Books

(courtesy Allen & Unwin Book Publishers) Love is way more weighty and muscular and substantial than many people give it credit for. There is a prevailing idea that romantic love is wispy and wafty, all red roses and swoons and sighs and dreamy looks at your beloved, and while yes, Continue Reading

(courtesy Allen & Unwin Book Publishers) Ladies and gentlemen and ill-advised members of the ocean liner-going public – this novel is not your grandmother’s Agatha Christie. The Empress Murders by Toby Schmitz, which first moves at a liner-appropriate pace before hitting the narrative pedal-to-the-metal and gloriously defying all expectations, may Continue Reading

(courtesy Hachette Australia) Imagination is a powerful thing. In a world held fast by the often tight and deadening hand of grim, dark and soulless reality, the ability to imagine places, people and times that operate above and beyond the everyday is a salvation, a gift that allows us to Continue Reading

(courtesy Hardie Grant Publishing) There’s something utterly beguiling about protagonists who don’t march to the beat of a conventional drum. In a world addicted to the idea that conventionality and a certain level of self-censoring propriety are the only way to go, lead characters who break the mould, even to Continue Reading

(courtesy Allen & Unwin Book Publishers) Depending on your perspective, old age is a time where you either throw in the towel and admit life is what it is and there’s no changing it, and by extension, you, or you give things a long, hard look and carpe diem the Continue Reading

(courtesy Angry Robot Books) SNAPSHOTReturn to the Thai-inspired world of Suyoram in this sharp follow up to 2024’s The Last Phi Hunter, exploring mythology, colonialism, and feminine rage. Ree is born with her eyes open to the Everpresent — a heightened awareness where Phi Hunters pull their magic and can Continue Reading

(courtesy Harper Collins Publishers Australia) Good lord but swashbuckling space operatic fun is good for the too tightly tied down soul. When all the stresses and obligations of life have you feel suffocatingly pinned into a very small and ever-diminishing space, picking up a superlatively good piece of wide-ranging sci-fi Continue Reading

(courtesy Hachette Australia) It has long intrigued this reviewer why it is that we love “found family” stories so much. It’s not that they don’t present a comforting and warmly lovely scenario; after all, who doesn’t love the idea of sadness, loss and crushing social isolation being countered by slowly Continue Reading

(courtesy Hachette Australia) There is an inestimable joy to finding your people. We all start out in life with a family into which we are born, which can either work for us or not, but along the way, if we’re lucky enough, we accumulate friends so close they become that Continue Reading

(courtesy Scholastic) If you have grown up and are comfortably ensconced as a member of the heteronormative majority, you will have likely seen little to trouble your secure worldview. Almost everything caters to the idea that society, and indeed civilisation as a whole, has been shaped in its entirety by Continue Reading