**** (four stars as per Bookseller & Publisher ratings system) Published by NewSouth, $34.95 pb, ISBN 9780868408606 Savage or Civilised? traces the evolution of manners in Australia from the early days when Europeans arrived with their rigid imagining of ‘the savage’ to ‘new publics’ and the modernisation of our cities. Exploding the myth of the [...]
In The Secret Cure, an unusual novel which requires the reader simply to surrender to its extraordinary beauty, Woolfe successfully combines a complex, heart wrenching love story with explorations into Asperger’s Syndrome, autism, science, genetics, psychology, the human condition and the very nature of love. The bulk of The Secret Cure is presented as the [...]
**** (four stars – an excellent book as per Bookseller+Publisher ratings system) Published by Miscellaneous Press, $19.95 pb, ISBN: 9780646522005 Some would not agree that some of the best writing appears in blogs. Editor Karen Andrews throws down the gauntlet by introducing her anthology as “an experiment to see how this writing, these writers, stand [...]
*** (three stars – a good book as per Bookseller+Publisher ratings system) Published by Transit Lounge, $29.95 tpb, ISBN 9780980571738, April Welcome to Oatlands, Tasmania, home of the femme-werewolf apocalypse. Sixteen-year-old Sally Hunter is seriously pissed off and she’s turning into a powerful ‘monster dog’, a werewolf with one hell of an appetite [...]
Pulp Fiction Press RRP: $21.95 pb ISBN 9780975112922 (2008) A thriller about vampires narrated by a librarian and set in Melbourne? I’m in! Not only does Lissa the librarian have a painful family history to deal with but she’s just starting to get over having been dumped by her loser boyfriend. Maybe [...]
Photo of Dr Anita Heiss courtesy Wayne Quilliam Dr Anita Heiss is a member of the Wiradjuri nation, and is an author, poet, satirist and social commentator. Her published works include the adult novels Not Meeting Mr Right and Avoiding Mr Right, the historical novel Who Am I? The Diary of Mary Talence, Sydney [...]
**** (four stars – an excellent book as per Bookseller+Publisher ratings system) Published by Macmillan, $29.99 tpb, ISBN: 9781405039314 The list of Kathryn Fox’s crime-writing peers who have praised her earlier novels—Malicious Intent, Without Consent and Skin and Bone is impressive and includes Jeffery Deaver and Lee Child. Fans of her gutsy protaganist Dr Anya [...]
A coveted ancient artefact, Egyptian magic, London Punks and the hotbed of Middle-Eastern politics are all part of the mix in Tobsha Learner’s new novel. Set predominantly in Egypt and opening in 1977—a very significant time in the region’s politics, Sphinx is narrated by Oliver Warnock, a geophysicist/oil geologist whose wife Isabella is a marine [...]
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