Books

(courtesy Pan Macmillan Australia) When you consider a classic book like Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, first published in 1884/85, it’s hard to imagine that the much-loved and adapted story could have any new light shone on it. It’s so well known and it’s lead character so well Continue Reading

(courtesy Bloomsbury Publishing) Could it be possible that the whodunnit can be reborn at the very end of the world? Well, to be fair, in the case of the inimitable Stuart Turton that happened a number of years back with the head-scratchingly brilliant The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle (2018) Continue Reading

(courtesy Penguin Books Australia) How on earth do you respond with any sense of sanity or certainty when everything you have ever depended on suddenly crumbles to dust in one fateful instant? That’s the huge question that confronts Marco di Mario one particularly scary day when, fresh from finishing first Continue Reading

(courtesy Pan Macmillan Australia) There is something thrillingly intense about every book that Adrian Tchaikovsky writes. While his stories aren’t necessarily told in an adrenalised pedal-to-the-metal fashion, they are always packed full of intriguing and utterly fascinating ideas that percolate with ferocity and passion out of every word and page, Continue Reading

(courtesy Affirm Press) As life races by at breakneck speed, it’s all too easy to assume that if we have fully realised who we are and what we could become by a certain age that it’s simply too damn late. But in Rhianna King’s utterly delightful debut novel, Birds of Continue Reading

Is there anything new under the murder mystery sun? You may think not; after all, how many ways can you have a crime happen, have it investigated by a quirky though frighteningly competent sleuth and have the killer/s unmasked in suitably dramatic fashion? As it turns out, quite a lot, Continue Reading

(courtesy Hachette Australia) Living up to hype, any hype, can be a crippling burden for any novel. It might well be every bit as good as the buzz feverishly declares it to be, full of characters you will love, themes you will embrace and a story that will draw you Continue Reading

(courtesy Text Publishing) Pretty much everyone on the planet sets out on this somewhat strange journey called life aiming for and expecting the best. After all, who wants to aim lower than that? It’s a one-shot deal and you’re hardly going to launch yourself into the fray hoping and planning Continue Reading