At the end of his tenure as Australian Children's Laureate, Hobbs has a message for educators and parents.

Literary news and events.

Alexis Wright, Miles Franklin-winning Indigenous author of Carpentaria, will be the second professor of Australian literature at the University of Melbourne.

There is an odd hysterical edge to Sebastian Hampson's second novel's obsession with the values and customs of New York.

A City of Port Phillip proposal to remove books from Middle Park Library and turn it into a collaborative digital working space has sparked opposition from residents.

The Room may or may not be the worst movie ever made, but the cult film has had an unexpectedly productive afterlife for Greg Sestero and the film's creator Tommy Wiseau.

Alex Skovron is better known as a poet but this book of short stories is a small revelation.

Allison Pearson's sequel to her bestselling novel from 2002, How Hard Can It Be?, feels forced and tired.

It takes a gifted writer to frighten the reader in any truly visceral way and Andrew Michael Hurley's new novel is genuinely creepy.

Matthew Weiner had massive success with Mad Men. But no one expected him to turn to writing fiction.

After tragedy struck Susan Alberti channelled her energy and her grief into causes closest to her heart: medical research, her football team and women's football.

Celebrated 16th-century renaissance man Jerome Cardano unearthed "the mathematical pillars" on which quantum theory is based.

Renate Klein argues that surrogacy turns the pregnant woman into an "incubator" and the child into a "product".

William Trubridge plumbs the spiritual depths of freediving: the sensation of shedding the physical self and the ego.

From YA fiction from John Green, to a Booker winner and a pointed page turner from Michelle de Kretser, these are the books you need to keep you reading this summer.

From Star Wars to Sia, to Hannah Gadsby and the Book of Mormon, plus new books by Michelle de Kretser and Philip Pullman and must-listen podcast Dear John, we have your summer covered.

It is hard to look away from a surf photo, and some the best are showcased in a new book.

Confronting in its brilliantly portrayal of a daughter and her single-parent abusive father.

For vintage Cold Chisel fans, frank and ample disclosures about band dynamics and company business are in keeping with Jimmy Barnes' hugely readable, no-bullshit style.

He's been doing it so long he's almost convinced himself it's normal, but Anthony Lehmann knows the key to surviving breakfast radio is all in the mind.

The Christmas wish-list grows longer, with a profusion of new books for gardeners of every level.

The neat tricks of cryptic clues in crosswords will make you smile.

Ahead of his return to Australia early next year, David Sedaris shares the unpublished diary entries he penned during a previous trip Down Under.

Mat Pember and Dillon Seitchik-Reardon top the gardening books bestsellers chart