Books editor Linda Herrick checks out what's cooking in the international market.

In The Black Swan Nassim Taleb describes a black swan as a significant unexpected random event that has a large impact. The question is, how do we best position ourselves to benefit from or minimise the negatives of such events?

In 2005, Micki McGee, a lecturer in sociology at Fordham University, New York, published Self-Help, Inc: Makeover Culture in American Life.

An enterprising Australian seller is hoping to reap a huge windfall from a set of books by NZ author Witi Ihimaera.

One of the quirkier lists ranks the top 10 vampire-spotting locales around the world.

Gordon Ramsay might be dropping an f-word or two after he topped a US doctors' list of the worst cookbooks of the year.

Kerri Jackson dons her imaginary apron and picks out the best cookbooks for Christmas.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

New Zealand-born Ruth Park resonated with generations of Australians, novelist Thomas Keneally said today.

The fight to prevent a house designed by Arthur Conan Doyle from being converted into flats is to be taken to the UK's High Court.

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.