Asked to recommend books for the holidays, some of our reviewers suggest thrillers, short stories and poetry, while others plump for history, lit. crit. or a stop-you-sleeping study of global warming. And, for some, the next few weeks are are an opportunity for spiritual reading

YSENDA MAXTONE GRAHAM
I’m haunted by Anthony Ray Hinton’s memoir The Sun Does Shine (Rider Books, £8.99; Tablet price £8.09). A black Christian warehouse worker in Alabama, he was convicted for a crime he didn’t commit, and spent 30 years on Death Row. This is a chronicle of state-sponsored racism and the fight for justice. Meanwhile, every time I go to sleep, I think of the five women in Hallie Rubenhold’s superb The Five (Doubleday, £16.99; Tablet price £15.29): the women who would be the victims of Jack the Ripper. What lurch in their fortunes led them to that patch of east London, to curl up for the night in a dark alleyway? The Ripper is (rightly) absent from this unforgettable book about five Victorian women’s lives.