From a transporting historical saga to a tale of small-town betrayal, the authors of our favourite page-turners reveal the books they take on holiday – introduced by Jenny Colgan

It is important to follow a balanced diet on holiday. Too many “My Wife’s Sister’s Husband’s Psychopath”, and you’ll get confused and grumpy. Too much sugary romance and your teeth will fall out. Something too big and challenging you’ve been meaning to get round to for ages will make you feel guilty and more liable to give in to scrolling, and if you take too many supposedly upmarket “must reads” of the summer, you will simply prove to yourself just how much overhyped averageness there is out there, when all you want is something satisfying.

You need to be able to chop and change depending on your mood, which means fiction and nonfiction. And finally, you need to be able to throw all of these rules out of the window if you find a sandy old water-stained copy of, for example, James Herbert’s Domain in your holiday cottage and decide to devote yourself to 600 pages of post-nuclear mutant rat-strewn London, or choose to go for a full-on Maeve Binchy sesh.

Avtar spent decades wondering what happened to the mother he never got to know. Thousands of miles away, Nicci was haunted by the story of a half-brother given away before she was born. How did a chatbot bring them together?

As a small boy growing up in Amritsar, India, in the 1960s, Avtar Singh used to hear whispers. Your mum isn’t really your mum, the rumours would say. Your mum lives abroad. Avtar didn’t really pay any attention to it. “I thought, the neighbours are just making up stories.” But the stories were true: the woman raising Avtar was actually his grandmother. When he was too young to remember it, his father had emigrated to Canada to work as a teacher, leaving Avtar in the care of his paternal grandparents. His grandfather, a police officer, was a fearsome authoritarian, but his grandmother brought him up with tenderness, as if he were her own son. She called him by his nickname, Titu. He felt loved.

When Avtar was around eight years old, he was told about his family in Canada: his dad, his mum and a little brother were waiting for him there, and he would soon travel to join them. Just after his ninth birthday, Avtar found himself sitting on a plane, dressed in a three‑piece suit and tie. He was travelling alone. He had never flown before. He didn’t speak a word of English. He landed in Halifax, Nova Scotia, on Christmas Eve, 1968; his family met him at the airport and took him home. “I didn’t know what to think,” Avtar, now 66, tells me in a video call from his home in Abbotsford, British Columbia. “Before I knew it, it was the first week of January, and I was put in school.”

Investigation finds evidence of distinct groups, from big-picture thinkers to those who sweat the small stuff

An investigation into what people think about has put the spotlight on the modern mind, revealing thoughts dominated by work, the need for coffee and a strong desire to go back to bed.

It also found evidence for four distinct groups of thinkers who spend more time than most either worrying about the world; mulling on household chores and finances; focusing on the mind and body; or the work-hard, play-hard combination of career and pleasure.

In the Warrington suburb of Culcheth, people are hopeful about what one of their own can achieve as the first northern PM in half a century

The Cherry Tree pub is an unassuming local. On a busy road in the Cheshire village of Culcheth, it is a chain-run pub where four shots cost £8, every burger comes with a soft drink, and sport is shown all day on the big screens. It is also a favourite of Andy Burnham, the new prime minister.

Many of the drinkers have a story about – arguably – Culcheth’s most famous son.

There’s no denying the power of the film on the big screen. But how far should modern moral sensibilities influence adaptations of classics?

Everyone knows how dumb it is to be this person: the one who mourns the film adaptation of a favourite text because it misses out this scene, or misreads that particularly beloved character, or has a slightly “inauthentic” take on some detail. Of course I’m talking about Christopher Nolan’s film adaptation of the Odyssey, a poem I have loved since I was a teenager. I enjoyed the movie, in common with a huge number of other people. It seems remarkable, even dizzying, that the adaptation of a nearly 3,000-year-old poem took $264m (£196m) at the box office over its opening weekend, has sent translations of the Odyssey surging up the bestseller charts, and is sold out (for instance) at London’s BFI Imax screen deep into September. We are living in an Odyssey time, amid an Odyssey frenzy.

There is no point trying to be a purist about a beloved classic text. Whoever reads the Odyssey, including Nolan, inescapably does so through the prism of their prejudices, informed by the conditions of their own place and time. Since the Odyssey is the result of decades, maybe centuries, of non-literate oral poets working with memory and improvisation, there’s no precise “original” place or time to return to, anyway. But what I can’t help doing is observe the choices Nolan has made and think about their consequences – because there are always divides in the road, paths not taken by any adapter.

Jacob, 27, a volunteer manager, meets Sophie, 28, a journalist

What were you hoping for?
To meet someone who I could connect with and possibly go on further dates.

Officials in Spain warn winds could worsen fires on Saturday

• Tell us: have you been affected by wildfires in Europe?

The French prime minister, Sébastien Lecornu, has requested the armed forces to deploy an Airbus A400M military transport aircraft earlier than originally planned to help tackle the major wildfires in Gironde, according to Le Monde.

The French newspaper reported the aircraft’s use was not originally expected until the end of the month due to the technical preparations and tests required beforehand.

While the fires raging across forests in France are a dramatic reminder of three successive heatwaves in as many months, the state of the country’s rivers provides another, no less worrying insight into the impact of extreme heat supercharged by the climate crisis.

The Loire, France’s longest river, is at a historical low, with the flow of some branches, including through the city of Orléans, reduced to a trickle between sandbanks. Two weeks ago, 16% of French rivers were reported to have dried up. A quarter of small streams were stagnant or had disappeared altogether, according to the national low water observatory. There has been little rain since.

President mocks political opponents and journalists in mostly light-hearted, hour-long speech at White House correspondents’ dinner

Donald Trump joked around with the room of journalists who he again accused of producing “fake news” as he hurled insults at his political enemies in a speech at the White House correspondents’ dinner.

A day after the Trump administration abandoned, for now, an extraordinary bid to subpoena reporters over their coverage, the US president attended the rescheduled White House correspondents’ dinner – an annual celebration of press freedom – in Washington on Friday evening.

In sea pools built with sandbags and rubble, Amjed Tantesh gives traumatised children brief respite from their daily lives

Swimming classes have started again in Gaza after three years of war, with hundreds of children learning to float, doggy paddle and take their first strokes in five makeshift sea pools built from sandbags and rubble.

The lessons allow a few hundred girls and boys to reclaim their childhood for a few hours in a place where there are no playgrounds, no formal education and children live in fear of continuing Israeli attacks. A UN survey in March found that 96% of children felt death was imminent.

Activity on the Gaza seafront

Jalsa Salana in Hampshire has had enhanced support from police, emergency services and local authorities

Security has been increased by several hundred additional staff at the UK’s largest Muslim convention, Jalsa Salana, alongside enhanced coordination with police, emergency services and local authorities, against a backdrop of growing anti-Muslim sentiment.

Last month, another big Islamic gathering was forced to close early after 12 people were arrested, including three on suspicion of conspiracy to murder, over a suspected far-right threat.