Germany's biggest Catholic-owned publishing house has been rocked by disclosures that it has been selling thousands of pornographic novels.

As protagonists go, Autumn Laing and I did not get off to a great start.

Take advice from the experts and read up on what you can do to save money, in your wardrobe, your home and your pantry.

A stack of promising new novels has thudded onto the Fiction Addiction desk.

Reading Airini Beautrais' new collection, Western Line, fills me with joy - through what words can do and through the avenues poetry makes available.

Suzanne McFadden talks to Kiwi romance queen Michelle Holman about issues and critics.

Queenstown and Southern Lakes has been named one of Lonely Planet's top 10 regions to visit next year.

JK Rowling has admitted she once wanted to kill off Harry Potter's best friend Ron Weasley out of "sheer spite".

This 19th century romantic triangle comes to life, writes Nicky Pellegrino.

British novelist Tasmina Perry is the author of Private Lives (Headline, $34.99).

Martina Cole’s crime novels explore the extremes of relationship dysfunction. She talks to Stephen Jewell about her fascination with the darker, and tougher, side of human nature.

Viva's Zoe Walker explores how characters described in fiction have influenced her through the years.

The blurb on the back of Breton Dukes’ debut short-story collection, Bird North And Other Stories, adds him to an esteemed line of New Zealand exponents of the genre: Frank Sargeson, Maurice Duggan and Owen Marshall.

Reading this very long book is deep immersion in the horrors of the Holocaust, and after a prolonged session readers may have to lift themselves from a state of depression about the human condition.

The Sense of an Ending is the kind of novel you might need to ponder for a few days before coming to any conclusions.

Ex-pat Geoffrey Wilson’s ironic imaginings are fuelled by his youth in South Africa and New Zealand, writes Stephen Jewell.

If I describe this memoir of life on the Kaipara as “charming”, it instantly sounds as if I’m sending it down the Damn-With-Faint-Praise chute. I’m not.

Michael Ondaatje talks about how he wrote The Cat's Table, where he gets his characters from and re-reading his favourite books.