Amy Winehouse's father Mitch is set to publish a memoir to tell the true story about the soul singer's life and to aid his recovery.

I'm a bit of a classics junkie. I've been known to go for several years without reading a single new-release book. It's not unusual for me to have not even heard of the titles on the Booker Prize shortlist, let alone read them.

Minrose Gwin clearly had a miserable time of it. Her father, Al the airman, only stuck around long enough to witness her birth, then fled to parts unknown, never to be seen again, although, to be fair, he did send Minrose a birthday present every year.

Murders, battles, seduction, witchcraft ... and a water goddess. It would be hard not to write a ripping history of the English War of the Roses.

Linda Olsson's novels sell in mega-numbers overseas. There are many places in this tender, loving story where you can understand why.

When the stone deer was placed in position in the pool in front of the Chalabi home in Kazimiya, near Baghdad, locals immediately named the palatial home the Deer Palace.

Christchurch-born, Britain-based Edlin's first novel, The Widow's Daughter, was a crammed narrative of World War II Auckland, and the reverberations of a sexual liaison across decades and oceans. It was commendably ambitious and inevitably uneven.

Radio personality and bibliophile Lily Richards tells her story to Viva.

Crooner Rod Stewart will “hold nothing back” in his autobiography.

"Life is hard" is one of the Noble Truths and Yang Pao, as a young boy landing on the streets of Jamaica in the 1930s, learns that lesson quickly.

In the opening pages of Michael Ondaatje's new novel, a young boy named Michael sets out for England on a passenger liner. It's the early 1950s.

Bronwyn Sell turns to the bookies to help her decide what to read and comes up with The Sense of an Ending.

A decade after it opened, the rail trail has become - to use an overworked phrase - a New Zealand tourist icon.

Wine writer Michael Cooper has recently released 100 Must-try New Zealand Wines (Hodder Moa, $34.99)

This author deserves bouquets for her insight, writes Nicky Pellegrino.

In an uncharacteristic fit of efficiency, I started reading my September feature book, Rules of Civility, on the same day I finished my August novel, There But For There.

British author Stef Penney tells Christian House about moving the setting for her second novel from the Canadian wilderness to a sinister England.

Constructed in the manner of ensemble films such as Nashville, Grand Canyon and Crash, this novel by the award-winning Australian writer Carroll again refracts the lives of some characters who have populated his previous work.

In 1967 the great critic Frank Kermode published The Sense Of An Ending, a series of lectures that not only mined the apocalyptic theme in art, but reviewed the ways in which fiction carves order and pattern out of the chaotic flux of time.

When I finished The Story of Beautiful Girl I felt like I needed a lie down.

Adults hacked off with the disappointment of modern life seek solace in children's books, a Cambridge University believes.

Next month sees the announcement of the year's most anticipated literary award, the Man Booker Prize.

I'm loving Rules of Civility by debut New York novelist Amor Towles. And I love the influences he's shared with us in our Q&A.