In this book full of striking images, it's the first that seems to best capture the essence of potter Barry Brickell - a 1971 portrait of the artist bent double to work inside a huge ceramic jar, his trunk vanishing ostrich-like into its clay mouth.
An older woman's wisdom is an asset we can all bank, writes Nicky Pellegrino.
Woodrow Wilson (Woody) Guthrie wrote many of his most enduring folk songs after trekking through America's dust-bowl during the years of the Depression and dispossession.
It was only in retrospect that I truly got the point of Douglas Kennedy’s latest novel.
The universal appeal of the "What If" speculation underpins this fascinating collection of artistic losses ranging from historic thefts to works that never actually realised.
Martin Crowe has called John Parker's document on the "Taylor Affair" ill-advised in a new book.
Partly autobiographical novel is a potential winner of awards, predicts Nicky Pellegrino.
Stephen Jewell meets the award-winning South African author of a thrilling tale of murder ... and baseball.
Sarah Dunant's trio of novels set in Renaissance Italy cemented her reputation as one of the great writers of historical fiction.
Most of Nicolas Rothwell's books and journalism offer lyrical, subjective evocations of northern Australia and its indigenous people.
The first book by Australian author Lucy Neave, Who We Were is a very restrained sort of thriller.
Some natures are drawn to hazard: to explore the familiar from a vertiginously different perspective.
Abigail Tarttelin has written a dramatic and emotionally authentic story. An unusual sexual secret gives this novel raw power, writes Nicky Pellegrino.
New Zealand’s Poet Laureate, Ian Wedde, has written two of my all-time favourite poetry collections: The Commonplace Odes and Three Regrets And A Hymn To Beauty.
Wellingtonian Emma Martin won the Commonwealth Short Story Prize with the title story of this first collection.
One of the more startling observations in a book filled with acute and startling observations is that Africans only really come to consider they are “black” when they go to the United States.
Steven Eldred-Grigg is a well-known and respected popular historian and novelist. Bangs is the fourth book in a series of novels that began with the much loved Oracles and Miracles, published in 1987.
Nicky Pellegrino delves into a harrowing tale of survival that's also a story about love.
People write - or want to write - for many reasons. For some, it is a compulsion, an itch that must be scratched. For others, it has more to do with the narcissistic conviction that the world wants to know what they're thinking and feeling.
A few years ago I visited the charming English port town of Whitby and was intrigued to discover its crucial role in the lives of two very different men whose names continue to echo down the centuries: Count Dracula and Captain James Cook.
For those readers eagerly anticipating the next effort from Sarah Waters, the queen of historical revisionism, look no further than Kate Worsley's debut novel.
A previously unpublished novel by Janet Frame, In the Memorial Room was written in 1974 and comes out of her experience as a Katherine Mansfield Fellow in Menton, France.
“Houses have their own ways of dying,” wrote E.M. Forster, “some with a tragic roar, some quietly.” Ashenden Park, the honey-stoned Palladian villa at the heart of Elizabeth Wilhide’s debut novel.
Nicky Pellegrino praises the author's skilful blend of human characters with the folklore of two cultures.
Stephen Jewell talks to American writer Hugh Howey about why his post-apocalyptic tale is more grounded than its contemporaries.
As the number of living New Zealanders who have actually fought in a war declines, attendance at Anzac Day ceremonies continues to rise and ever more books about military history are published. Jim Eagles looks at the latest offerings.