Hundreds of festival-goers slapped on sunscreen and absorbed three days of music and art by the sea at the biannual Splore festival at the weekend.

When Eugene Mursky makes his New Zealand debut on Thursday, he couldn't wish for a more theatrical launch than Prokofiev's glittering Third Concerto.

Writer and former jockey Dick Francis, famous for his horse racing-based crime novels, has died aged 89.

This collection of essays came together by chance.

Didn't Sinclair plagiarise a kookaburra when she came up with the original tune plagiarised by Men At Work?

Giving up smoking is one of the easiest things a person can do.

Leaving for work, a buttoned-up English banker asks his housewife: "Is your lover coming today?"

Damien Wilkins' previous novel, The Fainter, was the work of a writer committed to refreshing the page not for the sake of revolution.