Authors from Jonathan Swift to NoViolet Bulawayo show how much can be done with what might sound a narrow form – and how much fun can be had with it

These characters are often seen as comical or absurd, but authors from Shakespeare to Olga Tokarczuk show they have serious things to tell us

Finding your way without the social template of romantic love is a tough challenge, but writers from Deborah Levy to Hanya Yanagihara offer clues to how it can be done

Women’s role in espionage, largely written by women, leans less on explosions and more on perception, nuance and explorations of sacrifice – though they still kick ass

From sunny novels that revel in the picturesque to stark reports from one of the poorest regions in northern Europe, this county’s literature deserves more than a visit

Switching focus from conventional emotional ties, writers from George Eliot to Hanya Yanagihara show there are other stories to tell, just as profound

You might not hear much about it if you study philosophy, but this rich intellectual tradition is centuries old and often more open to the mess of life than its male counterpart

Never mind heaving bosoms and whimpering grunts, some writers – from Sally Rooney to DH Lawrence – depict genuine, sometimes graphic, intimacy in all its forms

These moments of precious fresh awareness can be found in authors from Oliver Sacks to Ottessa Moshfegh and Franz Kafka

Old women in novels have too often been malign or feeble, but fiercer and more vital senior citizens can be found in authors from Agatha Christie to Elizabeth Strout

With holidays, light evenings and heat, it is a season that goes naturally with romance, as authors from F Scott Fitzgerald to Maggie O’Farrell show

The genre is often presumed to be one ‘for boys’. Novelists including Virginia Woolf and Georgette Heyer prove that women are just as capable of bold escapes and derring-do as men

These interrupted stories, in fiction and real life, are powerfully moving and key into a universal anxiety

The days when lesbian stories were always racked with anguish are behind us. As Pride month gets under way, here is some rather more joyful reading

Science, memoir, fiction and poetry all point us towards the urgent truth that humans and nature are part of each other – and under threat

At war with the establishment, putting themselves in reckless danger and succumbing to terrible habits, these unreliable figures are dependably entertaining

We don’t need crash-bang confrontations in moral black and white. These novels tell more subtle stories, where the line between human and other blurs

From Elena Ferrante to Taffy Brodesser-Akner, writers have captured the pressures that being a mother can inflict on marriage and on the creative self

From John Steinbeck to Tommy Orange, it’s an old story that keeps on going, in one of the wealthiest countries on Earth. These books help explain why

So often defying the conventions of their age, these inspiring figures are also dependable boons for nephews and nieces in books by authors from Jane Austen to JK Rowling