Despite having their lives set out for them, fictional characters are often portrayed as masters of their own destinies. Maybe that's why people like them so much, says Will Self.

A long-lost Sherlock Holmes story has been found lying forgotten in an attic more than a hundred years after it was first published.

Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code follow-up Inferno was the most-borrowed book in UK libraries last year, while James Paterson was the most popular author.

Young detectives "replace vampires" in young adult fiction according to this year's Children's Book Prize shortlist.

Ali Smith's How to be Both, winner of the Goldsmiths Prize for original fiction and the Costa novel award, is shortlisted for the 2015 Folio Prize.

South African writer Andre Brink, who saw many of his books critical of the apartheid regime at the height of its powers banned, dies aged 79.

An unpublished novel by Harper Lee is to finally see the light of day, 60 years after the US author put it aside to write To Kill a Mockingbird.

The blaze began late on Friday at the Institute of Scientific Information on Social Sciences in Moscow, which was created in 1918 and holds more than 14 million items.

Booker winner Anne Enright is appointed the first Laureate for Irish Fiction at a ceremony in Dublin.