Pop life: The great success of superstar lyricist Tim Rice
ELISSA BLAKE Walking along the River Thames in the leafy south-west London suburb of Barnes, it's not easy to find Sir Tim Rice's house. There are no street numbers and high walls mask each property from the casual gaze.
Aussie talent
Australian idols of the K-pop world
It's hot; it's hip; it's worth billions of dollars. Gabriel Wilder meets the home-grown talent taking on the lucrative and competitive Asian pop market.
Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2 review: Food, glorious food
Paul Byrnes This is a kids' cartoon with an anarchic spirit, a work of wild imagination, like its successful predecessor from 2009.
Hot off the canvas
Pedro de Almeida A madam invites an artist into her house of bondage with thrilling results.
I will not chug-a-lug five wines in the first hour
RICHARD GLOVER Please tick your agreement to the following before attending any social events during the approaching festive season. If attending with your partner, ask that he or she fill in the form, then send a copy to your lawyer.
La Noche Mas Larga review: Buika's hybrid sound a hit
Buika's voice is so smoky you seem to hear it through a haze. Even on this superbly-produced album she seems somehow at one remove, while the piano sparks in the foreground, and the bass and percussion thrum and buzz. Then she reaches out with that voice, and suddenly it leaps from the haziness in a blaze of urgency, and the effect is as violent and surprising as a chiropractor cracking your neck.
Media mogul's voracious appetite for power and revenge laid bare
Jeff Sparrow 'Ethics? As far as I'm concerned, that's a place to the east of London where people wear white socks.'' That's Kelvin MacKenzie, the legendary editor of Rupert Murdoch's flagship paper The Sun.
Frank Camorra's fig-stuffed pork loin and a nutty grilled chicken
FRANK CAMORRA The sweet and savoury flavours of fruit and meat are a winning combination.
Presence of mind
Paula Goodyer Give yourself a gift this Christmas: enjoy a little of the things you love without the weighty legacy.
Recipe for war
Martin Crotty Historian Paul Ham details events leading up to World War I in a book with broad appeal.
Remote territory
Ruth Ritchie As the big drama series shut up shop there will be no shortage of shows to test your sanity barometer.
Punk 45: Kill the Hippies! Kill Yourself! review: Origins of a revolutionary movement
BERNARD ZUEL It's hardly new or revolutionary to say that if you think punk began in the UK, you don't know your history. For a start, you'll be getting a clip around the ear from certain parts of Brisbane with shouts of ''Oi, what about (I'm) Stranded?'' or a harbour dweller boasting of seeing Radio Birdman in 1974. Then someone with a New York accent offers to take you round the back of the Bowery and explain a few points upside your thick skull.
Addiction to acting
Jack Charles' road to redemption
NICK GALVIN After a long struggle against addiction and abuse, actor Jack Charles is finally taking himself seriously.
Kill Your Darlings review: Shooting from the hip
SANDRA HALL A murky tale of beat generation murder surfaces in this gay romance.
Short jagged sentences cut to the heart of siblings' pain
Dorothy Johnston Eimear McBride has invented her own syntax as a way of cradling suffering. Her linguistic constructions are leaky vessels, as they're meant to be. At the end of the novel, sinking into lake water, it's far from certain the narrator can survive. McBride's sentences are very short, many made up of only one or two words, and instead of proceeding through subject, verb, object and so on, the parts of sentences are frequently reversed.
Tale of homecoming
Peter Pierce With her mother gravely ill, Gabrielle Carey begins a personal journey, interwoven with memories of an expatriate writer.
The world as Kelly felt it
Alex McDermott Welcome to the Kelly book that exceeds Peter Carey's novel. It realises a completely felt, viscerally characterised ''Ned-world'' in a way Carey didn't manage. More than fiction, though, it succeeds as compelling historical narrative, with one minor and one serious caveat. The bantering, zesty prose takes you in and keeps you there. But it is FitzSimons' skill at creating a sense of a fully lived inner world that achieves a consistently transformative effect on the reader's mental world - the mark of a very good book indeed.
Wall-to-wall inspiration
As Melbourne celebrates its homegrown designs, Andrea Black asks Sydney experts for their local picks.
Girls' weekend
Do you need a girls' weekend away?
SARAH MACDONALD Sitting in a family wagon amidst the grot of ground-in food and broken toys we may not look like Thelma and Louise in a convertible but we sure feel like it.
Undercover
Your Family Story
SUSAN WYNDHAM The Book Thief competition; why we need negative reviews; kids like print.
How Nile Rodgers got lucky
GEORGE PALATHINGAL The circumstances have changed dramatically since the last time Nile Rodgers and I spoke. Only 20 months ago his outfit was a nostalgia act-cum-covers band, albeit an impressively tight one with perhaps more of a right to play those era-defining tunes than most.
A courageous intellectual map for our strange political times
Martin Flanagan This is one of the books of the year. What I value it for is not so much its central thesis - that free speech is meaningless if giving offence is prohibited - but for the analysis it provides of our strange political times.
Acts of concealment
Peter Craven The restrained genius of Margaret Drabble's writing can be appreciated in her superb new novel.
Art of darkness
Sue Williams Bleak teen fiction is a hit with young readers, but is it good for them?
Breakout from old stereotypes
Andrew Riemer Here is another generously paced novel of the kind we have been getting almost yearly from the phenomenally prolific Tom Keneally.
Frank Camorra's succulent crab dishes
FRANK CAMORRA Australia's coastline provides a rich bounty of tasty crustaceans.
Magic moments
History's most memorable movie moments
GARRY MADDOX From devastating deaths and stunning revelations to witty one-liners and epic triumphs, cinema's iconic scenes pack an emotional punch.
The Beatles Live at the BBC Vol. 2 review: Crucial moments in the history of one the world's greatest pop outfits
Bernard Zuel Forget about cicadas, warnings about the state being a tinderbox or talk of who will or won't be in the team for the first Test. For me, the modern sign of impending summer (or the opening of the Christmas buying season) is the appearance of the year's Beatles reissue, repackage or remix, often paired on the shopping list with the year's Beatles-themed book.
Ender's Game
Harrison Ford's character study
PHILIPPA HAWKER Cinema's accidental leading man takes a step back and finds plenty of rewards in playing second fiddle.
How I Live Now review: Combat fatigue
PAUL BYRNES A teenage girl fights back in an uneven tale of love and war.
Matangi review: M.I.A. re-engages with her past
On Matangi, Maya Arulpragasam's dense and sometimes intoxicating fourth studio album, the Sri Lankan-born English musician and provocateur happily doubles down on her contradictions, cutting up her moral stances and beliefs as readily as the beats on this busy
How much honesty do we really want?
RICHARD GLOVER The nutbags from Australian Vaccination Network will be forced to change their name to something that better reflects their anti-vaccination stance, following a court ruling this week. Fair enough. I'm all for truth in labelling. But once the principle is established, where does it stop?
Yoko Ono review: reliving the revolution
John McDonald A Yoko Ono retrospective throws new light on the artist.
Carrie review: Schlock of the new
SANDRA HALL A classic is updated with confusing, genre-bending results.
Strong opinions
Paula Goodyer Women should stick to light weights, says one celebrity trainer, but others have different advice.
The crims awful, detectives strange, reading riveting
Review By Sue Turnbull We've been through the mill with psychologist Tony Hill and DCI Carol Jordan. So much so that I suspected we might have seen the last of them following the dire conclusion to Retribution, the previous book in this series. At that point what looked like the promise of a happy ending exploded into tragedy and estrangement. Evidently, Val McDermid hasn't finished worrying with the pair just yet.
Those who have fled
Christopher Kremmer Dispossessed writers seize an opportunity to reclaim the idea of their country.
Time on his side
Ruth Ritchie Fifty years of Daleks and tin foil have secured a prime spot in popular culture.
Robyn Davidson
Making tracks
SUSAN WYNDHAM Tracks translates to the big screen; a novel way of promoting books; and a push for Australian literature in schools.
Ridiculous lingo
Way with words, after a fashion
Trend setters and stylish bloggers love to invent their own language, but Maura Judkis has had enough.
Catherine Deneuve's frosty charm
STEPHANIE BUNBURY The grand French actress' star persona is magnified against a cast of non-professional actors in On My Way.
