I had to buy a book recently. It hurt. Much as I love books, my financially sensible self would rather get them from the library or stock up on a few good novels at the school fair at $2 to $3 each.

Many contemporary male novelists, particularly comic ones, are incapable of depicting an unsympathetic female character.

American novelist Gary Shteyngart tells Alexander Bisley why he likes to combine hilarity, sadness and introspection.

Hyperbole often surrounds big novels, especially big novels from New York about New York and by New Yorkers, but in Gilbert's case it is all justified.

If you happen to spot celebrity stylist and designer Rachel Zoe out and about, do not worry - she's not judging you.

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.

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.

A little-known Kiwi author is pinching herself after landing a seven-figure advance and a lucrative film deal for her new book.

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.

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

It’s raw, relentless and, at an epic 3500 pages, a best-selling literary phenomenon. But the brutal honesty of Karl Ove Knausgaard’s My Struggle has shocked many — and alienated half of his family, writes Hermione Hoby.

Consider being commissioned and hard-pressed to write the biography of an old, famous, living author.

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.