Authors recommend their favourite recent reads, from addictive novels and fascinating cultural history to a game-changing graphic memoir

• Summer reading: the 50 hottest books for a great escape

Bernardine Evaristo
More Fiya: A New Collection of Black British Poetry, edited by Kayo Chingonyi, brings together a wonderful array of outstanding poets whose linguistic flair and wide-ranging perspectives excite, inspire and challenge in equal measure. As a companion, Canongate is also republishing the 1998 anthology The Fire People: A Collection of British Black and Asian Poetry, edited by Lemn Sissay.

Hilary Mantel
A novel featuring the young Joseph Stalin might not sound like summer entertainment, but Stephen May’s Sell Us the Rope is fresh and original: jaunty, cunning, thought-provoking but never solemn. For nonfiction, and a venture into the strange world of coincidence and prediction, try Sam Knight’s The Premonitions Bureau. It’s a book hard to classify, but wholly fascinating: lively, nimble, its subject poised on the frontiers of the possible.