Aidan is a thirty-something professional blogger, living a low-rent version of the high-life in post-9/11 New York. His relationship with his journalist girlfriend, Cressida, is strained; he's stuck in a bit of a rut.

Left your Christmas shopping to the very last moment? Want to do the whole lot speedily, all in one shop and with the minimum of fuss? Books are the answer to all your gift needs. Here's our pick of what's on the shelves.

Alas, this this is the second-to-last novel from the Portuguese Nobel Prize winner from whom I have gained so much enjoyment and stimulus over the past few years.

A book that poses the really big questions: about war and friendship, about love and loss, about living and dying.

It’s not often that you get a book endorsed by both Philip Pullman and Winston Churchill. But then, Conan Doyle’s French cavalry officer has been around for nearly 120 years, and has been read by five or six generations.

Quench your thirst for wine knowledge from expert writers passionate about their topic.

This second annual Griffith fiction collection focuses on contributors and topics from the Pacific in a generously interpreted sense.

Learn to cook like the French with this cookbook from Serge Dansereau.

Nicholas Evans' new novel, The Brave, deals with the hard edges of life. This is a story of people and relationships interlaced with a complicated and ambitious plot.

Graham Robb has that rare gift of storytelling that compels riveted attention from readers of non-fiction as much as fiction and he understands that stories may spring emotionally from places but inevitably embrace the lives of people.

Adventurous foreign correspondent Tim Butcher decides to emulate a 560km trek that novelist Graham Greene made in 1935.

With almost 50 books to her name, the formidably intelligent Margaret Atwood is a force to be reckoned with. She talks to Robert McCrum about cowardly politicians, her love of birds and why she's joined the Twitterati.

An enormously worthy and well-intentioned novel, strengthened by its ethical content, burdened by the very same ethical content.

First, because it has to be done, let's get our definitions sorted. The cover of this slim volume bills it as a graphic novel.

With the 2010 Bad Sex Awards announced last week by the Literary Review, Arifa Akbar looks at the criteria for consideration and the judging process.

With Christmas nearly upon us, the Canvas book reviewing team takes the hassle out of gift-shopping with ideas for all ages and tastes.

Graham Reid goes to a Sydney institution and meets new old friends.

John Grisham clearly felt deeply about this book - perhaps because he's recently become concerned about wrongful convictions, and the treatment of that theme here has a very passionate edge.

A mystery wrapped in an enigma is the very apt winner of the inaugural New Zealand crime-writing award.

Auckland stand-up comedian Ben Hurley gives insight into his reading preferences.