Phew! This book will mess with your head! An epic novel, in the tradition of David Mitchell, it's long, frustrating, confusing, but also exciting, satisfying and quite brilliant. There is also an app, which I don't have, where you can follow many of the individual characters' stories chronologically, rather than in the woven narrative of the book. Apparently, there are 10 different story strands, 3 different interlocking worlds - one of which may or may not actually exist - and many, many characters - one of which seems to exist in two of the worlds simultaneously.

This is the novel, first published in Japan in 1987, which made Murakami famous, much to his dismay. It was first published in English outside Japan in the 2-volume red and green editions in 2000 by Harvill Press, but is now available in a single volume edition. The 2 volume version echoed the original Japanese edition.

In this book, Robert Macfarlane explores the linguistic and literary landscape of the British Isles, and how words shape our sense of place. He investigates cultural reactions to landscape through naming of rock formations, rainfall, agriculture and many other aspects of the natural world. The book is arranged with chapters on mountains, woods, rivers, hunting, farming etc, and he discovers early writers on these subjects and describes their legacy, and then the chapter closes with a glossary of lost or traditional words and their meanings relating to that subject.

Michael Turner is attempting to rebuild his life following the death of his much loved wife. He moves from their cottage in Wales to a house overlooking Hampstead Heath, and eventually befriends his neighbours. Then a tragic event changes everything. That plot outline sounds cliched, and it would be if Owen Sheers had told the story in a conventional way, but through his extremely clever foreshadowing, flashbacks and subplots, he creates an almost unbearable tension. The book is vaguely reminiscent of Ian McEwen's Saturday, and is at least as satisfying and convincing.

Diane Brown is a Dunedin-based poet, novelist, memoirist, and creative writing teacher. Her new book is a personal memoir in verse. It's about her own life, and that of her parents, told through a series of deeply personal vignettes taking in social history of the 1950s and 60s, old age and dementia, marriage and divorce, the delusions of youth. It's searingly honest, very moving and very funny. This would not have been an easy book to write. It's very easy to read, however, but it continues to resonate long after it's finished.

Ben Sanders is a young (born in 1989) Auckland crime writer, who seems to have hit the ground running, and is about to make it truly big internationally. He's already published a highly acclaimed trilogy featuring Sean Devereaux (HarperCollins 2010, 2011 & 2013) which he wrote while studying engineering at Auckland University. He then went to the US, where he was signed up by an American publisher for a new series to be set in America. He then sold film rights to Warner Brothers. Bradley Cooper is set to produce, and star in the lead role.