Through coincidence rather than design, there's a strong American influence in this month's Fiction Fix hotlist of new novels.

Only in Ireland could a half-forgotten route be named the Way of St Declan or the way of St Patrick's Cow.

The thing about the movies that we've never got over is that they move. In doing so, they evoke a facsimile of life better than life itself. Even the "fractured flickers" of the early cinema commanded an instant suspension of disbelief.

Australian writer Arnold Zable talls Graham Reid about giving voice to people in his work and his good fortune in post-revolution China.

The official Harry Potter website has let the first lot of fans into its online realm. Harriet Walker was one.

This was supposed to be the blog in which the author of There But For The answered all the questions that you so carefully crafted for her.

Nicky Pellegrino speaks to a man who sees a bright future for felony.

Theresa Healey is an Auckland-based actress who is in Auckland Theatre Company's production of Calendar Girls at The Civic.

Ian Wedde's new novel portrays a troubled food critic who creates a crisis.

If somebody locks himself in a stranger's spare room for months, is he escaping the world or facing up to it?

The movie will be out soon but read the book first, says Nicky Pellegrino.

Hana Schofield is the co-author of the best-selling memoir, Goodbye Sarajevo.

Joyce Carol Oates, a prolific and award-winning writer, has assembled and revised a collection of essays and reviews that originally appeared in places such as the New York Review of Books and the Times Literary Supplement.

Nifty title. Nifty concept. Stories about work - manual work; skilled work; responsible, itinerant, above-board or undercover work. Nifty aim, also: all proceeds go to fund youth literacy programmes across the United States.

The most important skill a photographer can have is learning to see: the beautiful in the bland and the interesting in the immaterial.

Best-selling Kiwi crime writer Ben Sanders talks to Craig Sisterson about balancing study and writing, and evoking Auckland in his thrillers.

This outstanding transcription of extraordinary events carries a telling subtitle: "A Novel of a Life".

We still know little for sure about the prospects for intelligent fiction in a digital age. Yet most observers agree that the status of the professional "career novelist" may shift from that of a rare species to a deeply endangered one.