Books

Christmas miracles are the stock in trade of the season. They pop as regularly as stocking stuffers and garlands of ivy and baubles, and while they might be vanishingly rare in the festive desert known as the rest of the year, they are thick on the decorative ground when Christmas Continue Reading

(courtesy Harper Collins Publishers Australia) What is there to be said about the wondrously fun and glittering festive fun that is the familially festive joyfest that is The Christmas Carrolls: A Fantastically Festive Family by Mel Taylor-Bessent? Why you could call it “‘festabulous” or “Christmasriffic”, “merrynifiscent” or perhaps even “bauble-illiant”. Continue Reading

(courtesy Simon & Schuster) Finding your way out of a dark and terrible place in life is never easy. For Holly that sense of being trapped somewhere she doesn’t want to be – divorced, alone and effectively homeless with nowhere to go but either to stay at her emotionally frigid Continue Reading

(courtesy Pan Macmillan Australia) Is it possible to successfully manage a new start in life when the halls aren’t decked, the world is not being joy-ed and a man in a red suit isn’t acting all merry and bright? Likely, yes, but honestly why would you want to when Christmas Continue Reading

(courtesy Sourcebooks Casablanca) Writing about people falling love, especially at Christmas, purported to be the most romantic time of the year (and honestly it sure feels like that, even in an Australian summer), is quite possibly one of the easiest things to do in the world. Throw in some cute Continue Reading

(courtesy Allen & Unwin) Christmas is supposed to be all merry and bright and wondrously lovely, escapistly free from the nastiness and brutishness of the rest of the year. Well, that’s the general, tinsel on the tree and deck the hall view of the season anyway. But in Janice Hallett’s Continue Reading