Books & Authors

Ralph McAllister reviews The Sweetness of Water by Nathan Harris, published by Headline Publishing Group. Audio

Kate Macdougall's memoir London's No. 1 Dog Walking Agency is an entertaining perspective on a left-field profession and a coming of age story. Armed with a degree in Art History, and eschewing a back… Audio

You could probably write a book about what's happening in locked down Auckland, but publishers in the city would be hard pressed to do much with it under the level 4 rules.

After last year's big… Audio

Louise Ward of Wardini Books in Havelock North reviews Our Own Backyard by Anne Kayes, published by Bateman. Audio

World-leading addiction expert Professor Anna Lembke says our smartphones are turning us into dopamine addicts. As chief of Stanford University's dual diagnosis addiction clinic, Lembke has treated… Audio

Dr Sue Stuart-Smith is a psychiatrist, psychologist, gardener and literature lover who, in her much hailed UK bestseller The Well Gardened Mind brings all her passions together to look at the… Audio

Ahmed Rashid's bestselling 2000 book Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia was used extensively by American analysts in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. The Lahore-based… Audio

Briar Lawry from Unity Books Auckland reviews Julia and the Shark by Kiran Millwood Hargrave and Tom de Freston, published by Orion Audio

Deputy editor of The Economist Tom Standage's new book is A Brief History of Motion: From the Wheel, to the Car, to What Comes Next. It is in fact, five and a half thousand years of the history of… Audio

Library fines can be so scary they'll stop a borrower from ever going back. Now there's a world-wide trend to change that. 

Cody Keenan, a speechwriter for former US president Barack Obama helped craft speeches for the UN but says his most important contribution focused closer to home, in South Carolina. He tells Jesse… Video, Audio

Bronwyn Wylie-Gibb of University Book Shop, Dunedin reviews The Dark by Emma Haughton, published by Hachette Bronwyn says: "The Murder. The Suspects. The Isolation… Not so much a locked room as a… Audio

Catherine Raven lives in a remote mountain valley in Montana. She has lived more or less alone since leaving a troubled home aged 15. She was a National Park ranger for 20 years, and gained a PhD in… Audio

Jenna Todd of Time Out Bookstore reviews People Like Them by Samira Sedira, published by Penguin Random House NZ. Audio

Lyttleton writer and artist, Lily Duval has just been given a research grant to develop her project Six-legged Ghosts: Stories of the Insects of Aotearoa. Audio