Charlotte Higgins's Red Thread is a masterwork, an open-eyed analysis of the everyday mazery we face without even realising it, and an understanding of psychic and narrative architecture that's a pretty crucial piece of equipment for wherever and whenever we find ourselves lost. I read it on the balcony of a hotel in Rome... and it was as if the city itself opened playfully and thoughtfully around the reading experience in its amalgam of pasts and presents, histories and mysteries.

Any bookshelf would be graced by the presence of [Red Thread]… [it] ask[s] readers to surrender to the unpredictable pleasures of getting lost… playful and gorgeously written.

A serious, substantial, scholarly and yet also highly personal book about mazes… Red Thread is a book to admire as much as to enjoy.

[Charlotte Higgins] is no ordinary author. Her thrillingly original book – it really is like no other – is itself a sort of maze of facts and thoughts, ancient tales and modern phenomena… on every page there is a sparkling idea or a fascinating piece of information. It is also beautifully written… a beautifully produced volume, full of colour illustrations of sculptures and paintings and tantalising maps of mazes.

In this beautifully produced and richly illustrated book… Charlotte Higgins takes us on a fascinating meander through the art and literature of the last 2,500 years… After reading this book you will see labyrinths everywhere.

The joy of travelling with Higgins… [is that Red Thread] delights in the blinking movement from one subject to the next. In a few pages, we travel from Middlemarch to Ovid, from Arachne to Velázquez and his painting The Spinners and then back to George Eliot. It sounds dizzying; in truth it is illuminating.

This is a book to get gloriously lost in… It’s a lovely, wayward meander, combining memoir with surprising historical facts, unexpected connections and intriguing, imaginative speculations.

Higgins’ range is admirably, enviably broad… there is no shortage of visual pleasure in Red Thread.

Charlotte Higgins’ Red Thread is subtitled “On Mazes And Labyrinths” but is much more than that. It takes a nimble thinker to link the ancient stories of the Minotaur to archeological fabrication in the Edwardian era and to Arnold Bennett and the Potteries... [one] of the most interesting books this year.

Fascinating… enriching… very satisfying.

Red Thread is no ordinary piece of cultural criticism. It is certainly a learned journey through the role and history of mazes in art and reality. But it is also a deeply personal exploration of the role of the labyrinth in Higgins's own life… [Higgins] leads us all the way to the monster at the centre of the maze.

I adored this twisty-turny, illustrated history of labyrinths... A book to lose yourself in.

This erudite and elegantly written book transcends its esoteric subject matter: what begins as an art historical investigation develops into a thoughtful meditation on the nature of intellectual inquiry, and a celebration of human curiosity.

Fascinating… Higgins is a brilliant and scholarly writer.

A new book from journalist Charlotte Higgins is the [Radio 4] Book of the Week, treading a path through the winding topic of mazes and labyrinths.

The material is wonderfully rich, and the author I excellent at marshalling it into a series of vignettes to conjure the shape of a labyrinth.

[A] beautifully crafted book.

Higgins’ darting, spooling path connects myth with faith, art with literature, landscape with architecture, anecdote with interpretation… its images and schematic diagrams of labyrinths adding a visual dimension to a book already rich in thought and observation.

Richly erudite and compellingly personal.

A rich cultural history of mazes and labyrinths… Beautifully designed and precisely structured, it’s also a personal book about childhood memories, dreams and feeling at times lost in life.

[An] immersive, unusual love tale

Stokes-Chapman can write fascinating, three-dimensional characters... Meanwhile, extensive research brings the period so much to life you can taste it... full of buried family histories and fantastical archaeological theories, Pandora is a readable, solid debut

Whether the discussion is about artificial intelligence, the future capacities of knowledge, politics, philosophy, intuition, history (philosopher Thomas Metzinger shares experiences from post–World War II Germany that are hard to look away from), religion, reason, or the nature of consciousness, Harris grounds lofty discussions with concrete examples and his gift for analogy . . . free and open debate, in the best sense of the word . . . the book’s advantage over the podcast is that readers can linger as they need to and cherry-pick interviews at will. Recommended for anyone who wants to spend time with intelligent minds wrestling not with each other but with understanding.

One of the most eloquent and inspiring memoirs of recent years... A Dutiful Boy is real-life storytelling at its finest

Mohsin Zaidi...in a compassionate, compelling and humorous way, tells his story of seeking acceptance within the gay community, and within the Muslim community in which he grew up

A powerful portrayal of being able to live authentically despite all the odds

Zaidi's affecting memoir recounts his journey growing up in east London in a devout Muslim household. He has a secret, one he cannot share with anyone - he is gay. When he moves away to study at Oxford he finds, for the first time, the possibility of living his life authentically. The dissonance this causes in him - of finding a way to accept himself while knowing his family will not do the same - is so sensitively depicted. One of the most moving chapters includes him coming home to a witch doctor, who his family has summoned to "cure" him. This is an incredibly important read, full of hope.

A beautifully written book, a lovely story, life-affirming

Zaidi's account is raw, honest and at times quite painful to read. It's so vivid that it feels almost tangible, as though you're living the experiences of the author himself.

This heartfelt and honest book is beautifully written and full of hope