This fine novel investigates the fate of displaced people in the hazardous, dirty backwash of the second world war

It is late afternoon, March 1945, when a German schoolboy cycling home through the dusk sees a number of women under armed guard at the verge. The boy has grown used to the regular transport of workers to the munitions plant beyond town and instinctively senses that this group is different; out of place and suspicious. But by now the war is in its death throes and abnormality has become a given. Allied forces are pouring in, foreign labour is bleeding out. Everyone on Lüneburg Heath, south of Hamburg, seems depleted and confused, no longer sure who belongs and who doesn’t.

Hitler’s war machine was propped up by millions of workers, predominantly brought in from Poland and Ukraine and forcibly deployed to canneries, factories and farms. Once the Deed Is Done, the fine fifth novel from the German-British author Rachel Seiffert, covers the immediate aftermath of the Third Reich’s collapse, when this vast pool of slave labour became a logistical headache and a humanitarian disaster. Ruth Novak, a 32-year-old Red Cross volunteer from England, arrives at the plant to find the guards fled, paperwork burned and scores of hunched, hungry men left behind the iron railings. Undeniably, there is more than enough relief work for Ruth and her colleagues to tackle. But the mystery of those missing women throbs like a sore tooth. There ought to have been more labourers inside the factory, Ruth thinks. So what has become of the rest of them?

• Berrada hopes investment in team will not be affected
• Plan to build £2bn stadium in five years has this in mind

Omar Berrada has admitted it is a “risk” for Manchester United to try to build a world-class team and venue at the same time. The club announced on Tuesday they planned to construct a 100,000-seat ground on land adjacent to Old Trafford.

Berrada hopes United can move into the £2bn stadium by the start of the 2030-31 season but said the cost of building it could have an impact, acknowledging that Arsenal and Tottenham struggled to juggle building a ground and fighting at the top.

The third season of Mike White’s delicious resort-set comedy drama has teased yet another murder but we don’t yet know the whos or the whys

After a characteristically slow start, we are now halfway through this year’s season of The White Lotus. From what we know of the last two seasons, this means that things are about to get very crazy very quickly. To use season one as a way marker, we are now approximately the runtime of The Brutalist away from watching someone perform the equivalent of a suitcase poop.

More than previous runs, however, a number of mysteries still hang over almost every White Lotus character this year. We know that there’s a shooting. We know that there’s a body. At this point, almost every character could be either one of them. It’s time to theorise wildly.