A fiery episode in our recent history is plumbed for drama, writes Rebecca Barry Hill.

When did the amusement park coming-of-age story become a thing? Did I miss the memo?

This well-told story won the American National Book Award last year.

Carl Hiaasen needn’t look far for a story on which to base a novel. It’s all right outside his door in Miami, he tells Stephen Jewell.

Rudy’s 43rd year is not a good one. He’s on bad terms with his wife and daughters; his parents (living or dead); his assertive younger fellow-architects. He’s falling off the booze wagon and he’s just fallen off his Vespa.

Long-time Hollywood director Chris Columbus wants his latest success story to stay on the page — for now, anyway, writes Stephen Jewell.

The materially successful but spiritually bereft Janine Harding finds herself, in her early 40s, living in a “do-up” on an island in the Hauraki Gulf, where time on her hands sets her to thinking about her family history.

Stories told of the mostly unknown women behind US astronauts.

In this book full of striking images, it's the first that seems to best capture the essence of potter Barry Brickell - a 1971 portrait of the artist bent double to work inside a huge ceramic jar, his trunk vanishing ostrich-like into its clay mouth.

An older woman's wisdom is an asset we can all bank, writes Nicky Pellegrino.

Woodrow Wilson (Woody) Guthrie wrote many of his most enduring folk songs after trekking through America's dust-bowl during the years of the Depression and dispossession.

The universal appeal of the "What If" speculation underpins this fascinating collection of artistic losses ranging from historic thefts to works that never actually realised.

Martin Crowe has called John Parker's document on the "Taylor Affair" ill-advised in a new book.

Stephen Jewell meets the award-winning South African author of a thrilling tale of murder ... and baseball.

Partly autobiographical novel is a potential winner of awards, predicts Nicky Pellegrino.

Sarah Dunant's trio of novels set in Renaissance Italy cemented her reputation as one of the great writers of historical fiction.

Most of Nicolas Rothwell's books and journalism offer lyrical, subjective evocations of northern Australia and its indigenous people.

The first book by Australian author Lucy Neave, Who We Were is a very restrained sort of thriller.

Some natures are drawn to hazard: to explore the familiar from a vertiginously different perspective.

Abigail Tarttelin has written a dramatic and emotionally authentic story. An unusual sexual secret gives this novel raw power, writes Nicky Pellegrino.

New Zealand’s Poet Laureate, Ian Wedde, has written two of my all-time favourite poetry collections: The Commonplace Odes and Three Regrets And A Hymn To Beauty.

Wellingtonian Emma Martin won the Commonwealth Short Story Prize with the title story of this first collection.