It was a detective novel by Agatha Christie that taught John Heffernan about the importance of a ''good yarn''.

Jamie Morton has turned his father's badly written and breathtakingly explicit erotica into a smash-hit podcast. So what does his dad think of his newfound fame?

An unflinching investigation of dark family history

A history of the TV series that shocked Australia

Forget thanks: Couple donating $3 million to State Library redevelopment just want to sing the library's praises.

Author Pamela Hart focuses on how being caught up in a world-changing event affects an individual.

It's taken three years and a Pulitzer Prize for fiction to find a place in Australian readers' hearts but finally Anthony Doerr's All the Light We Cannot See has been voted the best book of all time.

Two self-published books - including a unique album of typographical art in which every image is made with letters that spell its very name - have cracked the shortlist for information books in the Children's Book Council of Australia Book of the Year Awards.

Literary news and events in Canberra.

• david astle

The casualties of the Coalition purge of 18C. Way back, it stood for 18 Celsius, or 18 carat. Or 18 cents.

AFL footballer Dane Swan tops the sport bestsellers chart

• books

Graeme Wood tries to understand what Islamic State is and what it really wants.

A scholarly examination of the life of one of our most famous writers.

Garth Nix takes familiar fairytales and gives them the Terry Pratchett treatment.

Fairytale scholar Jack Zipes examines the literary history behind stories of people rebelling against their masters with magical powers.

Bill Schutt's book reveals the evolutionary reasons we may end up eating each other.

A sympathetic portrait of the French novelist.

A personal account of a quest for meaning

Shusaku Endo takes a violent phase of Japanese history and uses it to probe the nature of faith in a circumstance of intense moral quandary.

Underbelly screenwriter Andy Muir's first Aussie crime novel features characterful storytelling.

Ever wonder how a dictionary is made? Take an insider's tour of a word factory.

• books

Michael Sala's second book is a slow-burning work that moves with troubling intensity and sensitivity to give an insider's account of a violent marriage.

The death of books has been greatly exaggerated...

An examination of the image of the 'doomed poet'.