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

Karl Ove Knausgaard: A writer's life
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.

Book review: The Last Word
Consider being commissioned and hard-pressed to write the biography of an old, famous, living author.

Ben Atkins: One night out sleuthing
Fledgling Auckland writer Ben Atkins talks to Craig Sisterson about the crime novel he has been working on since he was 15.

Lazy Days: Painting the kiwi lifestyle
Images reproduced with permission from Lazy Days: Painting the kiwi lifestyle by Graham Young, published by New Holland, $29.99.

Did dead novelist solve PM's cold case?
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.

Toying with times past
Miranda Carter read history while at Oxford and came to writing after a career in journalism.

Book review: Empty Mansions
The wealth gap is provoking much contemporary anxiety. But the financial imbalance between, say, Bill Gates or Warren Buffet and the Big-Mac slinger is a shadow of that which existed between the first American capitalist barons.

Terror scholar explores a dark fictional world
In Richard Jackson's book about a terrorist, sections of text are covered by heavy black lines.

How to spoil Game of Thrones
Have you spoiled Game of Thrones for yourself? Chris Schulz has. Here's his cautionary tale.

Fifty Shades one of the most borrowed books
Literary sensation Fifty Shades Of Grey - which has already set sales records - has become one of the UK's most borrowed library books.

How to reinvent yourself
Three Aucklanders tell Alan Perrott how they reinvented themselves.

School of hard knocks
Hope and hopelessness make a funny yet thoughtful combination, writes Rebecca Barry Hill.

Glee star to release memoir/how-to guide
Lea Michele says her illustrated memoir and lifestyle tome, Brunette Ambition, will be out in May.

Storm in a sorting-hat a familiar saga
Do authors own their characters? And if a writer retrospectively meddles with the fate of a beloved figure, should fans pay attention?