What kind of historical novelist is Barry Unsworth? Despite his practised ear for the idioms of the mid-18th century drawing-room, and weather eye for the contents of the era's wardrobe, he is not a pasticheur.

More an exercise in global warming propaganda than anything else, really, though the photos of endangered beauty spots are certainly stunning.

Stephen Jewell talks to New Zealand writer Pip Ballantine about why she went to the United States and the good manners of sci-fi followers.

A writer fills in the gaps in his family's dubious past, writes Nicky Pellegrino.

Penny Vincenzi is a bestselling UK author whose new novel The Decision (Headline, $36.99) has just been released.

A family history. Also a social and intellectual history, and a different take on the Australian Dream.

What can the latest film of Jane Eyre add to the story's long history on screen? Gerard Gilbert reports.

Rachel Simon was browsing through a book stall at a conference in Itasca, Illinois, when she found herself drawn to a short book with an arresting title: God Knows His Name: The True Story of John Doe No. 24, by Dave Bakke.

I'm sure the person who coined the phrase "a picture paints a thousand words" thought a thousand words sounded like a lot. But a single picture can paint - or at least inspire - far more words than that.

An appeal for $95,913 to restore Roald Dahl's garden shed has proved a plot twist too fantastical for the writer's fans.

British writer Hari Kunzru tells Stephen Jewell why he has adopted America as his base and why sci-fi readers are more open to the unusual.

Writer Michael Ondaatje, who won the Booker prize for The English Patient, draws on his own extraordinary life to conjure up evocative tales of displacement. Robert McCrum asks how much reality there is in his fiction.

Call Anita Shreve's books chick lit at your peril, warns Nicky Pellegrino.

Cute titles. How do I feel about cute titles? I feel that the authors have to work a couple of degrees harder to justify them. New Zealand-born, Britain-based Connell works very hard indeed in her second romp - and with reasonable success.

Barbara Ewing is a UK-based Kiwi actress and writer whose most recent novel is The Circus of Ghosts.

Who are we really? What's beyond the façade the rest of the world gets to see? How can we communicate without a voice?

Louisa Young's enthralling novel begins in the gorgeous, leafy light of upper-class Edwardian England where wealthy, bohemian-ish families plan lives filled with art and beauty, and ends in a darkened world transformed by the violence and pain of World Wa

Doctor-turned-suspense novelist Tess Gerritsen talks to Craig Sisterson about embracing her heritage and seeing her heroines come alive onscreen.

John Boyne, author of The Boy in Striped Pyjamas, has published a new novel with links to World War I. The Absolutist traces the experiences of a young serviceman through a deft weave of past and present.

Travelling with the original Lonely Planet as a guide, writer Brian Thacker finds what's changed in 35 years.

Books editor Linda Herrick talks to historian Anne Sebba about her new biography of the woman the royal family — and Britain — loved to hate.

It's a gutsy first-time novelist who writes a book about New York society in the early 20th century.

In this volume the Griffith writers look inward and backwards to gain some fresh insight into not only their own lives but the lives of us all.

This thoughtful little tome of short stories is perceptive and entertaining.

Can we relearn a sense? A chef apparently did, finds Nicky Pellegrino.