Book lovers, put that novel down for a sec, here's a festival that may just appeal to your love of literature.

For every person devouring a new best-seller, someone else is rereading an old favourite. But why do books, and authors, keep luring us back, asks Tom Lamont.

Lemon Andersen tells David Larsen how his time in prison led to a career in poetry.

The writer Gunter Grass once said even bad books are books and, therefore, sacred. And the good ones? Well, they are things to be read, objects to treasured and to be kept — hopefully in your own ever-growing library.

Australian novelist Kathy Lette tells Stephen Jewell how she sees the comedy within the chaos of daily life with an Asperger’s child and how she was picked up by Billy Connolly.

This Wednesday marks the start of the 2012 Auckland Writers & Readers Festival. Danielle Wright talks to New Zealand authors about their books set in Auckland to help you discover your neighbourhood through literature.

This raunchy read has everyone talking, but Nicky Pellegrino is underwhelmed.

Danielle Wright visits independent children's booksellers before the New Zealand Post Children's Book Awards' Festival, starting on Monday.

The world watched in horror as, in 2010, Haiti's main city Port au Prince collapsed under a shocking earthquake, its buildings crashing down and killing around a quarter of a million people.

I have to confess a prejudice against novels where the characters are continually lighting cigarettes and lifting drinks, and where the author continually tells you they're doing so.

Nicky Pellegrino finds the intricacies of a French novel a touch far-fetched.

New Zealand writer David Hill tells Linda Herrick how a song triggered his latest picture book and how he called upon his own uncles’ memories.

Gordon McLauchlan is a journalist and writer who has recently published The Passionless People Revisited (David Bateman, $29.99).

April 25 may be a public holiday on both sides of the Tasman, but a batch of new picture books and novels will ensure its meaning is not forgotten for another generation of young readers.

Spooky events in an English manor house entertain Nicky Pellegrino.

Sadie Jones’ highly entertaining third novel seems perfectly conceived to appeal to two popular tastes — fascination with the Edwardian country house and the revival of the English ghost story.

Georgina Harding's Painter of Silence is set in Dumbraveni in Romania, and spans the period from the onset of World War II, through the war's ongoing impact, to the imposition of Communism.