This mash-up of fiction biography and social history creatively mimics our retail frenzy.

There is a bloody battle afoot in the world of crime fiction. Few would deny that the status quo in the fictional worlds of murder and detection these days is a grim and gritty one, with operatic levels of violence practically obligatory. And this isn't just the male practitioners of the genre; many female writers now cheerfully out-Herod Herod when it comes to upping the body count.

Carlos Fuentes, one of Latin America's best-known authors and a critic of governments in Mexico and the US, died yesterday after a literary career spanning more than five decades. He was 83.

In celebration of the woman who scared my mother

Reasons to be cheerful

Out of America: The judges have decided not to make an award for the best work of fiction – literary folk are not happy

William Boyd, the celebrated author and James Bond enthusiast, is to step into Ian Fleming’s shoes and send Britain’s most famous fictional spy out on a new mission.

A bit of a departure this week, to celebrate the British Library's championing of forgotten authors. The jewel in their crown is the republication of the world's first detective novel, The Notting Hill Mystery by Charles Warren Adams, which had been serialised in the magazine Once A Week between 1862 and 1863.

Where are you now and what can you see?

Between the lines of beauty

Literary adaptations rule this year's Oscar nominations. But, for an author, having a book transformed by movie magic isn't always pleasant. Five writers tell Charlotte Philby what it's like to see your creation 'brought to life'.

Lewis Davies was the younger brother of the writer Rhys Davies (1901-78). Like him, he was born at Blaenclydach, a mining village near Tonypandy in the Rhondda valley. Their father kept a small grocer's shop, known rather grandly as Royal Stores, and their mother was an uncertificated schoolteacher. Lewis, born in 1913, was the youngest of their six children.

Killing you softly, like a cashmere slap