All the books that made the Orange shortlist are really good reads - great story, beautiful prose, a brilliant theme

The daring new opera featuring British terrorists planning an attack is being staged next month.

A High Court challenge to a plan to redevelop the Victorian house where Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote The Hound Of The Baskervilles has succeeded.

Best-selling novelist Sir Terry Pratchett has a new honour to go with the Bafta he won at the weekend: a pig named after one of his books.

The Fiction Uncovered prize is an unusual one, in that it selects eight titles instead of one winner each year. Its remit is quite simple: to “uncover and celebrate our best British writers”.

Literary festivals are supposed to broaden the mind, but Matthew Bell would rather stay at home with a good book

In comics, novels and films, the modern cult of the 'New Gothic' reveals a keen hunger for non-religious rebirth.

Theatre

Kidman sparkles and Efron comes of age, but they can't save this jumpy crime drama

A team of writers is playing at one of England's most beautiful grounds this Sunday. Come along and help raise money for two great causes

FreeView from the editors at i

Notebook

There is a bloody battle afoot in the world of crime fiction. Few would deny that the status quo in the fictional worlds of murder and detection these days is a grim and gritty one, with operatic levels of violence practically obligatory. And this isn't just the male practitioners of the genre; many female writers now cheerfully out-Herod Herod when it comes to upping the body count.