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Australian book reviewsAustralian booksReviewSilvey’s first novel since Jasper Jones is a compassionate tale about overcoming trauma to find family and self-acceptance, narrated by a trans child The characters that populate Craig Silvey’s novels are highly sensitive, acutely perceptive and imaginative – people hovering on the edge of childhood and the cusp of adulthood and struggling to find or understand their place in the world. This is as true of Charlie Bucktin, the 13-year-old at the centre of Silvey’s bestselling novel Jasper Jones, as it is of Eleanor and Ewan, the blind and reclusive (respectively) young protagonists of his debut, Rhubarb.

Newspapers & magazinesMirror sued by HoldenTV actress Amanda Holden is suing the Daily Mirror for libel over two articles that appeared in the tabloid's 3am gossip column alleging she had kicked up a fuss over her accommodation arrangements during the filming of BBC1 hairdressers' drama Cutting It. Her lawyers confirmed today Ms Holden has issued high court proceedings for defamation against Mirror Group Newspapers in respect of two articles about her published in the Mirror on September 28 and October 8.

My favourite albumMusicMy favourite album: Pirate's Choice by Orchestra BaobabOur writers are picking their favourite albums. Here, Caspar Llewellyn Smith gets carried away by a magical collision of Cuban and African soundsIt could feel lame to start any paean to a favourite record with a claim for its significance; it makes it sound dry, academic, removed from the emotions it engages. And yet the story of Pirate's Choice bears re-telling, and what I've taken from it over the years is bound up in its multiple histories.

Children and teenagersReviewJosh Lacey on an ecologically-minded book for teenagersScat, by Carl Hiaasen (Orion, £9.99) Like PG Wodehouse and Terry Pratchett, Carl Hiaasen always returns to the same fictional – or semi-fictionalised – world, but manages to unearth an apparently endless supply of convoluted plots and entertaining characters with improbable names. He writes densely plotted comic thrillers exposing the arrogance and greed of the politicians and businessmen who are determined to desecrate his native Florida.

Tony Rohr in a Joint Stock Theatre Group production of the play The Speakers, 1974. Photograph: Evening Standard/Getty ImagesTony Rohr in a Joint Stock Theatre Group production of the play The Speakers, 1974. Photograph: Evening Standard/Getty ImagesStageObituaryTony Rohr obituaryActor known for screen roles in The Long Good Friday and Harry’s Game, and as a stalwart of the Joint Stock Theatre GroupThe character actor Tony Rohr, who has died of prostate cancer aged 84, was frequently cast as villains on screen.

A man walking with his dog in the early morning in Lower Omalo.Adventure tourists have thrown the remotest mountain region of the country an economic lifeline – but at what cost to ancient traditions and customs? by Nadia Beard; photographs by Tomer IfrahThrough the Greater Caucasus mountain range that forms the northern belt of Georgia, the slim road of the Abano pass cuts a treacherous path. In fact the term “road” is a little generous; for 45 miles, this dirt track cut out of the edge of the mountainside swells and contracts as it snakes upwards to a height of 2,000 metres.