This author deserves bouquets for her insight, writes Nicky Pellegrino.

British author Stef Penney tells Christian House about moving the setting for her second novel from the Canadian wilderness to a sinister England.

Constructed in the manner of ensemble films such as Nashville, Grand Canyon and Crash, this novel by the award-winning Australian writer Carroll again refracts the lives of some characters who have populated his previous work.

In 1967 the great critic Frank Kermode published The Sense Of An Ending, a series of lectures that not only mined the apocalyptic theme in art, but reviewed the ways in which fiction carves order and pattern out of the chaotic flux of time.

Sir Paul McCartney has failed to impress critics with the premiere of his first ever ballet, with reviewers branding the show "forgettable" and "bland".

Sir Elton John is moving forward with plans to turn his life story into a major movie musical.

Glenda Bailey has transformed America's Harper's Bazaar by persuading A-list celebrities to take part in outrageous photo shoots.

What kind of historical novelist is Barry Unsworth? Despite his practised ear for the idioms of the mid-18th century drawing-room, and weather eye for the contents of the era's wardrobe, he is not a pasticheur.

More an exercise in global warming propaganda than anything else, really, though the photos of endangered beauty spots are certainly stunning.

Stephen Jewell talks to New Zealand writer Pip Ballantine about why she went to the United States and the good manners of sci-fi followers.

Penny Vincenzi is a bestselling UK author whose new novel The Decision (Headline, $36.99) has just been released.

A family history. Also a social and intellectual history, and a different take on the Australian Dream.

An exhibition celebrates the work of photographer Frank Hofmann, who fled the Nazis and found sanctuary in Auckland. Adam Gifford reports

Rachel Simon was browsing through a book stall at a conference in Itasca, Illinois, when she found herself drawn to a short book with an arresting title: God Knows His Name: The True Story of John Doe No. 24, by Dave Bakke.

I'm sure the person who coined the phrase "a picture paints a thousand words" thought a thousand words sounded like a lot. But a single picture can paint - or at least inspire - far more words than that.

British writer Hari Kunzru tells Stephen Jewell why he has adopted America as his base and why sci-fi readers are more open to the unusual.

Writer Michael Ondaatje, who won the Booker prize for The English Patient, draws on his own extraordinary life to conjure up evocative tales of displacement. Robert McCrum asks how much reality there is in his fiction.

Call Anita Shreve's books chick lit at your peril, warns Nicky Pellegrino.

Brother, they want me to write you a review but I’m not going to do it. Another book is out. Your collected works.

Cute titles. How do I feel about cute titles? I feel that the authors have to work a couple of degrees harder to justify them. New Zealand-born, Britain-based Connell works very hard indeed in her second romp - and with reasonable success.

Barbara Ewing is a UK-based Kiwi actress and writer whose most recent novel is The Circus of Ghosts.

I think everyone could learn a thing or two from New Zealand's Next Top Model.