From modern ghost stories to the history of grime: Stylist has a list of recommended reads for July.

Among the books that staff at The Pool are reading this week are Joanna Harris’ new thriller, Different Class, and The Talent Lab, by Owen Slot, which tells the story of Team GB’s recent Olympic successes.

Brexit is bringing considerable challenges to the Irish book industry.

And in more sad news, Manchester is to close ten libraries.

In the run-up to the publication of his new novel, How to Stop Time, Matt Haig talks to the Guardian about how books have saved him.

Jonathan Freedland asks how fiction can possibly compete with the presidency of Donald Trump.

Andrew Motion reviews A State of Freedom, by Neel Mukherjee in which “themes of alienation and life in transit are explored through the experiences of five characters in modern-day India”.

Prizes

Ingrid Persaud has won 2017’s Commonwealth Writers’ Short Story Prize for “Sweet Sop” - “a story exploring harrowing themes of fractured families, death and terminal illness, through the medium of chocolate”.

The longlist for the inaugural Goldsboro Books Glass Bell Award, which celebrates contemporary fiction. Kit de Waal, Clare Mackintosh and C E Morgan are among those longlisted.