Alan Smythe is the executive producer of Auckland Summer Shakespeare's 50th Anniversary show, King Lear.

For the past two years, former editor David Hastings has been poring over original pages of Auckland's first newspapers at the Auckland Museum as part of research for his new book.

The next James Bond novel has the world's most famous secret agent living in London's Chelsea section at the age of 45.

Kiwi bookworms prefer homicide to hanky panky, figures from libraries reveal.

This is very good, with an unusual proviso; this narrative has more routine everyday mountain climbing than anything I've read.

Kelly Clarkson has slammed music mogul Clive Davis for allegedly spreading false information about her in his new memoir.

A new James Bond novel, written by British novelist William Boyd, will be released on September 26, publishers Jonathan Cape have announced.

The 19th century novels I still like give a strong sense of demanding to be read aloud to an audience. But by 1950, I would say, that lingering expectation of how a novel delivers had changed, in most languages and even most genres.

All sorts of unexpected, unsettling things happen in these 30 short stories. In Phoenix, Arizona, jobless Victor heads south with his nation's worst-ever storyteller to reclaim parental remains.

Jenna Miscavige Hill was a third-generation Church of Scientologist. She escaped the secretive society and told her story to Nicky Park.

Ex-Scientologist Jenna Miscavige Hill has revealed the harsh reality of growing up in the Church. Read her story here.

Modern day tales of wizards and vampires are proving more popular with British children than classic stories like Roald Dahl's Matilda, research suggests.

This fishing fleet has nothing to do with cod or snapper. It’s a witty, whimsical account of the boatloads of British belles, who, from the mid-18th century to the mid-20th century, were shipped out to India to marry English males.

Compare these two statements. "If the foreign forces are ready to leave our country ... then we can help them. But if they insist on continuing the war, we don't have any other way than fighting." An Afghan warlord, speaking in 2009.

Self-scrutinising fictional heroines could be bad for your health.

Whitney Houston's daughter Bobbi Kristina Brown has slammed her grandma's tell-all book about her late mother and vowed never to read the tome.