The rest of us muggles might stock our closets with board games and other junk – JK Rowling's is housing every Harry Potter fan's dream.

My blood always races whenever a fresh batch of words needs assessing.

A painful yet compelling story of pure narrative without authorial intervention.

A New York novel that starts off dark – and only gets darker.

A beautiful and horrifying novella examining the history of Buddhism in Vietnam.

Three authors re-imagine literary greats in new novels

A dystopian tale that resonated in the contemporary real world.

A cultural history of hats in the West.

An unorthodox memoir of the "ways of seeing" that a blind person experiences.

Bibliophile Daniel Gray celebrates the rituals of reading.

A satisfying selection of writing by journalist-turned public intellectual Donald Horne.

The Thirst sees detective Harry Hole dealing with a very modern serial killer

The stories in Hungarian fabulist Laszlo Krasznahorkai's new fiction collection are bite-size marvels.

An intriguing exploration of the individual, the internet and the state in three non-fiction essays.

An imaginative debut recreates the life of Eugenia Falleni, a female-to-male transgender person who captivated Sydney in 1920

More an more authors are 'downsizing' from major publishing houses

Literary events in Canberra,

I reckon we all have one foot in the bogan camp, assuming sociologists will ever define such a space.

One of Australia's absolutely essential poets, Fay Zwicky, has died on the weekend her Collected Poems was published.

Comedian and childrens' author says Spike Milligan's Badjelly the Witch is one of the best books to read out loud.

• Books

A long talk with Robert Ludlum had big consequences for Eric Van Lustbader, who took on Jason Bourne after creator's death.

Death of a She Devil is a kind of coda to a brilliant literary career that will charm anyone who can cotton on to the lilt of a sentence or the wit of a wise old woman

• Review

Strong young-adult fiction like Anna Spargo-Ryan's The Gulf should not preclude it from being enjoyed by adults.

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