Edna O'Brien's new novel is about how we can still be seduced by evil people. Francesca Wade meets her.

If you're not sure what to get Dad this Christmas, Andrew Alderson has a few ideas of the literary kind.

Terry Gilliam is the odd man out of the Python squad, the warm and loose American among uptight Englishmen. Yet he may be the team's secret weapon.

T.S. Eliot once wrote that the critic's job was to "exhibit the relations of literature - not to 'life', as something contrasted to literature, but to all the other activities, which, together with literature, are the components of life".

Disney has released the first teaser trailer for the upcoming film The BFG.

Author Kevin Barry's latest novel Beatlebone delves into the mind of John Lennon as he seeks the solitude of a tiny Irish island that he bought for 1700 pounds in 1968.

The best books for the foodie on your Christmas list.

The summer holidays are for swimming and playing in the sun but parents should add another activity to their kids' agenda - reading.

Andrew Miller tells Tim Martin about the 'terrifying' rut he fell into after winning the Costa Book of the Year.

It's not every day you see people running around a field with a broomstick between their legs.

With the copyright due to expire at the end of this month, the long-banned Nazi bible will soon be revived.

It sounds incredible now that it took so long, but it was well received and won the Best First Book award.

Marvel comics is about to obliterate everything you've come to know about The Hulk.

JK Rowling explains Harry Potter named his middle child Albus Severus out of "forgiveness and respect" to Severus Snape.

Heroic fantasy books, Jack Reacher novels and crime thrillers top the reading list inside our prisons.

Although Paul Hartigan's art has roamed from pop-art painting and posters, to Polaroids and beyond, his neon work is the most familiar.

A Hunger Games prequel might be in the works, according to series' director Francis Lawrence.

Waiheke artist Emma Wright became a best-selling author after blogging about her art, her life and her battle with bulimia.

The Fault in Our Stars, which debuted at No 1 on the New York Times bestseller list for children's chapter books, had been borrowed 3006 times by this week.

John Freeman shot to international fame with his contentious 2009 book Shrinking the World: The 4000-Year Story Of How Email Came To Rule Our Lives.

There's no easy way to find out that an old mate has terminal cancer but reading a book about it has got to be one of the most moving.

Will the Pacific save us? In his biography of an ocean, Simon Winchester finds an optimistic note among all the doom we humans trail in our wake.

The style of the narrative can best be described as a darkly comic fairy tale. All the familiar tropes are there; jilted hero, beautiful damsel, dark castle,mysterious forest and a collection of untrustworthy characters who mean our hero no good.

There's only one person who can reduce Kiwi men to starstruck school girls clamouring for a peep of their idol.

You'll go a long way to find a more complex character than French writer Michel Houellebecq. He has attracted (and courted) controversy throughout his literary career.

Bill Manhire's new collection of stories includes a powerful essay on growing up with a father who liked a drink.