The Griffith Review is a quarterly journal of literary, political and current affairs writing out of Griffith University in Brisbane, a little like Granta. Pacific Highways is their first issue devoted to New Zealand writing, co-edited by Julianne Schulz and Lloyd Jones. It's a fine and representative selection of our best current writers, featuring essays, memoir, fiction and poetry, and 2 photo essays. There's not much fiction, only 3 pieces out of over 40 in total.

This is one of the more extensive and detailed books in the series, and Led Zeppelin's legendary fourth album is worthy of some discussion. Davies knows what he's talking about, and investigates the mystical and occults roots of each song in turn, as well as the writing, recording and mythology around the making of the album. He does go off on some pretty extreme speculations about what it all means, to my mind far beyond what Led Zeppelin thought they meant at the time; but the writing is colourful and evocative.

The Pogues' 1985 album is celebrated here in a rather eccentric fashion, which, I have to say, I found irritating in the extreme. Only about a third of the book i.e about 40 pages, is actually about the writing, recording and interpretation of the album, the rest is a fictional, sea faring narrative, using members of The Pogues in a version of the voyage of The Medusa. Roesgen's writing on the music is great, but there just isn't enough of it. Still, it does make you want to listen to 'A Pair of Brown Eyes' again.

Another in this tremendously good series on the making of particular rock albums - this time on Neutral Milk Hotel's 1997 album 'In The Aeroplane Over The Sea', which was a major cult album in the 90s and onwards. The band dispersed after this album was released, but reformed recently, and played an ecstatic show at the King's Arms last year. They clearly still have a faithful and enthusiastic following. This is one of the better books in the series, I think.

There has been quite a lot of talk in the trade about this book, suggesting that it's in the same vein as Guernsey or Major Pettigrew; it's easy to see why. I'd come across Gabrielle Zevin a few years ago with her wonderful YA novel Elsewhere, but hadn't realised she also wrote for adults. The novel is set in a bookstore owned by the rather grumpy AJ Fikry, located on a small island in the Cape Cod region in Massachusetts.

Swimming In The Dark is an unsettling thriller about Serena, a bright 15 year old girl, from a dysfunctional family in Otago, who is being abused by the local cop. The story is told from different narrators' perspectives, initially Serena herself, and her older sister Lynnie, who has escaped their toxic family and moved on to Wellington. Serena's schoolteacher, Ilse becomes involved, and at this point the story broadens to tell the story of Ilse's parents' escape form the brutality of the East German regime during the Cold War.