Hilary Rubinstein lived during a golden age of publishing, when publishers and literary agents (and he'd been both) were gentlemen, kept their words and always answered your letters. His long and mostly happy life was marked by his enthusiasms: for his family, for good books of every sort, for small, owner-run hotels and for chocolate. He was the youngest of three sons of a very old Anglo-Jewish family. One ancestor, a quill-maker, averted an attempt on the life of George III, and was rewarded with the royal warrant for quills.

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

Reykjavik lawyer and under-age granny, Thora Gudmundsdottir, isn't usually fazed by the dark. But finding herself in remotest Greenland, investigating the disappearance of mining company employees, she finds herself listening out for unexplained creaks.

Where are you now and what can you see?

Theatre

It was a small family bookshop, on a peaceful back street in a small town on the fringes of London. I treated it as my own personal library, and I would sit there for hours on end, often on the floor, usually not buying anything. I loved that bookshop, so naturally I had to go and betray it.

According to new research by discount website MyVoucherCodes.co.uk, people have been buying e-readers to disguise the embarrassing books they're reading. The poll of 1,863 e-reader owners found that 58 per cent had acquired the device partly so as to disguise their taste in erotic and/or children's fiction.

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

Genre of football writing grows in credibility with crowning of A Life Too Short as book of the year

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.

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All aboard the Medes to hunt moldywarpes