Sorted on book title (not in series order)
Before there was Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes, there was Fergus Hume’s The Mystery of a Hansom Cab—the biggest- and fastest-selling detective novel of the 1800s, and Australia’s first literary blockbuster.
Fergus Hume was an aspiring playwright when he moved from...Read more
The Mystery of a Hansom Cab, written in the mid 1880s, was a world-wide publishing phenomenon. The story of its publication deserves a book like Blockbuster!. Reviewed at ...Read more
First published by Penguin in 1989 THE FORTUNES OF MARY FORTUNE wasn't the easiest book to track down. In fact it took a lot of driving across the Goldfields region of Victoria to get my hands on a copy, which is somewhat appropriate given that the Central Goldfields is one of the...Read more
Into this fourth anthology, crime-writer Stephen Knight has lured 13 crime and literary writers, offering as irresistible bait the chance to bring the complications of violent death back to where it belongs - at home.
Contents:
The gripping story of Australia's first female crime writer and her career-criminal son
When Mary Fortune arrived in Melbourne with her infant son in 1855, she was determined to reinvent herself. The Victorian goldfields were just the place.
After a time selling...Read more
Fourth Status Report on the Project 'KEEP THE READING QUEUE UNDER CONTROL'.
As always - the last fortnight entries and The Next Up Reading List in full.
Eighth Status Report on the Project 'KEEP THE READING QUEUE UNDER CONTROL', with this month the subtitle of What Happens When You Can't Even Remember to do a Plan....
Third Status Report on the Project 'KEEP THE READING QUEUE UNDER CONTROL'.
Seventh Status Report on the Project 'KEEP THE READING QUEUE UNDER CONTROL', with this month the subtitle of A Month in Which Some Things Went to Plan.
Sixth Status Report on the Project 'KEEP THE READING QUEUE UNDER CONTROL', with this month the subtitle of, The Wheels are Being Realigned.
Two mysteries a century apart form the crux of this compelling new novel by the author of In Search of Mary Fortune. When Melvina (Mel) Kirksley lands a job at a feminist publishing house, her first assignment is to find out who wrote The Scarlet Rider, a mystery published as an 1860s...Read more
Nine tautly plotted stories of crime and detection ranging from the darkly dangerous to the frankly comical. All with young adult central characters - some authors have taken their own characters back to their childhood - others have created completely new characters.
It’s 1890. Holmes’s fame has spread even to the colonies, and he and his stalwart chronicler Watson are swept up in an array of mysteries Down Under. They find themselves summoned from place to place, dealing with exciting and unique mysteries in every corner of this strange island...Read more
An accessible dip into the world of fan fiction, these 16 illustrated short stories are not just for lovers of Sherlock Holmes.
Seventeen different authors have contributed to this collection, including the overall editor Christopher Sequiera, himself a...Read more
This book is a study of the "mothers" of the mystery genre. Traditionally the invention of crime writing has been ascribed to Poe, Wilkie Collins and Conan Doyle, but they had formidable women rivals, whose work has been until recently largely forgotten. The purpose of this book is to "...Read more
Rediscovery is exactly the word that needs to be applied to this small, but incredibly packed offering from renowned Senior Research Fellow Lucy Sussex.
Sussex has to be one of the greatest proponents of the discovery and telling of the tales of the earliest female writers -...Read more