Much more below...

Kinokuniya apologises to customers who felt harassed and warns clients from such companies are not welcome

A commercial “dating coaching” company has been using a popular Sydney bookstore for its clients to test out predatory “pickup” techniques.

In an open letter published online, Kinokuniya Sydney said it had been made aware the unnamed dating coaching company “has been using our store to give their clients practical experience, much to our dismay”.

Related: 50 years of pickup artists: why is the toxic skill still so in demand?

today a dude tried some classic ‘the game’ pickup artist lines on me at a bookstore, andstarted out w ‘can you help me with a recommendation, what was your fave book of 2019’. so i said @clementine_ford’s fight like a girl. he looked a bit flustered but persevered

And to anyone who has felt harassed we offer our deepest apologies. We have contacted the company we know is involved and requested they not enter the store again.

Jeanine Cummins’s novel, acclaimed by Oprah Winfrey, Stephen King and others, also faces scathing criticism from Latinx writers

Jeanine Cummins’s British publisher, Headline, is standing shoulder to shoulder with the American press that published her divisive thriller, declaring that it is proud to publish her in the UK. As the backlash continues over her novel about migration from Mexico to the US, the imprint acknowledged the book has “sparked debate about the legitimacy of who gets to tell which stories”.

American Dirt, the high-octane story of a Mexican mother who crosses into the US with her son, was published this week. It was acquired for a seven-figure sum by Flatiron Books in the US, and received effusive pre-publication praise from authors including Stephen King and Don Winslow. It went on to land a film deal and win selection from Oprah’s Book Club – a surefire guarantee of bestsellerdom.

Related: Jeanine Cummins on her explosive new novel, American Dirt

Judges of the £10,000 Portico award hail Jessica Andrews’ Saltwater for showing northern identity as ‘a place within us’

Jessica Andrews has won the £10,000 Portico prize, which goes to the book deemed to “best evoke the spirit of the north”, for her story of a girl from Sunderland who feels like an outsider when she goes to university in London.

Andrews sat down to write her debut novel, Saltwater, at the age of 24, fearing that the stories of the working-class people she loved were “slipping away”. Told in fragments, exploring mother-daughter relationships and a shifting class identity, it follows Lucy as she moves south to a new life she finds overwhelming, eventually leaving London.

Related: Saltwater by Jessica Andrews review – a coming-of-age debut novel

Oscar-winning actor presents documentary retracing life of Jewish teenager killed by the Nazis

She has performed on countless film sets, but Dame Helen Mirren was “profoundly moved” by the latest one: a reconstruction of the claustrophobic Amsterdam apartment in which Jewish teenager Anne Frank hid for two years from the Nazis with her family until she was arrested in 1944 and sent to her death in a concentration camp.

The Oscar-winning actor is presenting a documentary, to be released in cinemas on Monday, in which Frank’s life is retraced through the pages of her diary, a classic of war literature.

Jones, who was diagnosed with dementia in 2015, was the main directing force in Python’s films, as well a prolific creator of TV documentaries and children’s books

• Terry Jones: the Monty Python director – and a very naughty boy
• Jones’s lasting legacy – a life in pictures

Terry Jones, founder member of Monty Python and director of three of Python’s celebrated feature films, has died aged 77, his family have announced. In a statement they said: “Terry passed away on the evening of 21 January 2020 at the age of 77 with his wife Anna Soderstrom by his side after a long, extremely brave but always good humoured battle with a rare form of dementia, FTD.”

“Over the past few days his wife, children, extended family and many close friends have been constantly with Terry as he gently slipped away at his home in North London. We have all lost a kind, funny, warm, creative and truly loving man whose uncompromising individuality, relentless intellect and extraordinary humour has given pleasure to countless millions across six decades.”

Related: Monty Python's Terry Jones – a life in pictures

The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes returns to Panem, but gives dictator Coriolanus Snow a starring role

Suzanne Collins’s prequel to The Hunger Games will focus on the early life of her villain Coriolanus Snow, the tyrannical president of Panem, an extract from the forthcoming novel has revealed.

Publisher Scholastic has announced a world record first printing of 2.5m copies for The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, due to be published in May. But the preview has prompted unease among fans, after it showed that Collins has chosen to tell the story through a younger version of Snow – the dictator who loomed over her Mockingjay trilogy.

Latino writers say Jeanine Cummins’ novel uses stereotypes and exploits the suffering of Mexican immigrants

American Dirt, the third novel by Jeanine Cummins, begins with a group of assassins opening fire on a quinceañera cookout. We watch Lydia’s entire family get killed, one by one. Only Lydia and her eight-year-old survive.

The scene is one of many depictions of graphic violence in American Dirt and it has sparked an intense conversation about “pity porn” and writing about the Mexican immigrant experience.

Related: Jeanine Cummins on her explosive new novel, American Dirt

This makes a convincing case for why "American Dirt" is problematic--and backs it up with a lot of examples from the text itself. If you don't know this culture (as I don't), listen carefully to the people who do. https://t.co/HWY3lsGgvh

Hello, fellow book lovers! My next @oprahsbookclub selection is “American Dirt” by @jeaninecummins. From the first sentence, I was IN. pic.twitter.com/uonqIa3QRK

pic.twitter.com/Kd5hunlZAI

Related: A romance novelist spoke out about racism. An uproar ensued

This article was amended to correct information about Courtney Milan’s background

Noel Streatfeild’s children’s classic about orphaned sisters preparing for a life on the stage is being reimagined by the writer, actor and internet star

Ballet Shoes, Noel Streatfeild’s classic tale of three adopted girls hoping for – or dreading – a life on the stage, is to be reimagined for the modern era by writer and actor Carrie Hope Fletcher.

Endorsed by Streatfeild’s estate, Fletcher’s novel will, like Ballet Shoes, follow three adopted children. But while Ballet Shoes’ Pauline, Petrova and Posy Fossil are brought together when they are adopted by the eccentric elderly palaeontologist they know as Great Uncle Matthew, Fletcher’s children are found by the eccentric pebble collector Great Aunt Maude. They live in a rickety old London theatre, rather than the home on the Cromwell Road inhabited by the Fossils, and Fletcher has also made one of them – the ballet dancer of the three – a boy.

Les Mots à La Bouche’s move from the Marais shows loss of cultural heritage, activists say

In the window of France’s best-known gay bookshop, above the display of Lucian Freud art books, opera singer Maria Callas’s memoirs and a history of the Pride movement, a poster warns in giant red letters: “Cultural heritage in danger.” An urgent note on the door adds: “We need your help!”

Les Mots à La Bouche, a 40-year-old Paris institution, is the top LGBT bookshop in France and considered one of the best in the world – a focal point of Paris’s historic gay neighbourhood in the Marais district. But as property speculation in central Paris reaches dizzying heights – it is estimated that at certain times of year there are more Airbnb rentals than residents in the Marais – the bookshop is being forced out by rising rents.