This anthology is a substantial collection of writing from such well-known names as Melissa Lukashenko, Omar Musa and Maxina Beneba Clarke, as well as newer writers.

As far as symbolic issues inexplicably beloved by the conservative end of politics go, there have been few as passionately fought as their resolute objection to same-sex marriage.

Officials in charge of an Australian writers festival were so upset with the address by their keynote speaker, the American novelist Lionel Shriver, that they censored her on the festival website and publicly disavowed her remarks.

J.M. Coetzee has been knocked out of the Man Booker Prize. 

Lionel Shriver warned that inviting "a renowned iconoclast" to speak about community and belonging was "like expecting a great white shark to balance a beach ball on its nose".

This densely detailed book doesn't reveal much that is new but it does emphatically correct the misguided notion that Paul McCartney was the lesser talent of the Beatles' song-writing team.

A fresh and fascinating look into Ireland and one of its greatest families.

Read this column and you can't unread it. Sounds reasonable, right? Which is another way of saying that doesn't sound unreasonable, unlike saying that's reasonably unsound, which is plausible too, given this paragraph's hall of mirrors.

FICTION

Andy Griffiths and Terry Denton continue to delight readers at independent bookshops.

Sophie Hannah brings back Hercule Poirot and does an inspired job laying twists, ulterior motives and a breadcrumb trail of clues.

For the couple in Matthew Griffin's poignant, beautifully written debut, the closet remains the world.

Paul Mitchell is a terse and observant writer, as alive to the particulars of Aussie idiom and experience as Tim Winton, but less showy.

Robert Gott's actor and sometime detective thinks he's Laurence Olivier, though he's more often reduced to hamming it up as a pantomime dame.

There's shock, anger and confusion when the real world crosses with a beloved children's book.

Now 86, the hugely influential Ursula K. Le Guin has received a rare literary honour.

This is the story of the man who gave his name to that river and the great dam that now controls it.

Although we're used to Elizabeth Gilbert's personal revelations – no one would have predicted what the 'Eat, Pray, Love' author's next chapter was going to be.

''I'm no great author'' insists radio comedian Andy Lee on his overnight success as a children's author.

Emma Donoghue has turned the odd phenomenon of the fasting girls into the subject of her next historical novel, The Wonder.

Short stories

WILD ISLAND

Biography of The Dam Busters author

Books are sharks, said the late Douglas Adams. There were sharks before there were dinosaurs, and the reason sharks are still in the ocean is that nothing is better at being a shark than a shark.