Sloane Crosley’s essays I was told there’d be cake sold over 75, 000 copies and was on the New York Times bestseller list for 4 weeks. Aspects of her life, the good, the bad and sometimes the ugly are covered in 15 short essays written with humour and honesty. Read about her exploits and why she was expecting cake!

Arthur Conan Doyle created one of  literature’s greatest characters, the brilliant but flawed Sherlock Holmes. With unprecedented access to Conan Doyle’s personal papers and correspondence, biographer Russell Miller has written a comprehensive portrait. The adventures of Arthur Conan Doyle : a biography shows that his life was no less fascinating than his fiction.

This poignant collection by poets killed in World War 1 combines with colour plates and sketches to give insight into the experiences that inspired their poetry: – editor Brian Busby of In Flanders fields : and other poems of the First World War has chosen a variety of  poems relating both to war and the personal sadness of being away from home.

Read more about these books or others by New Zealand authors via the Literature Recent Picks.