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.

Lucy Wood’s first novel is a magic realist ghost story set in Devon. Lucy Popescu went there to meet her.

"Tell you what", write the editors of this excellent collection, is a phrase that promises "a revelation, a shift, a new truth".

I can see it plainly now. Stephen King has been playing me. The old Stephen King, the real one. I'd forgotten about him. That was his plan all along.

Porochista Khakpour's new novel is a magical realist take on 9/11.

The quintessential guide book for the scene of New Zealand's most significant war effort covers everything you need to know about the Gallipoli Peninsula.

Mussolini hated pasta and Hitler, famously a vegetarian, liked to eat baby pigeons. A new book tells us what tyrants liked for tea. John Walsh reports.

Linda Herrick delves into four new cookbooks that transport the palate around the globe.

With the national carrier entering its 75th year, here's a wee stocking-filler for the sky-gawping plane nerd in your life.

With a new novel out, and a potential film finally on the horizon, Patricia Cornwell tells Judith Woods how Dr Kay Scarpetta was held hostage by Hollywood.

Neil Gaiman’s latest fantasy is an attempt to restore to fairy tales some of the danger the Grimm brothers removed. Gaby Wood reports.

Some Luck is the first volume of Pulitzer Prize-winner Jane Smiley’s trilogy set in the Iowa badlands. Boyd Tonkin reports.

"Short stories don't sell," is the current mantra of publishers everywhere, as a way of refusing to look at proffered manuscripts in case they love them and are sorely tempted.

Changing fortunes in Tudor times have ring of reality.

INTERACTIVE: Our annual guide to the best books to give and receive this Christmas. Guess which ones made the list.

Each year American novelist Richard Ford heads to Ireland to shoot woodcock. Robert McCrum joins him on the Irish coast.

Comic book artist Ant Sang talks to David Larsen about his ‘transformational journey’