Australian author Carmel Bird reveals the works that shaped her.

Mark Brandi's unpublished manuscript has won a gong at the British crime-writing awards but he wasn't sure it was actually a crime novel.

Awards will help with Christmas shopping.

Literary news and events in Canberra.

The morphing path to malapropisms.

South Africa is the setting of this powerful tale of displacement.

Australia's top-selling military and history books.

Kim Mahood, an artist who writes exceptionally well, is fond of the expression "paying attention".

Clementine Ford's arguments about how and why women should fight back at their treatment in society is No. 1 in the independent bookshop charts.

The author hopes she won't regret the risk she took in writing her latest memoir.

For both Bruce Springsteen and Jimmy Barnes the rock'n'roll escape is a death-defying miracle, which is emblematic of their generation.

Maggie Joel has been writing fiction for 20 years and her short stories have been widely publisher in Australian literary magazines and on ABC radio. The Safest Place in London (Allen & Unwin), her fourth novel, tells the story of two families whose lives are changed by the London Blitz in World War II.

James Kelman is hugely influential as an author for good reason and Dirt Road is a fine example of his work.

Steven Marcuson's The Bunting Quest has similarities to Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code, except that it's better.

Laura Bloom's The Cleanskin lays bare the personal cost of sectarian conflict.

Tony Tulathimutte's Private Citizens is a whip-smart satire on a generation born into a perfect storm of privilege and disappointment.

Even grown-ups want to believe in fairytales, as a journalist found when public outrage greeted his "unmasking" of the best-selling Italian novelist Elena Ferrante this week.

It's 1923, and Hitler suddenly decides he needs to boost his national profile.

Was it worth the Liberal party taking Malcolm Turnbull back as leader for a second crack?

The case captured world headlines: both Peter Greste's plight and the efforts of his family to get the Al Jazeera journalist released from prison.

Tim Carmody's was a controversial appointment from start to finish.

Our genomes are to be thought of as a kind of history book, an epic poem that contains the story of us as individuals and our species.

Why this fascination with crime? "We need forgiveness and someone to blame," says crime writer Walter Mosley.

Sarah Perry's heroine, Cora Seaborne, is fierce, independent and believes utterly in science. "The wonderful thing about being a widow,'' she reflects, "is that you're not obliged to be much of a woman anymore."