An official Unesco City of Literature, Melbourne is also home to 'The Best Bookshop in the World'. In the run-up to its Writers' Festival in August, Dani Wright seeks out the city's best bookish spots.

The 1970s love affair between Meryl Streep and John Cazale saw them both on new acting paths but their journey together ended in tragedy.

Julian Fellowes mines the past but is not constrained by it, writes Stephen Jewell.

Jennifer Dann meets an author whose book is inspired by violence but defined by humanity.

Christchurch-based writer Heather McQuillan is the winner of this year's National Flash Fiction Day competition.

Karl Stead is like a grand old sideboard in the dining room of New Zealand literature.

Novels about painters and paintings have been in vogue recently.

Paul Dini has turned a tragic night of fear into an instantly-classic graphic novel.

The plight of an 11-year-old girl at Te Puea Marae with a love for reading has prompted a donation of more than 200 books.

"I'm slightly more blind than Stevie Wonder ... "

Noah is a 4-year-old boy who often wakes screaming from nightmares in which he plays with guns and is held underwater until he blacks out.

Foodies and home cooks will love these four new reads.

Richard Fairgray has less than 3 per cent normal vision, sees the world in two dimensions and is legally blind but is New Zealand’s highest-selling comic book writer and artist.

Call it a case of life imitating art. Copies of Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird have become hot property at Auckland libraries.

John Hart talks to Craig Sisterson about the roller coaster road to publication of his latest thriller.

When I found myself counting the words in sentences rather than actually absorbing them, I realised it was time to give up on the book.

What a phenomenon James McNeish is. Literary fashions, figures and feuds parade past and all the while McNeish is working steadily and skilfully away.

From rampaging dinosaurs and Maori myths to Shakespeare and social issues, our best writers for children and young adults tell stories about them all.

This year's big important NZ rock book has arrived and it's by the guy who founded Flying Nun. Here, he comes Clean about why and how he wrote it.

COMMENT: Sometimes I can confront my grief - walk right into the physical and emotional pain - but at other times I simply know I'm not up to the task.

When a driver ran through a stop sign, killing 12-year-old daughter Abi two years ago today, Lucy Hone used research into grief to try to ease the pain.

Elspeth Muir examines the culture of binge-drinking that she, too, fell into and the deeper issues it may conceal.

Stephen Jewell talks to British author Chris Cleave about bravery, racism and how he avoids getting stuck in a writing groove.

From the sure hand of historian Joan Norlev Taylor comes the tricky manoeuvre of binding fact and fiction into a convincing historical novel.

Zhang's bleakly lyrical first YA novel brought a cascade of admirers and superlatives; now comes this intricate narrative of adolescents in all their vulnerability, idealism and savagery.

"Plots set in the future are about what people fear in the present," says one of Lionel Shriver's characters in her latest novel set in a dystopian America of the near future.

Simon Cowell is planning to write a children's book along with other entertainment for kids.

About two years ago I bought a euthanasia drug online from China.

When it comes to crime fiction, New Jersey-based writer Harlan Coben is Big Business.