Digital outreach librarian Baruk Jacob set up Auckland Libraries' new 'Maker Spaces'.

J.K. Rowling has said she "loves" the fact that Hermione Granger will be played by a black actress in the highly anticipated new Harry Potter play.

Edna O'Brien's new novel is about how we can still be seduced by evil people. Francesca Wade meets her.

If you're not sure what to get Dad this Christmas, Andrew Alderson has a few ideas of the literary kind.

Terry Gilliam is the odd man out of the Python squad, the warm and loose American among uptight Englishmen. Yet he may be the team's secret weapon.

Author Kevin Barry's latest novel Beatlebone delves into the mind of John Lennon as he seeks the solitude of a tiny Irish island that he bought for 1700 pounds in 1968.

The best books for the foodie on your Christmas list.

The summer holidays are for swimming and playing in the sun but parents should add another activity to their kids' agenda - reading.

Parents, we report, are being urged to read to their kids over the holidays, or ensure they keep reading, to maintain their mental development.

Bad sex. Isn't it enough to have had it without having to read it as well?

Andrew Miller tells Tim Martin about the 'terrifying' rut he fell into after winning the Costa Book of the Year.

It's not every day you see people running around a field with a broomstick between their legs.

With the copyright due to expire at the end of this month, the long-banned Nazi bible will soon be revived.

It sounds incredible now that it took so long, but it was well received and won the Best First Book award.

Heroic fantasy books, Jack Reacher novels and crime thrillers top the reading list inside our prisons.

Although Paul Hartigan's art has roamed from pop-art painting and posters, to Polaroids and beyond, his neon work is the most familiar.

Our top reads of the year for 2015.

The 2016 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards inaugural longlist has been announced. There are 40 long-listed works; ten each from the four awards categories - illustrated non-fiction, general non-fiction, poetry and fiction.

A Hunger Games prequel might be in the works, according to series' director Francis Lawrence.

Waiheke artist Emma Wright became a best-selling author after blogging about her art, her life and her battle with bulimia.

The Fault in Our Stars, which debuted at No 1 on the New York Times bestseller list for children's chapter books, had been borrowed 3006 times by this week.

John Freeman shot to international fame with his contentious 2009 book Shrinking the World: The 4000-Year Story Of How Email Came To Rule Our Lives.

There's no easy way to find out that an old mate has terminal cancer but reading a book about it has got to be one of the most moving.

Will the Pacific save us? In his biography of an ocean, Simon Winchester finds an optimistic note among all the doom we humans trail in our wake.

The style of the narrative can best be described as a darkly comic fairy tale. All the familiar tropes are there; jilted hero, beautiful damsel, dark castle,mysterious forest and a collection of untrustworthy characters who mean our hero no good.