Looking for a new reading recommendation? Here are some brilliant new paperbacks, from moving memoirs to sequels of beloved novels

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From gay penguin parents to snake orgies, a biology professor looks at sexual adaptation in the animal world

In 1998, Roy and Silo, a pair of male chinstrap penguins at Central Park Zoo in New York, were given an abandoned egg to incubate after zookeepers observed them performing mating rituals together. For 34 days, they took turns sitting on it. When the egg hatched, the story became a viral sensation. The New York Times celebrated “A Love That Dare Not Squeak Its Name”. Roy, Silo and their daughter Tango became the subject of a LGBTQ-friendly children’s book, And Tango Makes Three by Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell.

Biology professor Nathan Lents remembers receiving copies of Tango as a gift when he and his husband became foster parents. Fast-forward to the present day, and Tango tops Pen America’s list of the most frequently banned picture books in the US. It was part of a high-profile lawsuit in Nassau County, Florida, and was designated for pulping by officials in Singapore. In 2025, it’s apparent that “conventional categories for gender identity and expression, and sexual attraction and romanticism, are just not cutting it any more”, Lents writes. Queer, non-binary, transgender, polyamorous – terms that were perhaps once obscure are here to stay. But at the same time, a powerful backlash is under way.

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During a period of deep personal turmoil, Marjolein Martinot took her camera down to the riverside in southern France – and began to feel connected again

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Tony Burke’s moreish, messy debut thriller about an iron-pumping cannibal who sparks a turf war between drug gangs excels in narky repartee

‘It’s basic detective work,” says veteran smalltown cop Stanton (Charles Dale), trying to justify pressurising a lead about her love life. “Very fucking basic,” says Patch (Andrea Hall), a London colleague who has come to the sticks because of a possible connection with a grisly serial killer. That’s the narky style of this ramshackle but moreish Welsh thriller, which takes place in the coke-sniffing milieu of endemic poverty and petty criminality, under ubiquitous sallow street lighting, in which everyone’s looking for an out.

Patch is right about the serial killer: drifter Sion (Craig Russell) has pitched up in town and blags a cleaning job at a local gym. A traumatised ex-squaddie with an inferiority complex, he takes offence at the group of hoodlums lording it over the machines. So he hammers in the skull of bouncer Dwayne (Kai Owen) and stores some choice morsels in a freezer; an extra protein source for his iron-pumping. But Sion is oblivious to Dwayne having recently cut in on a drug deal with rival Albanian gangsters – so his seemingly brutal murder threatens to kick off a turf war.

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Annual survey of young people’s reading habits which began two decades ago shows its lowest-ever result, most pronounced among boys aged 11 to 16

Reading enjoyment among children and young people in the UK has fallen to its lowest level in two decades, with the decline particularly pronounced in teenage boys, according to new research.

While the past year saw boys’ reading enjoyment fall across most age groups – particularly among those aged 11 to 16 – girls’ enjoyment remained relatively stable or slightly improved.

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Year 5 children’s punctuation pun scoops top prize in the Beano’s Britain’s Funniest Class competition

A joke about punctuation has been chosen as the funniest in a competition run by the Beano comic.

Year 5 pupils at Riverley primary school in Leyton, east London, won the accolade with their joke: What do you call the fanciest punctuation? An a-posh-trophe.

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Survivors of Flight 149 share chilling testimony as they prepare for their day in court. Plus: a millionaire ex-model needs a new house. Here’s what to watch this evening

9pm, Sky Documentaries
“I’m on a British Airways passenger flight, where’s the champagne? Then there’s this moment when you think: ‘Fuck, they’re bombing the aeroplane.’” That’s the account of one of the survivors of the hostages captured by Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein’s forces when a civilian flight landed in Kuwait in 1990. This startling documentary hears such testimonies as the survivors prepare to take the British government and BA to court to seek “justice and the truth”. Hollie Richardson

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It is a ‘queer Xanadu’, a sliver of sand where weekend-long revelling takes place in fabulous modernist beach-houses. As Fire Island gets its mojo back, we celebrate the Speedos-wearing architect who defined its look

Posters advertising a “bear weekend” cling to the utility poles on Fire Island, punctuating the wooden boardwalks that meander through a lush dune landscape of beach grass and pitch pine. It’s not a celebration of grizzlies, by the looks of the flyers, but of large bearded men in small swimming trunks, bobbing in the pools and sprawled on the sundecks of mid-century modernist homes. You might also find them frolicking in the bushes of this idyllic car-free island, a nature reserve of an unusual kind that stretches in a 30-mile sliver of sand off the coast of Long Island in New York.

Over the last century, Fire Island Pines, as the central square-mile section of this sandy spit is known, has evolved into something of a queer Xanadu. Now counting about 600 homes, it is a place of mythic weekend-long parties and carnal pleasure, a byword for bacchanalia and fleshy hedonism – but also simply a secluded haven where people can be themselves.

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South London park will host events including Field Day and Mighty Hoopla despite last week’s high court ruling

Organisers of the embattled music festival series Brockwell Live, held in Brockwell Park in south London, have said their events will go ahead despite a successful legal challenge against Lambeth council .

The park, in Herne Hill, hosts tens of thousands of people at the festivals Wide Awake, Field Day, Cross the Tracks, City Splash and Mighty Hoopla, as well as the family festival Brockwell Bounce and the Lambeth Country Show.

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