Latest from Books

Fiction Addiction: May's hottest new novels
Feed your fiction fix with some of the most absorbing new books to be released this month.

Writers & Readers Festival: 5 must-see sessions
Book lovers, put that novel down for a sec, here's a festival that may just appeal to your love of literature.

Rhys Darby: Dancing, lizards and the end of the world
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'.

New thrills of rereading old books
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.

Poet makes the most of being different
Lemon Andersen tells David Larsen how his time in prison led to a career in poetry.

Four Kiwi authors open up their home libraries
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 going out on a magical high
Eoin Colfer, the Irish creator of teen criminal mastermind Artemis Fowl, tells Stephen Jewell why his next episode will be his last.

Discover Auckland by following NZ writers' footsteps
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.

Erotica for the masses
This raunchy read has everyone talking, but Nicky Pellegrino is underwhelmed.

A new chapter: Children's bookshops come alive
Danielle Wright visits independent children's booksellers before the New Zealand Post Children's Book Awards' Festival, starting on Monday.

Book Review: In Darkness
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.

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

Travel book: <I>Mountain Biking North</I>
While the Kennett brothers' annually updated Classic New Zealand Mountain Bike Rides remains the Bible for the country's trails, this and its South Island predecessor are the hymnbooks.

Author shines a light on Moscow's darkest side
Author A.D. Miller’s debut novel defies the traditional crime thriller genre as it explores the Russian capital’s underbelly. Stephen Jewell writes.

Library readers hunger for hit book
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.