Books

(courtesy Beth O’Leary newsletter) A fresh start is waiting for Charlie Jones.But another Charlie Jones wants it too… The Isle of Ormer: population 500, soon to be 501. Charlie Jones has landed on the island to embark on her brand new life. As the manager at Ormer’s only farm shop, Continue Reading

An escapee from the depth of this reviewer’s TBR – 2026 is supposed to be the year of the much-neglected reads though so far 13 new books have been bought so who knows who well this will go – Lost in Time by A. G. Riddle comes with a doozy Continue Reading

(courtesy Simon & Schuster Australia) What does it mean to live a good life? We all have airily vague ideas of what that might entail from doing good to others to treating people with kindness to not using plastic and prioritising people over digital obsession. But it’s wide and open Continue Reading

This book was read at Kalimna, Yeranda cottages, near Dungog in early January 2026. If we’re honest, most of us live in fairly ordinary, decidedly unexciting cities or towns where everyone is as reasonably straight down the line as you can expect the contrarily idiosyncratic human race to be. They Continue Reading

What an extraordinary story. As you reach the end of Outlaw Planet by M. R. Carey, one of the finest contemporary voices working in science fiction and fantasy, you will be consumed by the idea that here is one of the very best and most human stories you have ever Continue Reading

This book was read at Kalimna, Yeranda cottages, near Dungog in early January 2026. At first glance, a novel premised on the idea that one man, moving across America over some decades, managed to start, and crucially, abandon, four families, who then seek to unite many years later via a Continue Reading

This book was read at Kalimna, Yeranda cottages, near Dungog in early January 2026. In the usual course of pop culture back and forth, a TV or streaming show would be watched in that medium, and then, the eager viewer would turn, if they were so inclined, to the book Continue Reading

This book was read at Kalimna, Yeranda cottages, near Dungog in early January 2026 It is perhaps inevitable that we filter everything we see through our well-entrenched worldview. Try as we might to look beyond what we intrinsically know and understand, and it is to course possible to do that, Continue Reading

This book was read at Kalimna, Yeranda cottages, near Dungog in early January 2026. What a magical story is contained in the novella-length pages of Automatic Noodle by Annalee Newtitz. Set in a post-apocalyptic mid-21st century California, which has just won its independence after a brutal war with an insidiously Continue Reading