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.

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.

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

When I picked up my October feature book, The Cat's Table, I recalled a radio interview I had once heard with New York Sun columnist Lenore Skenazy.

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

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.

Bronwyn Sell turns to the bookies to help her decide what to read and comes up with The Sense of an Ending.

A decade after it opened, the rail trail has become - to use an overworked phrase - a New Zealand tourist icon.

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.

In an uncharacteristic fit of efficiency, I started reading my September feature book, Rules of Civility, on the same day I finished my August novel, There But For There.

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.

When I finished The Story of Beautiful Girl I felt like I needed a lie down.

Adults hacked off with the disappointment of modern life seek solace in children's books, a Cambridge University believes.

Next month sees the announcement of the year's most anticipated literary award, the Man Booker Prize.

I'm loving Rules of Civility by debut New York novelist Amor Towles. And I love the influences he's shared with us in our Q&A.

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.

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.

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