Were the pushy parents of Brooke Shields, Judy Garland, Shirley Temple and other Hollywood stars really as bad as all that, asks Geoffrey Macnab.

You can buy a deluxe edition of this new, independent New Zealand publisher's handsome production, with "Yulong cream paper ... Woodfree real leather ... foil stamping".

Known as an actor in TV satire The Thick Of It and as a comedy writer for Veep, Will Smith has written a mystery thriller set in the Channel Islands. It’s John le Carre meets Middlemarch, he tells Alice Jones.

S.J. Watson’s ambitious follow-up to his best-seller Before I Go To Sleep delves into the murky world of cybersex, he tells Stephen Jewell.

Bold: How to Go Big, Create Wealth and Impact the World, by Peter H. Diamandis and Steven Kotler

Untangling the dramas of a seemingly normal family makes for an authentic read.

Julia Donaldson’s most famous book, The Gruffalo, has won the hearts of children around the world. During a fleeting visit to Auckland and Wellington, Britain’s best-selling author talks to David Larsen.

To begin a novel with a character who is dead from the very first page is a risk.

Celia Lashlie, the Kiwi author whose work on the raising of teenage boys earned her respect around the world, has died this morning after a battle with pancreatic cancer.

Acclaimed social researcher and author Celia Lashlie has cancelled all speaking engagements to stay home with her family in Wellington after being diagnosed with terminal cancer.

Celia Lashlie, the Kiwi author whose work on the raising of teenage boys earned her respect around the world, has terminal cancer.

Kiwi author’s first novel explores fantasy and memories set to a compelling tune.

Award-winning Auckland playwright Elisabeth Easther was once an erotic fiction writer. As Fifty Shades of Grey hits our screens, she reveals the highs and lows of her short-lived career in smut.

I would rather read Kelly Link than breathe. Writing about her is another thing again. I do not know why her new book is called Get In Trouble.

Debut novel combines writer’s love of music with her love of words, writes Rebecca Barry Hill.

New Zealand-born Peter Walker has been living in Britain for nearly 30 years now. He's made a considerable reputation as an author there, under as many as six nom-de-plumes, writing well over 100 books.

Die-hard fans of J.R.R. Tolkien's novels have been turned off by Peter Jackson's three-part film adaptation of The Hobbit, according to Kiwi researchers trawling through responses from viewers.

Orwellian theme conjures up masterly and witty parable for our times.

JK Rowling has finally answered three very important questions that have been bugging the most devoted of Harry Potter fans for years.

Back in the familiar rural midwest of her previous novels, Moo, Horse Heaven and A Thousand Acres, Pulitzer prize-winner Jane Smiley presents us with the first volume of a projected trilogy.

A novel is a place where past and present versions of one person can co-exist, and in his fifth novel Andrew O'Hagan movingly explores the way the "flotsam" of a life can rise to the surface as old age and memory go about their strange and poignant work.

To modern eyes, the little wagon in a Berlin museum looks like a model of an old horse-drawn cart. Solidly made, about as big as a baby's cot, it is in fact a handcart, to be pulled by people, not animals.

Plaudits to the publisher for their tactile, trim presentation of this small-is-beautiful novella. And to the Australian author herself for a rewarding — and riddling — little read.

The announcement that Harper Lee is to revisit the characters of To Kill a Mockingbird has been greeted with delight and suspicion.

Many writers resist national labels. Like Salman Rushdie, we'd rather belong to "the boundless kingdom of the imagination ... the unfettered republic of the tongue".

As we head into the Waitangi Day circus, Titewhai and her whanau have been gazumped by literary prima donna Eleanor Catton, writes Brian Rudman.

Je suis hua, writes Deborah Hill Cone, as she asks: "weren't we all just gargling on about free speech in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo massacre?"

What is normal? And what if you don't fit in with society's idea of it? Those are the issues raised by US author Amy Hatvany's thoughtful and compelling new novel

Christchurch crime writer Paul Cleave, whose books have sold more than half a million copies, has no qualms killing people on the page. But now online piracy is killing him, he tells Linda Herrick.