Regular flashes of brilliance in the prose don't entirely steady the wobbles in this second novel from UK actress and writer Emily Woof.

Australian writer Kate Grenville’s new book is a homage to her mother Nance, an ‘ordinary’ woman who decided she wasn’t going to follow in her own mother’s footsteps. She talks to Linda Herrick.

I really like the actress Celia Imrie, one of the stars of the Best Exotic Marigold Hotel movies. So I wanted to like her debut novel, but I struggled at times.

There's nothing like a little local knowledge - someone who can point a visitor in the direction of the best pub or offer the inside word on where to find the least crowded beach spot and how to get a good price on tickets for the museum or gallery.

Indian novels tend to be sprawling, colourful and chaotic affairs. Em and the Big Hoom is some of those things but not all.

Never mind the name, Kazuo Ishiguro is one of the best British writers in the business, and his dazzling latest novel, The Buried Giant, may just be his best yet.

You can buy a deluxe edition of this new, independent New Zealand publisher's handsome production, with "Yulong cream paper ... Woodfree real leather ... foil stamping".

Known as an actor in TV satire The Thick Of It and as a comedy writer for Veep, Will Smith has written a mystery thriller set in the Channel Islands. It’s John le Carre meets Middlemarch, he tells Alice Jones.

S.J. Watson’s ambitious follow-up to his best-seller Before I Go To Sleep delves into the murky world of cybersex, he tells Stephen Jewell.

Untangling the dramas of a seemingly normal family makes for an authentic read.

Roddy Doyle’s new novel, aimed at people with poor literacy, is inspired by a death in his own family, the Booker winner tells Arifa Akbar.

To begin a novel with a character who is dead from the very first page is a risk.

Kiwi author’s first novel explores fantasy and memories set to a compelling tune.

I would rather read Kelly Link than breathe. Writing about her is another thing again. I do not know why her new book is called Get In Trouble.

Orwellian theme conjures up masterly and witty parable for our times.

Back in the familiar rural midwest of her previous novels, Moo, Horse Heaven and A Thousand Acres, Pulitzer prize-winner Jane Smiley presents us with the first volume of a projected trilogy.

A novel is a place where past and present versions of one person can co-exist, and in his fifth novel Andrew O'Hagan movingly explores the way the "flotsam" of a life can rise to the surface as old age and memory go about their strange and poignant work.

To modern eyes, the little wagon in a Berlin museum looks like a model of an old horse-drawn cart. Solidly made, about as big as a baby's cot, it is in fact a handcart, to be pulled by people, not animals.

Plaudits to the publisher for their tactile, trim presentation of this small-is-beautiful novella. And to the Australian author herself for a rewarding — and riddling — little read.

What is normal? And what if you don't fit in with society's idea of it? Those are the issues raised by US author Amy Hatvany's thoughtful and compelling new novel

Christchurch crime writer Paul Cleave, whose books have sold more than half a million copies, has no qualms killing people on the page. But now online piracy is killing him, he tells Linda Herrick.

Lucy Wood’s first novel is a magic realist ghost story set in Devon. Lucy Popescu went there to meet her.

"Tell you what", write the editors of this excellent collection, is a phrase that promises "a revelation, a shift, a new truth".

I can see it plainly now. Stephen King has been playing me. The old Stephen King, the real one. I'd forgotten about him. That was his plan all along.