REVIEWED BY NAIDA MULLIGAN - © Fairfax NZ News

Ailsford is the contemporary setting for this series of vignettes.

REVIEWED BY CASSIE LUKE - © Fairfax NZ News

I must admit I was a little worried picking up this book, because it had been so long since I had read the Shelters of Stone.

REVIEWED BY NADINE HEMA - © Fairfax NZ News

Major Pettigrew is the ultimate traditionalist. He lives in a quiet English village where he enjoys a quiet but well- respected life.

REVIEWED BY NAIDA MULLIGAN - © Fairfax NZ News

This book comes packaged in critical praise, both for itself and for Maynard's previous novel, Labor Day.

REVIEWED BY LESLEY SOPER - © Fairfax NZ News

A collection of short stories by a well-regarded (some say brilliant) Chinese writer, which explores love and alienation in a modern, urban world.

REVIEWED BY F MULLIGAN - © Fairfax NZ News

Helen Adams is a free lance photographer who comes to South Vietnam in search of some greater understanding of her brother's death in combat than merely the bare facts, but also to see war's face.

REVIEWED BY NAIDA MULLIGAN - © Fairfax NZ News

This is a most competent debut from born and bred Southlander, Tanya Moir.

REVIEWED BY MAREE FIELD - © Fairfax NZ News

The Blackadder family have fallen on hard times – their castle stolen by another powerful Scottish family and the remainders of the Blackadders scattered, murdered, or folded into the Hume clan by marriage.

REVIEWED BY LESLEY SOPER - © Fairfax NZ News

By the author of The Horse Whisperer, which is a hard act to follow, but Nicholas Evans manages to do it.

REVIEWED BY NAIDA MULLIGAN - © Fairfax NZ News

This is Brunonia Barry's second novel. Her first, The Lace Seller, having been a New York Times bestseller. It does boast some pleasing critical praise on the cover of this one.

REVIEWED BY F MULLIGAN - © Fairfax NZ News

Abi Rutherford, an Anglican vicar, returns to Cambridge to join a parish as a curate.

REVIEWED BY NAIDA MULLIGAN - © Fairfax NZ News

Spellbinding," said the UK's Daily Mail. "Spellbindingly boring," said Mr FM as he refused to read it.

REVIEWED BY NADINE HEMA - © Fairfax NZ News

When her Aunt Rose dies, Julie Jacobs is heart-broken and confused when she is left a key to a locked box somewhere in Italy.

REVIEWED BY NADINE HEMA - © Fairfax NZ News

When her Aunt Rose dies, Julie Jacobs is heart-broken and confused when she is left a key to a locked box somewhere in Italy.

REVIEWED BY NAIDA MULLIGAN - © Fairfax NZ News

You may relate to the first person narrator, Maxwell Sim,if you, like him, are in your late 40s and entering (or exiting) a midlife crisis.

REVIEWED BY NAIDA MULLIGAN - © Fairfax NZ News

Lee Langley is a veteran author and here she continues the story of the operatic Madame Butterfly, which presumably ended with the heroine handing over her son to his father and committing suicide.

REVIEWED BY DEBBIE JAMIESON - © Fairfax NZ News

I like Fay Weldon. Her books are wonderfully readable, always focused on women and full of all the foibles, quirks and mistakes of existence. But it took me longer than usual to warm to Kehua. Billed as "a tale of murder, adultery, incest, remorse, redemption and ghosts", it instantly sounded complicated.

REVIEWED BY NATASHA HOLLAND - © Fairfax NZ News

An orphan destined to become a great queen, who has a desire for children she cannot have, and the occult she turns to, to ensure the crown placed upon her remains.

REVIEWED BY MAREE FIELD - © Fairfax NZ News

Luka lives in a world of stories. His father Rashid – the Shah of Blah – tells Luka stories all the time, and he moves through the world with his head full of fantastic tales.

REVIEWED BY F MULLIGAN - © Fairfax NZ News

This is the second book in the series.

REVIEWED BY SARAH MCCARTHY - © Fairfax NZ News

In the mid-1800s, Actress Mary Penney has bought disgrace on her family and is being shipped out to India to hopefully marry her way out of the situation. Instead she ends up in China with her cold, unyielding brother-in-law, Robert Fortune, a horticulturist bent on stealing China's tea secrets for the East India Company.

REVIEWED BY F MULLIGAN - © Fairfax NZ News

John Patterson and Dusty Miller are part of a private security team tasked with training Afghan anti-narcotic teams.

REVIEWED BY LESLEY SOPER - © Fairfax NZ News

It is not the tree of solid silver (symbol of the Mongol tribes who had become a nation) which decorates the palace of Ogedai Khan in his great new city of Karakorum, that you will remember from this sweeping, fast-paced novel.

REVIEWED BY NAIDA MULLIGAN - © Fairfax NZ News

Charlotte Grimshaw lives in Auckland where she writes a monthly column in Metro magazine. She is already an award-winning and critically acclaimed novelist of note.

REVIEWED BY LESLEY SOPER - © Fairfax NZ News

Reading Carrell's earlier book The Shakespeare Secret first may help to fill in a bit of back story about Curse's heroine Kate and hero Ben, but overall this is a good, if very bloodthirsty, novel for those who enjoy books of the ilk of the Da Vinci Code.

REVIEWED BY JILLIAN ALLISON-AITKEN - © Fairfax NZ News

New Zealand Truth was a force to be reckoned with in its hey-day, breaking the juiciest of stories and keeping the dodgy and depraved quaking in their boots.

REVIEWED BY SARAH MCCARTHY - © Fairfax NZ News

English rose Sophie Apperly is the kind of girl that puts everyone else's needs before her own – especially her family, who think just because she isn't a scholar that she's quite stupid.

REVIEWED BY NAIDA MULLIGAN - © Fairfax NZ News

This is Glenn Taylor's second novel and it has already been well reviewed with some impressive critical comments on the cover.

REVIEWED BY MAREE FIELD - © Fairfax NZ News

Arthur is a released psychiatric patient living in a halfway house in Ponsonby. He also thinks he's the second son of God, and that Armageddon is coming.

REVIEWED BY NADINE HEMA - © Fairfax NZ News

Were you, or are you still, a fan of David Cassidy?

REVIEWED BY ANDREA CODD - © Fairfax NZ News

This is the third novel by New Zealand author Felicity Price about the main character Penny Rushmore.

REVIEWED BY F MULLIGAN - © Fairfax NZ News

The seafaring town of Marstal in Denmark is the main centre of this novel.

REVIEWED BY SARAH MCCARTHY - © Fairfax NZ News

Brooke has been exhausting herself supporting musician husband Julian while he tries to hit the big time – so when the dream comes true Brooke thinks she is ready for the payoff – but it isn't what she expected.

REVIEWED BY F MULLIGAN - © Fairfax NZ News

Savage Lands is a novel inspired by and set amid the French colonisation of Southern Louisiana.

REVIEWED BY LESLEY SOPER - © Fairfax NZ News

This is the story of the redoubtable Margaret Beaufort, heiress of Lancaster; bride of Edmund Tudor, mother (at 14) of Henry VII; determined and dedicated plotter; religious fanatic; destined to be a terrible mother-in-law to Elizabeth of York.

REVIEWED BY LESLEY SOPER - © Fairfax NZ News

This work of fiction does no favours to Katherine Howard. Generally written off by history as young, frivolous, stupid and promiscuous, this is pretty well how the fifth wife of Henry VIII is portrayed in this novel.

REVIEWED BY LESLEY SOPER - © Fairfax NZ News

Corrag is a novel of rare lyrical writing, which transports you to the Scottish Highlands, and specifically to the Glen of Glencoe and the terrible betrayal of 13th February, 1692.

REVIEWED BY NAIDA MULLIGAN - © Fairfax NZ News

Chalcot Crescent is written from the first-person point of view of Frances, the younger sister by two years that author Fay Weldon never had.

REVIEWED BY MAREE FIELD - © Fairfax NZ News

Rose Tremain's new nove, Trespass opens dramatically enough, with a young girl on a class picnic discovering something horrific in the forest.

REVIEWED BY F MULLIGAN - © Fairfax NZ News

Henry Oades and his family travel from the United Kingdom to New Zealand in order for him to take up an accountancy position at Wellington's Government Distillery.

REVIEWED BY LESLEY SOPER - © Fairfax NZ News

A poetic and oddly satisfying novel by an acclaimed New Zealand poet and writer.

REVIEWED BY NAIDA MULLIGAN - © Fairfax NZ News

Esther Vilar is a veteran playwright who was born in Buenos Aires. Evidently in 1971 she published a non-fiction controversial bestseller called The Manipulated Man about gender politics.

REVIEWED BY F MULLIGAN - © Fairfax NZ News

Thrice cursed, Haiti and its birth is the setting for the start of this family saga-historical drama.

REVIEWED BY NAIDA MULLIGAN - © Fairfax NZ News

Julian Corkle is a Filthy Liar is suitable only for readers with an open mind. If you're very religious (particularly Catholic) or homophobic, then leave this one on the shelf.

REVIEWED BY LESLEY SOPER - © Fairfax NZ News

The third in the Kitty series by NZ historical novelist Deborah Challinor, set in the utterly realistic backdrop of Melbourne and old Ballarat during the Australian goldrush, 1854.

REVIEWED BY LESLEY SOPER - © Fairfax NZ News

Thomas Cromwell, Henry VIII's "Master Secretary" would probably have killed for a publicist like Hilary Mantel when he lived.

REVIEWED BY NAIDA MULLIGAN - © Fairfax NZ News

This book is worth buying just for the simple fact that all royalties go to Amnesty International, that great organisation that works to protect human rights all over the world.

REVIEWED BY NAIDA MULLIGAN - © Fairfax NZ News

Remarkable Creatures is fiction based on real life and this always makes the best stories I find.

REVIEWED BY F MULLIGAN - © Fairfax NZ News

A professional hit man nicknamed Lucky Fox is, naturally enough, a troubled man. During his latest hit he has a revelation. He realises his life doesn't have to be empty and his relationship with God can be repaired.

REVIEWED BY NADINE HEMA - © Fairfax NZ News

I am going to be completely honest, I picked this book up for the recipes, and who can blame me when it includes delicious treats like "Chocolate Cream with Creme Angalise" and "Lamb Shanks with Orange and Star Anise".

REVIEWED BY NAIDA MULLIGAN - © Fairfax NZ News

Part fact, part supposition, this work of fiction details the last two years in the life of Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh.

REVIEWED BY NADINE HEMA - © Fairfax NZ News

Alison Booth's debut novel, set in the 1950s, is a beautiful yet shocking account of the events that unfold in the small coastal Australian town of Jingera.

REVIEWED BY ROSEMARIE SMITH - © Fairfax NZ News

This is a cosy collection of English eccentrics inhabit these brilliantly written short stories, based on the author's affectionate childhood recollections of village life.

REVIEWED BY NAIDA MULLIGAN - © Fairfax NZ News

During the Inquisition in 1616, Seville is a dangerous place to live or visit.

REVIEWED BY NAIDA MULLIGA - © Fairfax NZ News

Sorry, I've read the blurb and first six chapters but this is one book I don't really want to finish. Not only is this a novel, it's a social historical document which I'm sure is of great importance in the history of Australia.

REVIEWED BY F MULLIGAN - © Fairfax NZ News

The English Civil War and subsequent Commonwealth is the period setting for Rebels and Traitors.

REVIEWED BY MICHELLE LEE - © Fairfax NZ News

This is a book with a strong message. Lydia Kyriaco has a serious drinking problem which only gets worse when her boyfriend dumps her and she stuffs up at work. To top it all off her cat gets run over and her world slowly crumbles. Looking at the bottom of a wine bottle is her only escape – until she realises all her problems have stemmed from the booze.

REVIEWED BY MICHELLE LEE - © Fairfax NZ News

Set in England, musician Ritchie dies and leaves behind a partner (he didn't marry) and three daughters in London; a woman (he did marry) in Newcastle and their son. Guess which family benefits?

REVIEWED BY L KLAVER - © Fairfax NZ News

Summertime is the third instalment in the fictionalised autobiography of writer John Coetzee.

REVIEWED BY ROSEMARIE SMITH - © Fairfax NZ News

Reviewers have all noted this new novelist's imaginative fictional use of the 1950s Parker-Hulme schoolgirl murder of Parker's mother, but few if any seem to have picked the repressed memory of sexual abuse that ties in that other major Christchurch scandal, the Civic Creche Case.

REVIEWED BY NAIDA MULLIGAN - © Fairfax NZ News

Breaking the Rules is the latest of Taylor Bradford's prolific output and the excuse for the anniversary edition of A Woman of Substance.

REVIEWED BY F MULLIGAN - © Fairfax NZ News

Laurence Beaumont, heir to the Lord Beaumont title and a Cotswold estate, has returned to the bosom of his family in England, having spent six years on the continent in search of adventure and a licence for freedom.

REVIEWED BY KEN MACKAY - © Fairfax NZ News

This is one of those books that start from the beginning and go nowhere.

REVIEWED BY NAIDA MULLIGAN - © Fairfax NZ News

The 30th anniversary edition of A Woman of Substance was published in October. It contains a new foreword from the author, which reminds us of just how popular this saga has been over the years, and what a role model Emma Harte still is.

REVIEWED BY MICHELLE LEE - © Fairfax NZ News

Ever wondered what it's like to be popular?

REVIEWED BY L KLAVER - © Fairfax NZ News

Ellie's best friend, Lucy, is murdered in a Notting Hill street in full view of her daughter, Sophie.

REVIEWED BY F MULLIGAN - © Fairfax NZ News

Edilean Talbot is the heiress to a Scottish estate and holder of a large dowry. Her only relative, an uncle, is keeping her isolated in Scotland with hopes of embezzling her wealth.

REVIEWED BY MICHELLE CHILTON - © Fairfax NZ News

Larissa Stark has it all: money, children, a hard-working husband, even a brand new Jag! But all is not as it seems.

REVIEWED BY NADINE HEMA - © Fairfax NZ News

For reasons unknown to me and the wonderful world of Google, Irish author Anna McPartlin has republished her 2006 debut novel Pack up the Moon. She has changed a few of the characters' names, repackaged it, changed its title and, voila, the literary world now has Because You Are with Me.

REVIEWED L KLAVER - © Fairfax NZ News

Alice Howland is a Harvard professor, wife and mother of three adult children. She is 50 years old and increasingly forgetful.

REVIEWED BY NADINE HEMA - © Fairfax NZ News

Tamara Goodwin and her mother lead a privileged life until her father passes away leaving nothing but a pile of debt. This forces the pair to move in with Tamara's Aunt and Uncle in the country near the ruins of Kilsaney Castle.

REVIEWED BY MICHELLE CHILTON - © Fairfax NZ News

When assistant district attorney Alexa Hamilton, a successful career woman with an equally beautiful daughter, Savannah, is handed a case she can't turn down – the trial of an accused serial killer – Savannah's life comes under threat.

REVIEWED BY F MULLIGAN - © Fairfax NZ News

Eleanor Goodriche grows up a free spirit despite her puritan father or even, contradictorily, because of him.

REVIEWED BY NADINE HEMA - © Fairfax NZ News

This story is not a nice one. It's not one to curl up on the couch with, or one you get a warm, gushy feeling from when you have turned the last page. This is the story of Simon Axler, an ageing actor who has lost both his talent and his self-confidence. He admits himself into a psychiatric hospital, where he meets a woman with a damaged past, who leads him on to a violent path.

REVIEWED BY STEVE MASON - © Fairfax NZ News

For his latest – 19th – novel, Bryce Courtenay has taken the fictional character of Danny Dunn, a teenage sporting hero from the working-class Sydney suburb of Balmain.

REVIEWED BY NAIDA MULLIGAN - © Fairfax NZ News

Lost in Translation was first published in 1998 and won several awards and notable mentions.

REVIEWED ROBERT MAXWELL - © Fairfax NZ News

This story blew my mind. Plain and simple. This book was engaging from start to finish, with twists, turns and a series of intriguing sub-plots. A roller-coaster ride into the imagination.

REVIEWED BY NADINE HEMA - © Fairfax NZ News

Nick Hornby, author of High Fidelity and Slam, returns with this funky and utterly appealing story of long-time couple Duncan and Annie and their mutual love of musician Tucker Crowe.

REVIEWED BY GWEN CHALONER - © Fairfax NZ News

The Ozone is a pub in Perth, a shearer's pub. At some point all the characters in this book, set in the late 70s, pass through its doors and lean on its bar, including Joe McDuff, a young New Zealander from Tokanui, in the Catlins.

REVIEWED BY MICHAEL FALLOW - © Fairfax NZ News

Let's first acknowledge the warning light.

REVIEWED BY MAREE FIELD - © Fairfax NZ News

Marian Keyes has a nice touch when it comes to whimsy, and she employs it to good effect in The Brightest Star in the Sky.

REVIEWED BY LYNETTE KLAVER - © Fairfax NZ News

Philippa Gregory's latest novel begins during the War of the Roses, when the House of York challenged the House of Lancaster for the throne of England.

REVIEWED BY MAREE FIELD - © Fairfax NZ News

Access Road is a novel about memory the past and the present and how they wind together and pull us apart sometimes; and put us back together.

REVIEWED DEBBIE JAMIESON - © Fairfax NZ News

There is something special about a writer sharing the process of writing with the reader.

REVIEWED ROSEMARIE SMITH - © Fairfax NZ News

This little book is the literary equivalent of a series of lightening portraits made without taking pen from paper, with rapid-fire personalities bursting off the page.

REVIEWED JUDY CLEINE - © Fairfax NZ News

This book ends with a quote from Mother Julian of Norwich, 14th Century, "All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well."

REVIEWED F MULLIGAN - © Fairfax NZ News

Mia is a tattoo artist, martial arts exponent and the keeper of ancient arts.

REVIEWED GWEN CHALONER - © Fairfax NZ News

There's nothing better, in my view, than a long intimate saga that flicks back and forth across the decades, introducing the major players and how they're connected, how they meet and how their lives pan out.

REVIEWED BY NADINE HEMA - © Fairfax NZ News

I know you should never judge a book by its cover, but I have to admit, I did this time, on the spot.

REVIEWED BY GWEN CHALONER - © Fairfax NZ News

A bit like a cross between the TV show Friends (without the whacky humour) and that really old movie The Big Chill (without the incredible soundtrack) this book forces you to sort out fairly quickly who's married to who, who's slept with whose partner and who knew about it.

REVIEWED BY GWEN CHALONER - © Fairfax NZ News

Commenting on Dune Road, USA Today asks us to 'think The Big Chill with lots of tea and posher accents' but I think that's an insult to a classic movie.

REVIEWED BY F MULLIGAN - © Fairfax NZ News

The Fraud is an historical novel that moves from Bristol to London as we follow the life and trials of Grace Marshall.

REVIEWED BY F MULLIGAN - © Fairfax NZ News

Set in the colonial Australia of the late 1830s, Ironbark is a historical drama/romance.

REVIEWED BY LYNETTE KLAVER - © Fairfax NZ News

Hans van den Broek's life falls apart when his English wife goes home with their young son after 9/11.

REVIEWED BY LYNETTE KLAVER - © Fairfax NZ News

Thirty years ago, Catherine hitchhiked to Italy with two friends and met the charismatic Beppi and his sullen best friend Giancarlo.

REVIEWED BY LYNETTE KLAVER - © Fairfax NZ News

In an Addis Ababa mission hospital an Indian nun gives birth to conjoined twin boys, whose father is assumed to be Thomas Stone, the hospital's chief surgeon.

REVIEWED BY ROSEMARIE SMITH - © Fairfax NZ News

Academic Clare Lacey is on her way to a conference of art historians in Ireland, country of origin of the father who walked out on the family when Clare was a child.

REVIEWED BY JUDY CLEINE - © Fairfax NZ News

The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing is a truly astonishing fantastical and fictional story of the life of an African slave in colonial America.

REVIEWED BY DEBBIE JAMIESON - © Fairfax NZ News

Indignation is the 29th book by prolific American author Philip Roth.