William Palmer’s novels have always tried to superimpose great truths on relatively small-scale canvases.

A new novel imagines the shimmering yet ill-fated life of Zelda Fitzgerald, writes Rebecca Barry Hill.

Scottish writer Iain Banks said Wednesday he has been diagnosed with late-stage gall bladder cancer and has just months to live.

A fantasy love story set in the islands and being described as the Twilight series of the Pacific is getting young Pacific people excited about reading.

Despite moments of beauty, no one escapes the horror in Nadeem Aslam’s fourth novel.

Famines, disasters, turmoil and poverty have driven millions of Chinese people from their homes to foreign lands for centuries. Now the grand-daughters and grandsons of the original “sons of the yellow emperor” are returning home; history has turned full

In the shadowed and sepulchral Florence of the 1690s, with the Medici dynasty in steep decline and the city cowed by the puritanical regime of Cosimo III, a sculptor in wax receives a commission from the Grand Duke himself.

When I first heard that Barbara Anderson had died I toured our bookshelves looking for the book that had me fall in love with her.

Renowned for his curving furniture and elegant lighting, lead designer David Trubridge's new book So Far explores his fascinating life and approach to design. Here he shares his approach to the creative process.

Veteran rocker Eric Clapton had to rewrite his tell-all memoirs after realising he had wrongly blamed friends for his descent into drink and drugs hell.

The premise of Richard C. Morais' Buddhaland Brooklyn is that an apparent fish-out-of-water can eventually find, and adjust to, its new pond. Morais takes rather a long time to get there, but he makes it.

Nicky Pellegrino finds the tale of a diary washed ashore intriguing and compelling.

C.K. Stead’s remarkable new collection of poems, The Yellow Buoy: Poems 2007-2012, was completed in his 80th year.

The book I love most is ...

The thing I love most about Maggie O’Farrell’s writing is the way she colours in her characters.

Set in Japan and on an island off the Pacific coast of Canada following the Japanese tsunami, A Tale For The Time Being has two narrators, Japanese Nao and American/Japanese Ruth, who are worlds apart yet eerily connected.

Harry Potter star Emma Watson has posed topless for a new book celebrating the beauty of nature.

Last Sunday saw Wales deny England a Grand Slam when thrashing them in Cardiff. Twenty-three years ago saw one of the most famous Grand Slams in what was then the Five Nations - and England were again the central protagonists.

Katy Perry has denied rumours that she is planning to write a book about her relationship with Russell Brand.

Emma Watson continues to be the subject of speculation she will star in the big screen adaptation of erotica novel Fifty Shades of Grey.

Nicky Pellegrino finds she wants 'something else' from a writer she admires.

The book I love the most is ...

Being praised by, among many others, Daniel Woodrell — the author of the bleak Winter’s Bone, which was made into a suitably monochromatic and emotionally grim feature film — shows where Ron Rash’s fiction lies on the graph.