A spokesman for GCHQ said: "We do not comment on our defence against the dark arts."

A pristine copy of Hawaiian Surfboard is part of the Rare Books collection up for grabs.

Paul Theroux is one of the great travel writers because he makes you eager to visit where he writes about, even when he sharply gets what's wrong with it.

Dozens of authors will visit for the Auckland Writers Festival but what's it like to be a visiting author far from home?

It took Herman Melville 135 chapters to get to the part when the whale and the captain do battle, but it took 165 years for scientists it prove it's actually possible.

A visiting British reading advocate says reading can help fight poverty.

Sir Ian McKellen returned a £1 million memoir advance because he found writing it "painful".

Local writer Ben Sanders tells Greg Fleming about transposing his previously Auckland-based crimes Stateside and finding his storylines while daydreaming.

Greg Fleming reviews the latest batch of crime fiction

A complaint about the reading of a novel written by a beloved Kiwi children's author has been upheld by the Broadcasting Standards Authority.

Our new literary heroines are dark, twisted - and a little closer to home. Kim Knight talks domestic noir with Paula Hawkins, ahead of the British author's Auckland visit.

A book about New Zealand got Toby Little started on a mammoth letter-writing project. Joe Shute meets him.

Booker and Pulitzer Prize-winning authors and standout New Zealand writers are lined up for the Auckland Writers Festival.

COMMENT: Since Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows was published in 2007 and the second of the two-part movie adaptation of JK Rowling's final Harry Potter novels was released in 2011, the author and her creation have been in a kind of limbo.

Dawe says Into the World is a story about the traps that young men fall into, with a focus on the results of bad decisions.

In an anxiously anticipated new story, Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling has transported her world of magical wizarding across the Atlantic and some Native American commentators are not happy with the result, saying it exploits and distorts Native culture.

The second chapter of JK Rowling's History of Magic in America includes even more revelations about the previously untold past of wizards and witches in the New World.

JK Rowling has unveiled the first of four chapters from her History of Magic in North America. Rachel Bache takes a closer look at the lessons we can learn about the wizarding world.

A sequel to the controversial book Into the River is set to be released at a launch in Mt Eden next Tuesday.

JK Rowling has dropped a bombshell on Harry Potter fans, previewing new stories that promise to unveil "the whole story".

An American journalist claims to have uncovered evidence that Oracle broke the rules in their famous comeback win over Team NZ in the 2013 America's Cup.

No one gets beheaded; some readers are displeased.

Is this 'geeky' Oxford graduate's debut the sexiest book of the year?