Stanley ‘Tookie’ Williams: one of the last men to be executed in California

The once-feared leader of the Crips, put to death in 2005, had a warning for UK gangs. Tony Thompson met him in prison

In Byron’s Wake and Ada Lovelace reviews – computing reputations

Annabella Byron is rescued from more than a century of bad press, while three mathematicians consider her daughter’s particular genius

James Comey’s political memoir beats rivals at bookstores

The Trump-bashing FBI director’s memoir, A Higher Loyalty, has sold 600,000 in its first week at bookshops

Dictator Literature by Daniel Kalder review – the deathly prose of dic-lit

Mein Kampf is drivel, but what about Stalin’s poetry and Mussolini’s bodice-ripper? And does an autocrat lurk within every dreadful writer?

A Spy Named Orphan: The Enigma of Donald Maclean – review

Roland Philipps’s gripping retelling of the Soviet spy’s life reveals his appetite for self-destruction

In brief: Balancing Acts; Francis I; The Fire Court

Behind the scenes at the National Theatre, the life Francis I of France, and murder on the streets of London after the Great Fire

Meghan: A Hollywood Princess by Andrew Morton – digested read

A young woman’s journey from California dreaming to whirlwind royal romance, charted by Andrew Morton, retold more succinctly by John Crace

All in the Downs by Shirley Collins review – the English Folk Revivalist’s revival

A memoir from the singer who lost her voice that celebrates her roots and is unsparing about the London scene’s leading lights

Packing My Library by Alberto Manguel review – a bibliophile’s demons

The urbane Argentinian grumpily boxes up his 35,000 books and writes a Jekyll and Hyde set of reflections on libraries and the power of reading

Deborah Levy: ‘The new generation of young women can change the world’

The writer discusses the quest for a freer life and why she always returns to JG Ballard

Shakespeare’s Originality by John Kerrigan review – what the Bard pilfered and changed

Shakespeare inhabited a literary culture in which imitation was applauded. This erudite study teases out his alchemical transformations of what he had read or seen

Astrid Lindgren: The Woman Behind Pippi Longstocking by Jens Andersen – review

A thoughtful biography of the children’s author reveals an exuberant nonconformist whose eventful life was touched by tragedy

Imagine Wanting Only This by Kristen Radtke review – an appetite for destruction

Kristen Radtke’s restless memoir of her search for abandoned places is like Planet of the Apes as told by Shelley

Thomas Paine by JCD Clark review – a High Tory on the radical hero

The veteran enfant terrible of English historians sets out to rescue the author of Common Sense from ‘from the enormous approbation of posterity’

Rebel Prince by Tom Bower – digested read

The latest biography of the heir to Britain’s throne is given a proper crowning by John Crace