A "FULL HOUSE" sign outside the town hall last Friday was hardly surprising, with Hilary Hahn playing Sibelius with the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra.

You might think anyone wanting to stand up in front of a room of strangers and try to make them laugh is mad.

And what do you for a job? asked Chris Cox of one of the six whom he had dragged up on stage for the grand finale.

A collection of paintings that have caused art aficionados to turn a deep shade of purple are to go on show.

A new book covers the former First Lady's marriage and years in the White House, as well as the 1960 campaign and JFK's thoughts on a second term.

Thirty years after the Korean War, an American veteran and an Asian woman are still confronting the conflict that briefly brought them together.

Readers will need both stamina and stomach to get through Lionel Shriver's 480-page So Much for That.

This full and funny first novel, set around a Rome-based English-language newspaper, comes with faux reporters' room coffee stains on the cover.

Gretchen La Roche and Andrew Uren fashioned a graceful weave, in scurrying toccata at times and elsewhere exploring the beat of blurred dissonance.

New author D.J. Connell talks to Stephen Jewell about her hilarious novel which has been optioned for a film.

Natasha Solomons skilfully weaves refugee tales into a novel about adjusting to life in a new land.

Ashley Brown and pianist Michael Houstoun have few equals as a team.

For a woman knocking on 70, King lights up damn bright and her voice was denser and richer than its younger counterpart.

A book about Samoan tattooing - tatau - records a story that has been 30 years in the making.

Being green doesn't have to mean deprivation and sacrifice. Eco-journalist Francesca Price shows us how.

Novels, for all their categorisation as fiction, must, to some extent, draw on the writer's own experiences. Or they must, at least