Strong showing by three independent publishers in Australia's premier literary award longlist.

Award-winning playwright and former Labor speechwriter's passing prompts widespread tributes.

Ruth Quibell's book is a quiet work of art that offers intimate observations about those ordinary "things" of life that matter so much.

Molly Haskell's book is a biography with a difference – she attempts to excavate his psyche from the films he's been involved with as a writer, director or producer.

There are about 7000 languages on the planet but hundreds of them are in jeopardy. The number is set to taper to three figures by 2100.

I loved John Irving's characters, his frankness, and the way he wove short stories and chapters of books "written" by Garp into his narrative.

Melbourne crime writer Adrian McKinty has won a major gong in the US crime-writing awards, the Edgars.

Julie Buntin's coming-of-age debut novel is a thoughtful treatment of various themes – friendship, motherhood and the failed urge of the American Dream.

Michele Roberts uses two narratives 160 years apart to create a beautifully structured ghost story and tale of women's lives.

Anita Shreve's account of bush fires is terrifying, and her portrait of a bad marriage almost equally so.

Tamara McKinley uses the Highland Clearances of the 18th and 19th centuries as a meta-historical background for her historical novel, set in 1905.

Robert Dessaix's latest witty and philosophical offering springs from observing that people are increasingly anxious about how they spend their time.

The final book of F. Scott Fitzgerald's unpublished and uncollected stories, I'd Die For You contains work from every period of Fitzgerald's career.

Bruce Grant's memoir offers not only moments in his own life but, as well, course-changing moments in the life of Australia over the last century.

You don't have to have been awarded a gigantic international literary prize to make a winning acceptance speech.

Paula Keogh and poet Michael Dransfield were in their mid-twenties when they met in a psychiatric ward and fell in love. Half a lifetime later, Keogh writes of this dark and ecstatic time.

Sven Brinkmann offers his own contrarian seven steps, inspired by the ancient Stoics, to help you resist the fetishisation of the self.

In the spirit of the absurdist and playful logic that characterises Lewis Carroll's Alice books, A Chink in a Daisy-Chain takes us into the rabbit warren of Phil Day's mind.

Paula Hawkins' first novel, The Girl on the Train, sold more than 20 million copies around the world. So how does she follow that up? With a dark mystery of drowned women.

After after eight years of patience, obsession and digital breakthroughs the definitive guide to 900 species of Australian birds has been born.

The debut novel by Marija Pericic is about a spectacular Kafkaesque literary fraud.

Noted is a festival for anyone who loves to write

The Premier's Literary Awards shortlist flags a coming-of-age of shorter forms of storytelling.

One woman's journey of discovery took her back to the very place she wanted to escape from.