Books

(courtesy Macmillan Publishers) One of the marks of an exceptionally good writer is the ability to take a story steeped in a fantastical premise, one ripe with all kinds of imaginative possibility and to do something impactfully meaningful with it. It’s a real art; lean too hard into the fantastical, Continue Reading

(courtesy Simon & Schuster Australia) It is always a pleasure of the greatest magnitude when you dive into a sci-fi novel which always promises some thrillingly big and sweeping storytelling and it goes even bigger and bolder than you expected. It’s hard to be surprised in our everything-on-the-table preview-manic digital Continue Reading

(courtesy Pan Macmillan Australia) One of the most enduring motifs in space operas is the idea that a renegade, diverse bunch of people, all of good heart and relatively pure soul, which is rare in a rough-n-tumble, dog-eat-dog galaxy, can find each other, come together, forge a found family against Continue Reading

(courtesy Hachette Australia) Some seven years ago when I had the great fortune to read Queenie by Candice Carty-Williams, it became quickly apparent that here was a protagonist I was going to really love … A LOT. Queenie was everything you could want in a leading character, so much so Continue Reading

(courtesy Allen & Unwin – Australia) If you ever have the opportunity to go to a book launch of any kind, even it features a genre that usually doesn’t trouble the heaving shelves off your overstacked TBR, then you must go. Not only will, of course, have the great pleasure Continue Reading

This novel was mostly read at Kalimna, Yeranda Cottages, Main Creek (Dungog) NSW, August 2026 Secrets can usually only stay secrets for so long. Somehow, some way, what was holding them in place far away from public gaze and collective knowledge corrodes and falls away and the truth outs, unable Continue Reading

This novel was read at Kalimna, Yeranda Cottages, Main Creek (Dungog) NSW, August 2026 The title of this remarkable novel is your first indication that there is something special in the offing. I Love the Whole World! may sound like the exuberant, chemically-adjusted and enhanced exclamation of someone at a Continue Reading

This novel was read at Kalimna, Yeranda Cottages, Main Creek (Dungog) NSW, August 2026 Life is so full of quiet, everyday moments that we can forget how momentously explosive it can be, how, that hiding in those self-same nuanced and seemingly unremarkable slivers of time, can sit some of the Continue Reading

This novel was read at Kalimna, Yeranda Cottages, Main Creek (Dungog) NSW, August 2026 If there’s one thing that is guaranteed to get me diving into a novel faster than you can say “Yes, I’ll buy that book!” (a favourite and enduring phrase of mine) it’s saying that the novel Continue Reading

This novel was partially read at Kalimna, Yeranda Cottages, Main Creek (Dungog) NSW, August 2026 Becoming lost in life is far easier than we might think. Oh, we march from the vivaciously assured certainty of youth, inwardly adamant that we know we are, what we want and how we will Continue Reading