(courtesy Pan Macmillan Australia) As ideals go, perfection has to be one of the most laughably impossible. Granted all ideals dance somewhere in the land of blue sky implausibility, cosily inspiring ideas that would be wondrously good if they made it from hope to actuality but which never quite manage Continue Reading
Books
Book review: The Dogs of Venice by Steven Rowley
(courtesy Penguin Random House) Can you ever get away from yourself? Not really, but and this is crucial in the context of Steven Rowley’s delightful novella, The Dogs of Venice, you can get away from the place where you experienced trauma and that can make the world of difference, So, Continue Reading
Book review: Engaged, Apparently by Amy Andrews
(courtesy Harper Collins Publishers Australia) Is it possible, we muse wonderingly at the start of this review, to reinvent a trope? Or, at the very least, and trust us, it’s a very good “very least” indeed, to put a shiny new sheen on it and present it to an enraptured Continue Reading
Book review: The Distinctly Competent District Councillor by Jonas Jonasson
(courtesy Harpers Collins Publishers Australia) There is something so heartwarming about looking at life in a whimsical way. In an age when everything is so full on and so serious and unrelentingly intense – this can be both a good and a bad thing but either way, it exacts a Continue Reading
Book review: Here and Beyond by Hal LaCroix
(courtesy Bloomsbury Publishing) We live in troubling times. Hardly a news flash there; one glance at the nightly news is enough to traumatise you with updates on the creeping annihilation of climate change, the democracy-decimating horrors of fascism and the possibilities of new pandemics, fresh wars and death and violence Continue Reading
Book review: Margo’s Got Money Troubles by Rufi Thorpe
(courtesy Hachette Australia) Before her life gets massively and royally upended, Margo Millet’s life is not an easy one. Caught between a narcissistic mother who does love daughter but only on very conditional grounds and an absent ex-pro wrestler father who is loving but only in her life when he Continue Reading
Valentine’s Day book review: Better Than the Real Thing by Brooke Crawford
This book was read at Kalimna, Yeranda cottages, near Dungog in early January 2026 “Life,” declares the front cover tagline of Brooke Crawford’s debut novel, Better Than the Real Thing, “is messy.” The central character of this rawly emotionally honest romcom, which serves up a potential fairytale ending but not Continue Reading
Valentine’s Day book review: Swept Away by Beth O’Leary
(courtesy Hachette Australia) As premises go, the one what washes through Swept Away by Beth O’Leary is a doozy. We are meant to believe, and honestly you will trust us, that two people can retire to a houseboat for a one-night stand and find themselves, the next day, floating to Continue Reading
Book review: The Elsewhere Express by Samantha Scott Yambao
(courtesy Penguin Books Australia) Create a real sense of fantastical otherworldliness is not as easy it sounds. Surely, you reason, it’s simply a case of letting your imagination run free and allowing it to express itself in ways that defy any and all caveats of our actual reality? But while Continue Reading
Book review: The Expert System’s Champion by Adrian Tchaikovsky (Expert System book #2)
(courtesy Pan Macmillan Australia) If you read a lot of really good science fiction, it will become immediately apparent that imagination is rarely in short supply among the boundlessly creative authors of the genre. But what will also emerge is how imaginatively fertile some of the giants of the genre Continue Reading