Gregory Maguire has made his name and created his niche with the contemporary rewriting of classic fairy tales and fables. He is the author of Wicked, originally a novel and now a hit musical, which is a quirky re-reading of The Wizard of Oz.

A South African-born journalist has turned successfully to crime and the Australian landscape.

Diaries from WWII's final days tell of resilience to brutality in A Woman In Berlin, writes Elissa Blake.

There's no place for the politics of personality

JUST to cheer people up, this year will have lots of books on the economic crisis with titles using "crisis", "depression" and "crash". Look out for The Depression Crash Crisis.