Books

ARC courtesy Simon & Schuster (via NetGalley) – release date 25 May 2021. There is a certain romanticisation about writing that dwells steadfastly in the hearts of anyone who hasn’t actually written. Truth be told, it probably resides in the souls of those who do write; however, there it is Continue Reading

ARC courtesy NetGalley – release date 31 August 2021 in Australia. At the very least, a good fantasy story should allow you to escape the often dreadfully predictable bonds of the everyday and escape into a world that’s nothing like the one you see on your daily commute or when Continue Reading

ARC courtesy NetGalley – release date 7 July 2021 in Australia. There is a great and abiding darkness in Catch Us the Foxes by Nicola West which belies its setting in the bucolically sunny climes of the NSW South Coast, specifically the popular tourist town of Kiama, known most famously Continue Reading

It’s a rare thing for anyone to ever have an abiding sense of destiny. Sure, many of us might have a fairly strong sense of where it is we want to head in life or who we would like to be, but knowing deep in the very fabric of our Continue Reading

Trauma has its own corrosive way of stopping life in its tracks. For many people it is a transitory thing, a period of loss and grieving that immobilises them temporarily but which eventually gives way to some form of healing and tentative then more confident steps forward to something new Continue Reading

There is a power and resilience, and yes, even a verdant sense of hope to Emily Spurr’s debut novel, A Million Things, that will leave you in wonder at the immense capacity of connection, friendship and love to rescue a lonely and adrift life … or two of them. But Continue Reading

For a species that craves certainty, humanity sure has an enduring fascination with the enduring endlessness of mystery and suspense. Perhaps now that we are mostly, pandemics and their wrathful disruption aside, snug and safe within the clearly-set bounds of civilisation – sure it’s an illusion of substance and assuredness Continue Reading

Diving into any of Becky Chambers wondrously good books is to enter a literal universe of rich possibility and exquisitely well-realised humanity (even when the characters are anything but) that engages you from the get-go and doesn’t let you go until the very end of each thoughtfully-written and insightfully emotive Continue Reading

ARC courtesy NetGalley – release date 7 July 2021 in Australia. Trauma in life is inevitable. None of us particularly want to admit to that since it means dismantling this cosy late twentieth century notion that it we do everything right we will lives as charmed as the happy-ever-after in Continue Reading

You not immediately think to link a viral sensation Disney + series with an Australian writer who calls Boonah, Queensland home, but as you soak yourself in the healing balm that is Tabitha Bird’s The Emporium of Imagination, which deals with grief in one of the creative and soul restorative Continue Reading