles, By Lucy Wood

Sat, 18 May 2013 18:30:00 GMT

Lucy Wood's beguiling debut collection is set along the coastlines of her native Cornwall, and draws on a rich Cornish tradition of myth and folklore. In these tales, children play among the bleached bones of giants; young women are transformed into standing stones on clifftops; ageing pensioners plunge beneath the waves to search for spouses lost at sea.

Paperback review: Banksy, The Man Behind the Wall, By Will Ellsworth-Jones

Sat, 18 May 2013 18:30:00 GMT

I've long been sceptical of Banksy, what with his PR-driven cult of anonymity and faux-naÏf public statements.

Review: The Shining Girls, By Lauren Beukes

Sat, 18 May 2013 18:30:00 GMT

You wait ages for a time-travelling serial-killer thriller and then two come along at the same time. But where AK Benedict's The Beauty of Murder chose an academic and philosophical approach, Lauren Beukes's The Shining Girls goes straight for the Hollywood jugular (elevator pitch: Se7en meets Back to the Future; or, perhaps more accurately, Sever meets Back to the Suture).

Review: The Humans, By Matt Haig

Sat, 18 May 2013 18:30:00 GMT

Matt Haig's new novel, his fifth for adults, is a wryly humorous look at the human condition as seen by an alien. The narrator comes from the planet Vonnadoria, where life is based around maths, logic and rationality, with no messy emotions to clutter up the immortal existence. So far, so Mr Spock, but the interest comes from the narrator's mission. A professor of maths at Cambridge University, Andrew Martin, has solved the Riemann hypothesis, a real mathematical conundrum involving prime numbers. Vonnadorians believe that this holds the key to space travel, so the narrator's job is to exterminate Martin and anyone to whom he has divulged his discovery.

Review: Big Brother, By Lionel Shriver

Sat, 18 May 2013 18:30:00 GMT

Lionel Shriver is famous for two things: her prize-winning novel about motherhood, We Need to Talk About Kevin, and her personal obsession with diet and exercise. Big Brother conflates the two in being about a woman's reaction to her brother's obesity.

Photography book review: New Fashion Photography, Compiled by Paul Sloman, Introduction by Tim Blanks

Sat, 18 May 2013 18:30:00 GMT

The 21st century has seen dramatic changes in photography, technology, fashion, and art.

Review: And the Mountains Echoed, By Khaled Hosseini

Sat, 18 May 2013 18:30:00 GMT

The Afghan-American Khaled Hosseini's career as a novelist has not been prolific – this is only his third book in the course of 10 years – but he has made up for it in impact: sales for the first two, The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns, exceed 38 million copies worldwide. These beautifully written epics of the oft bloody history of the land of his birth over the past 60 years have justifiably earned him a reputation as a great storyteller and he must have felt the weight of expectation on him when constructing number three. I'm pleased to discover that it's a worthy successor.

Review: What Do You See When You Close Your Eyes?, By Moss Project

Sat, 18 May 2013 17:00:09 GMT

When the composer and performer Moss Freed finished recording his new jazz album What Do You See When You Close Your Eyes?, he wondered what kind of response it might elicit from the listener, and approached some writers to see if they might put it into words. As a result the album includes a collection of short stories by Colum McCann, Joe Dunthorne, Lawrence Norfolk, Hanan al-Shaykh, James Miller and Naomi Alderman.

What Do You See When You Close Your Eyes?, by Moss Project

Sat, 18 May 2013 17:00:09 GMT

Leaving Alexandria, By Richard Holloway

Fri, 17 May 2013 18:00:43 GMT

This excellent memoir crystallises current debates on the church, homosexuality and women's ordination.

Arcadia, By Lauren Groff

Fri, 17 May 2013 18:00:32 GMT

Poppy-seed cake, polygamy and patchouli are just some of the ingredients of Seventies communal life recalled in this sensuous novel.

Clever Girl, By Tessa Hadley

Fri, 17 May 2013 18:00:24 GMT

Ten-year-old Stella lives with her widowed mum in rented rooms in run-down Sixties Bristol. Top of the class, Stella loves horses and reading. When her mother remarries and they move, teenage Stella meets Valentine. With his Caravaggio cheekbones and intellectual swagger, he lures her away from The Forsyte Saga towards Beckett and Burroughs, from hoping to meet boys on the school bus to the ecstasy of drugs and bohemian posturing.

Edmund Burke: Philosopher, Politician, Prophet, By Jesse Norman

Fri, 17 May 2013 18:00:00 GMT

Conservatism is in deep crisis. The Euro referendum battles ricocheting through Westminster are a side-show. The crisis is of a wholly different order; profound, indeed existential. Margaret Thatcher quite brilliantly held together the tensions between the liberal economic energies of the new right and the traditional, patriotic disposition of both her party and our country. Now the long march of the liberals appears almost complete; they have won out over the "one nation" Tory story.

Basti, By Intizar Husain, trans. Frances Pritchett

Fri, 17 May 2013 18:00:00 GMT

Intizar Husain, shortlisted for this year's Man Booker International Prize, has long been the eminence grise of Pakistani letters. After the death of Qurratulain Hyder, he is also Urdu's most celebrated living writer of fiction. Renowned for his short stories, he shifted at his peak from a quiet realism that some termed Chekhovian to a postmodern use of myth and fable that marked a radical change in Urdu fiction.

Scarp, By Nick Papadimitriou

Fri, 17 May 2013 18:00:00 GMT

Fans of Macfarlane, Sebald or Sinclair may feel they don't need the company of another lyrical urban walker. Think again.

Faces in the Crowd, By Valeria Luisella

Fri, 17 May 2013 18:00:00 GMT

In Mexico City, a mother begins work on a novel about earlier, happier days in Manhattan and her obsession with a poet of the Harlem Renaissance.

Book of a lifetime: An Artist of the Floating World, By Kazuo Ishiguro

Fri, 17 May 2013 18:00:00 GMT

The Booker Prize-winner The Remains of the Day is Kazuo Ishiguro's most famous novel, but An Artist of the Floating World is his one book that I re-read at least once a year.

The Uninvited, By Liz Jensen

Fri, 17 May 2013 18:00:00 GMT

A corporate thriller populated by folkloric trolls and child murderers might sound an odd beast, but Liz Jensen is no stranger to genre-bending fiction. Returning to themes present in her bestselling eco-drama, The Rapture, here she examines how far supernatural phenomena can ever be incorporated into a system of rational beliefs.