Kate Evans has had six miscarriages. To her, each felt like a bereavement – yet she mourned in silence. So how do you deal with the loss of someone who never lived?

A Freudian PI returns in this historical thriller

Mahler had a superstitious fear of tackling his Ninth Symphony, and the score he completed in 1909 is duly riven with anguish, nostalgia and farewell gestures. Its 1912 premiere did indeed prove posthumous.

Al-Shymaa Kway-Geer got her job because of the way she looks. Not because of her average height, her shoulder-length hair or her fashion sense. She is a Tanzanian MP because of her skin, which is white and freckled with sun damage and her pale, almost colourless eyes.

Nigeria has cracked down on the abuse of children branded as witches after a British investigation into the practice. A man calling himself "the bishop", who said he had killed more than 100 people possessed by the devil, has been arrested.

A youth finds himself in a strange village, near the sea, in the cool of the evening. He does not know how he got there, or who he is. A beautiful young woman explains that he is dead; if he becomes her lover, she will return him to the land of the living. Though tempted, he chooses instead to travel further into the land of death, to the island of Athos where he will try to reach the summit of the Holy Mountain.

In Nigeria, rogue pastors prey on fears of black magic to drum up a lucrative trade in 'exorcisms'

Superstition holds that twins bring bad luck in Madagascar.

Black cats, broken mirrors; superstitions may seem silly, but, asks Sanjida O'Connell, could they be the secret of our survival?

A rather muted master blaster

It is a very strange thing, the way in which the evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins has come to resemble that which he most despises. There is something almost biblical in the desire of this high-profile hard-rationalist to smite the unbelievers, and remove them from the face of the earth, using the implacable power of science and reason. God knows, as he wouldn't say himself, how we'd manage without the chap.

There are some books, like places, that it's better not to encounter too soon in life. I visited Venice for the first time recently and was moved to tears. Perhaps it was the contrast of so much shimmering colour after the grey-green architecture of Geneva, where I was living, but I prefer to think of it as the impact of beauty, an effect that might have been missed had I been younger.

John Woo's epic £40m film has been beset by setbacks and tragedy. Clifford Coonan reports from Beijing