Whatever you're doing this Monday, wherever you might be, take a moment to reflect on the most popular word in the English language, OK?

A new book charts Abba’s progress from camp 70s novelty act to enduring musical phenomenon. Anna Tyzack meets one of the famous four, Bjorn Ulvaeus.

Could Britain have avoided World War I? Historians Max Hastings and Niall Ferguson have presented rival views on the BBC.

Linda Herrick surveys the wealth of names coming to Auckland’s Writers Festival in May.

An Arabic scene of dunes and camels was the backdrop for a diverse literary event, writes Linda Herrick.

Divergent, the latest young adult novel poised to become a blockbuster movie, meets all the criteria for the genre.

Imagine a world in which the advances of the science since the publication of 'On the Origin of Species' - or even since Charles Darwin was born - were ignored.

For sale: hexagonal house in quiet position near top white-baiting lagoon in the heart of the South Island's West Coast.

Nearly 200 years after her death, Jane Austen has become one of the most widely read authors in history. Kerrie Waterworth finds out why she continues to appeal, generation after generation.

It is not easy to decide which lie Helen Dunmore was talking about when she titled her new book.

British-based writer Tom Rob Smith tells Stephen Jewell how real life drama inspired his new novel in a way that disturbed him far more than he expected.

Award-winning author Eleanor Catton spent yesterday in Hokitika, the setting of her critically acclaimed novel The Luminaries.

Keith Richards is releasing a children's book in September, but he is not the first celebrity to venture into the world of children's publishing.

Peter Williams, QC, turns 80 this year and is finishing a new book of stories from his long legal career.

Fledgling Auckland writer Ben Atkins talks to Craig Sisterson about the crime novel he has been working on since he was 15.

Images reproduced with permission from Lazy Days: Painting the kiwi lifestyle by Graham Young, published by New Holland, $29.99.

Extensive footnotes make this hard to follow, as Nicky Pellegrino discovers.

Walt and Judy, of 1970s small-town Vermont, can't conceive a child. For all their mutual tenderness, life has become just "a collection of gestures and habits". So they adopt.

A Swedish newspaper has intensified a decades-old allegation by dead crime novelist Stieg Larsson about who was behind the 1986 murder of the country's Prime Minister.

Miranda Carter read history while at Oxford and came to writing after a career in journalism.

The wealth gap is provoking much contemporary anxiety. But the financial imbalance between, say, Bill Gates or Warren Buffet and the Big-Mac slinger is a shadow of that which existed between the first American capitalist barons.

In Richard Jackson's book about a terrorist, sections of text are covered by heavy black lines.

Have you spoiled Game of Thrones for yourself? Chris Schulz has. Here's his cautionary tale.