Books

(courtesy Penguin Books Australia) Is it possible to write a novel that is riotously clever and funny and yet absolutely able to cut right through to the heart of what it means to be human, to love, connect and belong, and to feel lost and alone when that doesn’t going Continue Reading

(courtesy Allen & Unwin) No one wants to think they’re a terrible person. If we’re honest, we all want to be the hero, the saviour, the flawlessly giving and selfless person that people laud and talk about with breathless wonder, someone people want to be friends with and love and Continue Reading

(courtesy Hachette Australia) Working out when you should walk away from something you love is always tough. The reason you’ve stuck out a particular gig for so long is the very thing that keeps you anchored there, and while longevity of occupation in a particular place or occupation doesn’t always Continue Reading

(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