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“I’m gentrifying the crime novel,” proclaims John Banville. “My aim is to turn crime fiction into a literary form.” The Irish author’s shift from prize-winning heavyweight to genre-fiction bestseller is one of the more unexpected twists in an illustrious career.   The winner of the 2005 Man Booker prize for The Sea and several other awards, Banville is frequently listed among the runners and riders in contention for the Nobel Prize for Literature. In 2006, he began writing detective novels featuring morose pathologist Quirke – played on television by Gabriel Byrne – under the pseudonym Benjamin Black. More recently, he...

Michael Rosen sniffs his armpit, winces slightly and confirms that, no, there is “no danger” of his marketing a candle with a scent based on that of his intimate body parts. “I’m not Gwyneth Paltrow,” he explains, “and I’m not some kind of guru.” Instead, says the writer and broadcaster, “I’m somebody who has had some experiences, tried to chew over them and written about them in case people find that at all helpful.”   He’s downplaying not just the wisdom with which his latest book, Getting Better, is laced, but also how hard-won it has been. It covers his...

When I was 25 years old,” begins Dasha Kiper’s book, “I moved in with a man who was 98.” It’s an intriguing opening line, but the pages that follow are even more fascinating. Until she paused to write Travellers to Unimaginable Lands, which is Radio 4’s Book of the Week, Kiper was a consulting clinical director at an Alzheimer’s organisation in New York.   The 98-year-old, Mr Kessler, was a Holocaust survivor and dementia sufferer, and the story of how Kessler and Kiper coped together is just the first of several painful, poignant, funny, revealing and instructive case studies that form...

Book of the Month: The Premonitions Bureau   Listening back to my recording of this interview is a distinctly spooky experience. We are speaking two days before the Queen’s death, and Sam Knight – who has written a book about people who can see the future – asks me: “What if I had a vivid, specific premonition that something dreadful was about to happen at Balmoral?”   Normally, I’d wave this off as mere coincidence (it’s the day of Liz Truss’s audience with Her Majesty, so that’s probably why it’s in his mind), but Knight’s book poses enough troubling questions...

Is your new novel not exactly a page-turner? Are your fingers spending more time scrolling on screens than flicking through pages? Well, clearly a book club is for you. No, not the Book Club film about 50 Shades of Grey – but an actual book club, complete with specially selected books, the chance to discuss with other members and even an overall saving on the price. Everyone knows that book clubs help motivate you to do the reading and help you make new friends – but a good book club can be a gateway to so much more, and impact...