REVIEWED BY LESLEY SOPER - © Fairfax NZ News

Most people are aware of the story of Oscar Schindler and his courageous efforts to save Jewish lives during World War II.

REVIEWED BY NAIDA MULLIGAN - © Fairfax NZ News

John Richardson is an important figure in Otago and Southland pioneering history. I, for one, had never heard of him.

REVIEWED BY LESLEY SOPER - © Fairfax NZ News

Only one man in New Zealand can claim to have entered parliament with the ambition to be attorney-general in order to improve the rule of law and restrain the executive, and end up 11 years later as Prime Minister.

REVIEWED BY CHRIS CHILTON - © Fairfax NZ News

Reviewer Chris Chilton finds this biography more racy than revealing.

REVIEWED BY JILLIAN ALLISON-AITKEN - © Fairfax NZ News

Quirky British comedian Simon Pegg has tried his hand at writing and the result is an autobiography that feels like the perfect mix of professional overview and personal emotion.

REVIEWED BY F MULLIGAN - © Fairfax NZ News

Haane Manahi from Ohinemutu joined up with the army at the start of World War II. He became part of B Company of the 28th (Maori) Battalion and as part of the NZ division he was sent to England, Greece, Crete and North Africa.

REVIEWED BY JILLIAN ALLISON-AITKEN - © Fairfax NZ News

This latest book by Glyn Harper is one that brings home the trauma, hardship, heartache and horror of living through, and with, a war.

REVIEWED BY NAIDA MULLIGAN - © Fairfax NZ News

This is the awe-inspiring life story of Zambian HIV victim, Princess Kasune Zulu. Not the sort of book I would ordinarily choose to read, it nevertheless grabbed me from the first page and was compulsive reading. Contrary to expectations it was not a sad read, but one full of positivity and hope.

REVIEWED BY NAIDA MULLIGAN - © Fairfax NZ News

The report of the expedition and death of Henry Whitcombe by Jakob Lauper was first published way back in 1863.

REVIEWED BY NAIDA MULLIGAN - © Fairfax NZ News

I'm not sure how I've got to the age I am now and never read any of William Taylor's novels. It doesn't sound as though they're easy to forget either so I'm sure I'd have remembered reading one.

REVIEWED BY CRAIG LAWSON - © Fairfax NZ News

As a huge fan of Gok, I was extremely excited to start reading his autobiography.

REVIEWED BY JILLIAN ALLISON-AITKEN - © Fairfax NZ News

I tried to go into reading the autobiography of America's 43rd president with an open mind.

REVIEWED BY ROSEMARIE SMITH - © Fairfax NZ News

This has to be the definitive biography, greatly expanding the caricaturised historical view of the fraudster infamous for her 1909 masquerade as The Female Bridegroom of Nugget Bay.

REVIEWED BY JILLIAN ALLISON-AITKEN - © Fairfax NZ News

Ian Mune is something of the elder statesman of acting here in New Zealand, with a pedigree that covers film, television and theatre.

REVIEWED BY NATHAN BURDON - © Fairfax NZ News

It's an unusual subject to write about, a sports reporter.

With the offices of Mayor of Auckland and Governor-General of New Zealand under her belt Dame Cath (as she likes to be known) is also proud to display on her study wall a certificate of membership of the Worshipful Company of the Art or Mistery of the Butchers of the City of London – which entitles her to drive a flock of sheep across London Bridge. When she made a fund-raising parachute jump the Queen sent her a telegram: "Well jumped. Elizabeth R."

REVIEWED BY STEVE MASON - © Fairfax NZ News

Susan Boyle has captured the heart of romantics around the world  a middle-aged spinster from a small Scottish village who sat Simon Cowell on his backside.

REVIEWED BY NATASHA HOLLAND - © Fairfax NZ News

Ultra-marathon runner Lisa Tamati is a gutsy woman. It's no easy feat to be an ultramarathon runner and running through Death Valley, Nevada, is not walk in the park.

REVIEWED BY DEBBIE JAMIESON - © Fairfax NZ News

Fans of the television show Underbelly should be excited to get a little closer to the truth behind Melbourne's gangland murders with this autobiography by the wife of drug dealer and at least four-time murderer Carl Williams.

REVIEWED BY LESLEY SOPER - © Fairfax NZ News

Another book on Anne Boleyn and Henry VIII? Don't be misled.

REVIEWED BY MICHELLE LEE - © Fairfax NZ News

In 2006, when Haleh Esfandiari tried to leave the country of her birth, Iran, after visiting her elderly mother, she became the victim of a highway robbery.

REVIEWED BY ROSEMARIE SMITH - © Fairfax NZ News

From revolutionary Russia to refuge in America, this gem of self-publication (by Sonechkas daughter and Kiwi son-in-law) also provides a fascinating window on a tragic sweep of Russian history, but through the lifestory of a woman born in 1904.

REVIEWED BY F MULLIGAN - © Fairfax NZ News

In the year 1271 Marco Polo accompanied his father and uncle on what was their second trip to the East.

REVIEWED BY JOSEPH BEAUMONT - © Fairfax NZ News

Think of Bill Clinton and the name Monica Lewinsky at once springs to mind, so skewed was his handling of the scandal created by a major personal flaw. It's a fair bet, too, that he will figure in the history books as the second American president to stand trial for impeachment. Yet that is to undermine his idealism and determination in the many political battles he fought, and sometimes lost, in his two terms of office. America had never had a leader like him.

REVIEWED BY JILLIAN ALLISON-AITKEN - © Fairfax NZ News

Steven Spielberg's epic World War II movie Saving Private Ryan was one of those gut-wrenching stories that stayed with you long after you walked out of the theatre.

REVIEWED BY ROSEMARIE SMITH - © Fairfax NZ News

Brothers and Sisters (edited by Charlotte Wood, Allen & Unwin, $37.99) & Way Back Then, Before We Were Ten: NZ writers and childhood (compiled and edited by Graeme Lay, David Ling, $34.99): These two collections make an interesting pair, dealing with the universals of childhood – the confusion of emotions, magical experiences, and the discovery of self – but set in specifically Australasian environments with multicultural undertones.

REVIEWED BY JILLIAN ALLISON-AITKEN - © Fairfax NZ News

By now, most people will know the name Julie Powell, her efforts to work her way through Julia Child's recipes having been immortalised on film in Julie & Julia.

REVIEWED BY GWEN CHALONER - © Fairfax NZ News

Whether or not vodka is your favourite tipple, and whether or not you're into history, The King of Vodka: The story of Pyotr Smirnov and the Upheaval of an Empire is a fascinating saga of one man who made a huge difference to a whole nation.

REVIEWED BY JILLIAN ALLISON-AITKEN - © Fairfax NZ News

Julie Powell  wasn't happy with her life. Living in a pokey New York apartment and simply getting on with the daily grind, the author felt like life was passing her by.

REVIEWED BY JOSEPH BEAUMONT - © Fairfax NZ News

When feisty Carterton lawyer Herbert Hart left New Zealand in 1914 to serve as a major with the New Zealand Expeditionary Force, he never dreamed he would return home as a much-decorated brigadier-general.

REVIEWED BY JILLIAN ALLISON-AITKEN - © Fairfax NZ News

He's a Kiwi icon and a good southern bloke but there are probably a lot of us who still don't know as much about Burt Munro as we really should.

REVIEWED BY MAREE FIELD - © Fairfax NZ News

Temuera Morrison is one of New Zealand's most enduring – and probably best-recognised – actors.

REVIEWED JUDY CLEINE - © Fairfax NZ News

Bernard Brown is a high profile Auckland law lecturer with a taste for poetry and puns ("even Aesop had his/her foibles") an interest in law reform and an acerbic wit.

REVIEWED F MULLIGAN - © Fairfax NZ News

John Cameron Fraser was born in Scotland in 1834. He later travelled to New Zealand and settled here. That's the bare bones but his descendant Warwick Thompson has taken Frasers story, filled in a few blanks with reasonable possibilities and tweaked things a little to produce a semi-biographical historical novel.

REVIEWED BY PAT VELTKAMP SMITH - © Fairfax NZ News

This is a truly harrowing tale, written in the first person by a woman born out of wedlock to live her childhood as an orphan, abused, unloved.

REVIEWED BY WILL HINE - © Fairfax NZ News

Queenstown man Alan Hamilton waited until he was in his mid-70s before writing his first book.

REVIEWED BY JOHN CUTT - © Fairfax NZ News

James Hector was all but the forgotten man of New Zealand science until the centenary of his death in 2007.

REVIEWED BY JUDY CLEINE - © Fairfax NZ News

Of all the memoirs I have read recently this is the one that gave me the most pleasure and the most insight into another person's pain, problems and triumphs.

REVIEWED JILLIAN ALLISON-AITKEN - © Fairfax NZ News

Madonna's brother has jumped on the publicity bandwagon with a book that I suppose will make him some money but certainly won't gain him any favour with his famous sister.

REVIEWED BY FRANK GLEN - © Fairfax NZ News

It is seldom a book appears these days written by an individual who served in both World War I and II.

REVIEWED BY STEVE MASON - © Fairfax NZ News

Published as a companion to the exhibition of the same name curated by Te Papa in Wellington last year and running in Auckland until November 1, Life and Vision covers the life and paintings of Rita Angus.

REVIEWED BY JOSEPH BEAUMONT - © Fairfax NZ News

William Ferguson Massey, founder of the Reform Party and champion of rural interests, was prime minister of New Zealand from 1912 to 1925.

REVIEWED BY JUDY CLEINE & JOHN BALLANTYNE - © Fairfax NZ News

Alexander McKay (1841-1917) was not a willing pupil in his village of birth in Scotland, and apparently didn't pay much attention to straying cows or his other family duties.

REVIEWED BY WILL HINE - © Fairfax NZ News

At the end of Michael Hill's new book is a hand-scrawled message to the reader: "If you have what it takes to be a winner I want to hear from you contact us on michaelhill.com".

REVIEWED BY JOSEPH BEAUMONT - © Fairfax NZ News

This book is a pleasure to read clear, well-written and balanced.

BY ROSEMARIE SMITH - © Fairfax NZ News

"Most New Zealanders have been born here and had no choice in the matter; I [chose] to come, [took] the chance, and I ... stayed."

REVIEWED BY GWEN CHALONER - © Fairfax NZ News

This is like a prequel/sequel to the book that inspired the movie Marley & Me about a couple with a wondrously neurotic dog.

REVIEWED BY JILLIAN ALLISON-AITKEN - © Fairfax NZ News

Reviews in brief:

REVIEWED BY GWEN CHALONER - © Fairfax NZ News

You don't have to be an alcoholic to read this book but if you are, you've got nothing to lose and possibly something to gain, although I did have a few prejudices to overcome to get past the first few pages.

REVIEWED BY LYNETTE KLAVER - © Fairfax NZ News

Tall, handsome, and intelligent, Roald Dahl had all the makings of an ideal operative.

REVIEWED BY NAIDA MULLIGAN - © Fairfax NZ News

This book is "No 5 in the Murphy Series". Ross Curtis relates episodes from his life as a deer culler, forest ranger and all-round mountain man.

REVIEWED BY JILLIAN ALLISON-AITKEN - © Fairfax NZ News

Gordon Ramsay is a bloke with a big mouth but he's got the talent to back up all his noise.

REVIEWED BY JILLIAN ALLISON-AITKEN - © Fairfax NZ News

Richard Branson, the entrepreneur behind the wildly successful Virgin Group, is one of those astonishingly rich people who is also astonishingly adventurous.

REVIEWED BY JILLIAN ALLISON-AITKEN - © Fairfax NZ News

Aussie's Crocodile Hunter Steve Irwin may have died an untimely death after his encounter with a stingray but there's no doubt he packed more into his 44 years than most of us could ever hope to achieve in two lifetimes.

REVIEWED BY JILLIAN ALLISON-AITKEN - © Fairfax NZ News

Genuine, true blue adventurers aren't exactly a dime a dozen but here in New Zealand we seem to have more than our fair share.

REVIEWED BY JILLIAN ALLISON-AITKEN - © Fairfax NZ News

We all felt for former All Black Norm Hewitt when the news broke back in February, 2006, that his brother Rob was the diver missing off the Kapiti Coast.

REVIEWED BY SARAH MCCARTHY - © Fairfax NZ News

J G Ballard has been hailed as one of the great british writers of his generation. 

REVIEWED BY JOSEPH BEAUMONT - © Fairfax NZ News

A cup of tea drunk by former KGB officer Alexander Litvinenko in a London hotel in November 2006 had been spiked with a radioactive substance, and three weeks later he was dead.

REVIEWED BY PAT VELTKAMP SMITH - © Fairfax NZ News

It will go down in history as one of the great battles of 20th century feminism, the battle to be ordained, to join the clergy of a traditional church.

REVIEWED BY MAREE FIELD - © Fairfax NZ News

Suzanne Paul is, by now, as well-known for her failures in New Zealand as she is for her successes.

REVIEWED BY VIVIENNE ROBERTS - © Fairfax NZ News

Well-known Aucklander Christine Fernyhough doesn't do things by halves. Having been the co- founder with Alan Duff of Books in Homes then Gifted Kids Programme she gets in there and gets things done.

REVIEWED BY HELEN BISSLAND - © Fairfax NZ News

Kiwi Keith a biography of Keith Holyoake is a lively, impeccably researched and well presented work as the reader would expect from an accomplished academic like Gustafson.

REVIEWED BY JILLIAN ALLISON-AITKEN - © Fairfax NZ News

There's probably not a lot you can say about Sir Edmund Hillary that we don't already know.

REVIEWED BY FRANK GLEN - © Fairfax NZ News

In recent years, General Sir Bernard Freyberg, the New Zealand World War 2 divisional commander has fallen under the growing scrutiny of the younger batch of New Zealand military historians.