From the personal to the epic, the third book in this round-up could not be more different again, propelling the reader as it does into the postmodern.
ODT books editor Helen Speirs sat down with Man Booker Prize-winning New Zealand author Eleanor Catton between her appearances at last weekend's Dunedin Writers and Readers Festival, hoping to shed some light on the West Coast goldrush murder mystery doorstopper that is The Luminaries.
Before her appearance at the Dunedin Writers and Readers Festival, Otago Daily Times books editor Helen Speirs asks Wellington author Elizabeth Knox about the process of writing, blurring the boundaries between fantasy and reality, and the invisible monster in her latest novel, Wake.
The Dunedin Writers and Readers Festival has been a labour of love for its five-member trust, most of them unpaid volunteers, including chairwoman Alexandra Bligh, a Dunedin lawyer and keen reader who had the idea for the festival a year ago.
Love in all its complexities comes under the microscope in the latest stand-alone novel The Forever Girl, by prolific Edinburgh-based author Alexander McCall Smith.
This has to qualify as one of the most unusual and unpredictable novels I have read.
Elderly Dorrigo Evans, compulsive womaniser, husband, father, retired surgeon, lover of literature, WW2 veteran and reluctant war hero, is penning the foreword to a book of illustrations by a former fellow Australian POW, one of hundreds of thousands of men who died slaving to build the Thai-Burma railway under the Japanese 50 years earlier.
New Zealand author Charlotte Randall has created an extraordinary piece of fiction based on the early-19th century true story of four convicts who escaped on a sealing ship from jail on Norfolk Island, were dropped on one of the remote subantarctic Snares Islands for a year's sealing, and left there for almost a decade.
When people wake to a living nightmare, what will they do to survive?
This is a simple and catchy Kiwi take on the classic counting song This Old Man by New Zealand author/illustrator Errol McLeary who now lives in Australia.
Central Otago author Kyle Mewburn has come up trumps with this delightful tale of a poor chick who thinks it must be sick when it fails to lay an egg.
American Aaron Becker has ventured from the world of film design to create his first children's book, a wordless journey into the imagination.
In this story, established Auckland children's author Melinda Szymanik recounts all the things that happen in the world while a young boy sleeps in his bed.
This appealing book by a trio of New Zealand comic-book collaborators follows the story of a young boy, Morgan, on his quest to find out the name of the moon.
Papatowai children's author Diana Noonan and Dunedin illustrator Robyn Belton have created a poignant story of a little boy and his faithful teddy bear.
A new book by Australian author Tim Winton is always a treat.
The subtitle to New Zealand journalist Mike White's book is certainly accurate, although readers hoping for an answer to the question posed by the main title may be disappointed.
This quirky, literature-laden book by two British friends is a ''novel'' take on best-book compilations and the self-help genre, and is sure to delight bibliophiles.
Helen Speirs reviews Skippers & the Shotover River, Queenstown.
Peninsula is the third collaboration between writer, editor and photographer Paul Sorrell and fellow Dunedinite photographer Graham Warman.