Towards the end of his rambling diary of a road trip through his native country, Garth Cartwright engages in a sly piece of critic-proofing sophistry.

This guide has information about the main grounds and teams in the top 18 rugby-playing nations.

Suzanne McFadden talks to Kiwi romance queen Michelle Holman about issues and critics.

Queenstown and Southern Lakes has been named one of Lonely Planet's top 10 regions to visit next year.

JK Rowling has admitted she once wanted to kill off Harry Potter's best friend Ron Weasley out of "sheer spite".

This 19th century romantic triangle comes to life, writes Nicky Pellegrino.

British novelist Tasmina Perry is the author of Private Lives (Headline, $34.99).

Viva's Zoe Walker explores how characters described in fiction have influenced her through the years.

The blurb on the back of Breton Dukes’ debut short-story collection, Bird North And Other Stories, adds him to an esteemed line of New Zealand exponents of the genre: Frank Sargeson, Maurice Duggan and Owen Marshall.

Reading this very long book is deep immersion in the horrors of the Holocaust, and after a prolonged session readers may have to lift themselves from a state of depression about the human condition.

The Sense of an Ending is the kind of novel you might need to ponder for a few days before coming to any conclusions.

Ex-pat Geoffrey Wilson’s ironic imaginings are fuelled by his youth in South Africa and New Zealand, writes Stephen Jewell.

If I describe this memoir of life on the Kaipara as “charming”, it instantly sounds as if I’m sending it down the Damn-With-Faint-Praise chute. I’m not.

Michael Ondaatje talks about how he wrote The Cat's Table, where he gets his characters from and re-reading his favourite books.

When Patrick McGuinness’s debut novel The Last Hundred Days was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize in July it had sold 64 copies. By September it was nudging 4000 sales.

Mark Lynch does love his rugby. I remember once when Lynch and I and a few stragglers went to see the Waratahs play the Stormers in Sydney.

There are so many fine picture books about New Zealand these days that it's often difficult to find a point of difference that makes one stand out from the others.

To state the bleeding obvious, we can be a nation of blunt-ended rugby fanatics. As 1987 All Blacks captain David Kirk quips in his foreword of Ian Grant's book Having A Ball, "it's part of the rhythm of life, and long may it remain so".

Dan Cleary is one clever guy - actor, writer, producer and someone who doesn't mind poking the borax.