Linda Olsson's novels sell in mega-numbers overseas. There are many places in this tender, loving story where you can understand why.

When the stone deer was placed in position in the pool in front of the Chalabi home in Kazimiya, near Baghdad, locals immediately named the palatial home the Deer Palace.

Minrose Gwin clearly had a miserable time of it. Her father, Al the airman, only stuck around long enough to witness her birth, then fled to parts unknown, never to be seen again, although, to be fair, he did send Minrose a birthday present every year.

Murders, battles, seduction, witchcraft ... and a water goddess. It would be hard not to write a ripping history of the English War of the Roses.

Christchurch-born, Britain-based Edlin's first novel, The Widow's Daughter, was a crammed narrative of World War II Auckland, and the reverberations of a sexual liaison across decades and oceans. It was commendably ambitious and inevitably uneven.

Out with vampires, in with other-worldy romance, writes Nicky Pellegrino.

Radio personality and bibliophile Lily Richards tells her story to Viva.

Rainer Maria Rilke has always commanded a devoted following among connoisseurs of fine literature but he is also widely read.

In the opening pages of Michael Ondaatje's new novel, a young boy named Michael sets out for England on a passenger liner. It's the early 1950s.

"Life is hard" is one of the Noble Truths and Yang Pao, as a young boy landing on the streets of Jamaica in the 1930s, learns that lesson quickly.

Wine writer Michael Cooper has recently released 100 Must-try New Zealand Wines (Hodder Moa, $34.99)

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.