Book lovers, put that novel down for a sec, here's a festival that may just appeal to your love of literature.

Best known as band manager Murray from Flight of the Conchords, Rhys Darby is one of New Zealand's biggest comedic exports. The funny man popped in to the NZ Herald office for a chat about his new book, This Way to Spaceship, 'a handy autobiographical end-of-the-world companion'.

For every person devouring a new best-seller, someone else is rereading an old favourite. But why do books, and authors, keep luring us back, asks Tom Lamont.

Lemon Andersen tells David Larsen how his time in prison led to a career in poetry.

The writer Gunter Grass once said even bad books are books and, therefore, sacred. And the good ones? Well, they are things to be read, objects to treasured and to be kept — hopefully in your own ever-growing library.

Eoin Colfer, the Irish creator of teen criminal mastermind Artemis Fowl, tells Stephen Jewell why his next episode will be his last.

This Wednesday marks the start of the 2012 Auckland Writers & Readers Festival. Danielle Wright talks to New Zealand authors about their books set in Auckland to help you discover your neighbourhood through literature.

This raunchy read has everyone talking, but Nicky Pellegrino is underwhelmed.

Danielle Wright visits independent children's booksellers before the New Zealand Post Children's Book Awards' Festival, starting on Monday.

The world watched in horror as, in 2010, Haiti's main city Port au Prince collapsed under a shocking earthquake, its buildings crashing down and killing around a quarter of a million people.

Emily Perkins' sumptuous new book, The Forrests, is a novel to savour slowly: line by line, character by character, revelation by revelation.

Auckland library readers might have to shelve plans to borrow a copy of The Hunger Games - there are more than 2000 people in the queue to borrow it.

I have to confess a prejudice against novels where the characters are continually lighting cigarettes and lifting drinks, and where the author continually tells you they're doing so.

Nicky Pellegrino finds the intricacies of a French novel a touch far-fetched.

New Zealand writer David Hill tells Linda Herrick how a song triggered his latest picture book and how he called upon his own uncles’ memories.

Gordon McLauchlan is a journalist and writer who has recently published The Passionless People Revisited (David Bateman, $29.99).