Author Naomi Alderman is best known for her 2016 novel The Power, which won the Women's Prize for Fiction and was later turned into a TV series on Prime Video. Her debut novel, Disobedience, which drew on her experiences growing up in an Orthodox Jewish community in north London, was published in 2006, and made into a film starring Rachel McAdams and Rachel Weisz in 2017. Her other books include The Future and Don’t Burn Anyone at the Stake Today, and she is also a video game creator. Her latest novel, The Strangers – a highly personal tale about a novelist called Naomi who discovers a strange new animal in her back garden – is out on 17 September.

A superbly written and brilliantly acted TV drama about a young female serial killer (Lola Petticrew) who was a sex-trafficked woman who is now tracking down the men who trafficked and brutalised her and is killing them one by one. It is funny and moving and exciting. Come on, you want to watch this. Who doesn't want to see disgusting, abusive men get their comeuppance? It really is deeply enjoyable, while not pulling its punches.

Jasmine Sun is a young journalist who has been doing extraordinary work writing about AI, Silicon Valley and San Francisco, and a culture which is rapidly peeling off from the rest of the world. Her most recent investigation – into the real experiences on the ground of cities where a data centre has been proposed  is brilliant, but everything she writes is wonderful. She has amazing instincts about what one wants to know about. A true star, not just of the future but right now.

I haven't been able to get this film out of my head since I watched it. It is the story of a real case, which you can look up, although don't do that until you've finished watching the film – a man who came to believe that the state had no authority over him, or anyone. He dragged his teenage son into it with him – keeping him out of school and teaching him that laws and government aren’t real. Nick Offerman is tremendous as the father. The film unfolds like a nightmare. We live in a world now where people can and do make their own realities and this is about the effects of that.

I absolutely love Jeremy Cooper's writing, he is clearly someone who has lived his life among aesthetics and art and has a lifetime of opinions and experiences to share. His previous novel, Brian, was also superb, about a solitary man who decides to go to the BFI every night and watch whatever is there, and how film changes his life. This is also about art: a young female saxophonist and an older female composer work together on a project for the Proms. The composer is a procrastinator who finds it hard to engage with life. The saxophonist is vibrantly alive. Will their collaboration produce good music or just discord?

Look, can I just recommend this thing, which, once you've tried it, you will never go back and probably never want shop-bought mayonnaise again? Into the cylindrical cup of a stick blender, put a whole egg, a good dollop of mustard, and pour on oil until the egg is completely covered, and then some. Put the stick blender on top of the yolk and the mustard, and make sure that there are no air bubbles. Then turn the stick blender on and very, very gently and slowly allow more of the oil to get to the egg. You have homemade mayonnaise within less than 60 seconds. Just add lemon juice and salt. You might need to practice a few times until you get it right, but after that it is revolutionary. 

The Strangers by Naomi Alderman, published by Fig Tree, is out on 17 September; order it at a discount here from the Nerve Bookshop