Graham Robb has that rare gift of storytelling that compels riveted attention from readers of non-fiction as much as fiction and he understands that stories may spring emotionally from places but inevitably embrace the lives of people.
Adventurous foreign correspondent Tim Butcher decides to emulate a 560km trek that novelist Graham Greene made in 1935.
With almost 50 books to her name, the formidably intelligent Margaret Atwood is a force to be reckoned with. She talks to Robert McCrum about cowardly politicians, her love of birds and why she's joined the Twitterati.
An enormously worthy and well-intentioned novel, strengthened by its ethical content, burdened by the very same ethical content.
First, because it has to be done, let's get our definitions sorted. The cover of this slim volume bills it as a graphic novel.
Ten well-known Kiwis have written a Christmas book to promote a ChildFund programme which lets New Zealanders give animals to families in developing countries.
With the 2010 Bad Sex Awards announced last week by the Literary Review, Arifa Akbar looks at the criteria for consideration and the judging process.
With Christmas nearly upon us, the Canvas book reviewing team takes the hassle out of gift-shopping with ideas for all ages and tastes.
Graham Reid goes to a Sydney institution and meets new old friends.
John Grisham clearly felt deeply about this book - perhaps because he's recently become concerned about wrongful convictions, and the treatment of that theme here has a very passionate edge.
A mystery wrapped in an enigma is the very apt winner of the inaugural New Zealand crime-writing award.
Auckland stand-up comedian Ben Hurley gives insight into his reading preferences.
The proliferation of household focused magazines has brought housekeeping professionalism to the fore.
The striking photos of geothermal activity and scenery in this 64-page booklet certainly make you want to go to Rotorua.
Stephen Jewell talks to director-turned-writer Guillermo Del Toro about his life post Middle-earth and the newly released second part of his spine-chilling vampire trilogy.
Jonathan Franzen, Tony Blair and Ken Follett are all guilty of crimes against brevity, writes Robert McCrum.
Set in Mumbai, Saraswati Park is a vivid portrait of intergenerational family dynamics in an ever-changing, modern day India.
This is the first full biography written since the publication of the two-volume edition of Mansfield's Notebooks (2002), transcribed by Margaret Scott, and the final (fifth) volume in 2008 of her Collected Letters.
Theme-based anthologies serve several purposes. They explore and represent particular subjects from a thousand vantage points and they assemble diverse voices, both familiar and unfamiliar.