Joel Dicker wrote a brilliant debut about a blocked writer on his second novel; his second novel feels somehow blocked.

Dragon Teeth takes a real-life rivalry between 19th-century palaeontologists, and transforms it into a clunky and unsatisfying historical novel.

The Forensic Records Society is the latest quirky, original parable from the sureal humorist Magnus Mills.

Victor Klemeper's eyewitness account of revolt in Munich soon after World War I was written for a newspaper and has a distinctly man-on-the-spot feel to it.

The Sagrada Familia is the only building on earth begun in the 19th century (1882) and still being built today: work slowed drastically by the Spanish civil war.

Iain Ryan's hero Nate is in way over his head in an underworld where the only choices are between bad and worse.

Clive Small (a detective for 38 years) and Tom Gilling create a scary picture of the scale of the local drug trade and its overseas connections.

Briohny Doyle's sharp, entertaining, often amusing book explores the phenomenon of turning 30 through millennial eyes.

In the era of data-driven politics, pressing the flesh and listening to voters still matter.

The masterful Don Winslow's new book, The Force, is an epic crime novel about a corrupt cop and his crew in contemporary New York.

When she was at Radcliffe, Gertrude Stein always wore black and refused to wear a corset. Samuel Beckett liked Wallabee boots and Aran sweaters and settled on his hairstyle when he was 17. Edith Sitwell bought furnishing fabrics and had them made into dresses. William Burroughs "branded himself" in a suit and tie. Zadie Smith is rarely photographed without her head wrap.

A new theory suggests that George Orwell made a crucial change to the text of Nineteen Eighty-Four not long before he died.

Steven Lang's third novel, Hinterland, focuses on the interactions of a group of people in a small Queensland country town that is the focus of an environmental campaign.

Literary events in Canberra.

Book which details offences allegedly committed by Cardinal Pell will be removed from sale in Victoria.

Bond's character is beloved by generations, selling millions of books and spawning TV and film versions.

In 2012, I had one of those experiences about which every book collector dreams. I'd spent a beautiful late summer's day in Oxfordshire researching George Orwell's childhood and had arranged to meet a friend in my favourite English pub, The Three Tuns.

Is there a place for apostrophes or hyphens in crossword clues? Opinions differ.

• Books

A coveted British Crime Writers Debut Dagger award got publishers moving on Mark Brandi and his first novel, Wimmera.

It began with a Facebook share that awakened the trolls and ended with more than 2000 people showing their support to an iconic Brisbane bookstore.

Karin Slaughter was influenced as a writer and as a woman by Sara Paretsky's books.

• Review

Judith Mackrell weaves together stories of three unique women and the palazzo they each at one time owned on Venice's Grand Canal.

• Review

Though Wayne Macauley's allegorical prowess remains undimmed, his latest is straightforward and direct.

According to Jodie Archer and Matthew Jockers, there is an answer to the apparent randomness of major commercial success in popular fiction that emerges when the data is mined by computers.