The summer holidays are for swimming and playing in the sun but parents should add another activity to their kids' agenda - reading.

Parents, we report, are being urged to read to their kids over the holidays, or ensure they keep reading, to maintain their mental development.

Bad sex. Isn't it enough to have had it without having to read it as well?

Andrew Miller tells Tim Martin about the 'terrifying' rut he fell into after winning the Costa Book of the Year.

It's not every day you see people running around a field with a broomstick between their legs.

With the copyright due to expire at the end of this month, the long-banned Nazi bible will soon be revived.

It sounds incredible now that it took so long, but it was well received and won the Best First Book award.

Marvel comics is about to obliterate everything you've come to know about The Hulk.

JK Rowling explains Harry Potter named his middle child Albus Severus out of "forgiveness and respect" to Severus Snape.

Although Paul Hartigan's art has roamed from pop-art painting and posters, to Polaroids and beyond, his neon work is the most familiar.

Our top reads of the year for 2015.

The 2016 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards inaugural longlist has been announced. There are 40 long-listed works; ten each from the four awards categories - illustrated non-fiction, general non-fiction, poetry and fiction.

A Hunger Games prequel might be in the works, according to series' director Francis Lawrence.

Waiheke artist Emma Wright became a best-selling author after blogging about her art, her life and her battle with bulimia.

The Fault in Our Stars, which debuted at No 1 on the New York Times bestseller list for children's chapter books, had been borrowed 3006 times by this week.

John Freeman shot to international fame with his contentious 2009 book Shrinking the World: The 4000-Year Story Of How Email Came To Rule Our Lives.

There's no easy way to find out that an old mate has terminal cancer but reading a book about it has got to be one of the most moving.

Will the Pacific save us? In his biography of an ocean, Simon Winchester finds an optimistic note among all the doom we humans trail in our wake.

You'll go a long way to find a more complex character than French writer Michel Houellebecq. He has attracted (and courted) controversy throughout his literary career.

Bill Manhire's new collection of stories includes a powerful essay on growing up with a father who liked a drink.

Patricia Cornwell's best-selling crime novels are based on obsessive detail and gory research. But the author's own back story is one of the most frightening of all.

7-year-old Kate Diprose loves art and is now a published illustrator.

Wealth inequality is driving us back to the days of Victorian England, argues a book exposing the rise of the rich kid club.