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Falling Towards England, Clive James14/02/2020 - 1:17pmThe second in the Unreliable Memoirs set of books sees Clive James newly arrived in post-war England, a Sydney boy trying to make good in the bright lights, high(er) society and learned sets of English society. Don't read this, however, if you're expecting the really breezy, cleverly observant, self-deprecating ways of his childhood. Young adult Clive James is a different beast and he's out of place, out of step and seemingly somewhat out of clues in this world. Moving from self-deprecation clearly into a form of almost self-loathing, the Clive James that is trying to ... Read Review |
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Six Wicked Reasons, Jo Spain10/02/2020 - 4:46pmThe six adult children of Frazer Lattimer have an entire childhood of fraught experiences to draw upon for examples of bad parenting. Their mother, Kathleen Lattimer, was an utter saint though and often served as a buffer between her overbearing husband and their three sons and three daughters. With Kathleen now gone, and Adam Lattimer returning home after a ten year absence, there is much that must be discussed. Six Wicked Reasons is a novel about the people who never let you forget the past. Your family were there, and they know you best. Adam had quite a few very ... Read Review |
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Little White Lies, Phillipa East03/02/2020 - 3:11pmTapping into the guilt of parents everywhere who have all had their days where it simply went to hell on public transport, Little White Lies is a novel about repercussions, regret and the tangled webs we weave. The life of the White family moved on, as it had to, after the disappearance of young Abigail from a busy London subway platform. Anne has kept her family together whilst managing her grief, attending to the necessary tasks of raising her twins and being a supportive spouse to her husband Robert. Receiving a call that Abigail has walked into a suburban police ... Read Review |
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Reckoning, Magda Szubanski24/01/2020 - 1:32pmPowerful and moving, a perfect face to face bookclub book triggering a wide ranging discussion as we talked through many of the issues out of the book including the concept of Reckoning and inter-generational trauma.Read Review |
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She, HC Warner22/01/2020 - 2:16pmEvery now and then we meet a literary villain who is both villain and victim. Meet Bella, a young woman who does not take kindly to being sidelined or left behind. You might recognize her. Someone who once worked in your office. Someone who once dated one of your friends. Someone you’d like never to meet again. This is She. After being so inexplicably dumped by the ebullient Charlotte, Ben was not expecting to bounce into rebound quite so soon. Sweet successful relationship revenge comes in the form of Bella, a drop dead gorgeous young professional who rides into ... Read Review |
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Italian Shoes, Henning Mankell11/01/2020 - 2:06pmITALIAN SHOES by Henning Mankell goes to prove, once again, that a really good writer is a really good writer, regardless of the genre, styling, or setting of the book. Exploring the themes of estrangement, loss, fear and isolation ITALIAN SHOES isn't a crime fiction novel, it's a poignant, beautiful, sad, uplifting and evocative look at a man, his life, his mistakes and his redemption. Frederick Welin is sixty-six years old, a former surgeon who has spent the last 12 years of his life, purposely exiled to the island home that his grandparents left him. He has carved ... Read Review |
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The Hunting Party, Lucy Foley07/01/2020 - 5:30pmYou know those books that pop up so often on your feeds that you begin to feel that the universe (and lots of very savvy literary publicists) would really like you to read them? This is how I came to read THE HUNTING PARTY by Lucy Foley. Having heard many good things, and with Foley’s second crime novel now in the pipeline for a February release, it was time to find out why so many people latched onto Foley’s first intriguing crime thriller. Seven friends, most of which went to college together, gather for their traditional New Year’s vacation. It’s a time to catch ... Read Review |
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Impossible Causes, Julie Mayhew31/12/2019 - 2:56pmChoosing the remote island of Lark to relocate to is a decision made by the Kendricks in the wake of enormous loss. Viola and her mother Deborah will never be the same again now it is only the two of them, and the safety offered by the tiny community of Lark seems heaven sent at just the right time. Lark, population 300, is only accessible by sea twice a year and rarely approves new residents to its shores. Teacher Leah, who regularly seeks the wisdom of the tarot via her spiritual neighbour Margaritte, is joyed to discover that one of the three new residents of Lark is ... Read Review |
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Bruny, Heather Rose08/12/2019 - 2:18pmA comment often made about BRUNY is that readers going in did not know it was going to be such a political read. BRUNY is one of those works that very effectively puts the frighteners on for many fronts; climate change, politics, foreign investment, cultural divides – swing the proverbial, you’ll find it here. The building of a bridge between mainland Tasmania and Bruny Island is a contentious issue with many island residents not seeing the point of making a part of the world that should be protected that so much more accessible. Called back home by the twin powers ... Read Review |
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Borkmann's Point, Håkan Nesser06/12/2019 - 4:10pmBORKMANN'S POINT is the second book in the Inspector Van Veeteren series, but the only one currently available in English. Nesser lives in Sweden and has set his book in a fictitious small Scandinavian town. An ex-con is murdered by a blow from a very unusual, extremely sharp instrument. Soon a real-estate mogul is killed in the same way seemingly with the same weapon. Van Veeteren, who was holidaying on the coast nearby, is stopped from returning home and sent to help the local under-experienced police team. Van Veeteren finds an immediate friendship Bausen, the head of ... Read Review |
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Darkness For Light, Emma Viskic29/11/2019 - 2:47pm‘He slowed as he took the bend, then sped up and pulled into the kerb. Door half-open, eyes on the mirror. The black sedan rounded the corner. It drew nearer, headlights off, the driver a hazy silhouette. Closer, nearly level. Passing. It kept going, the brakelights flashing once as it reached the next bend, then it was gone. He breathed again. Just someone taking the same traffic-avoiding route across town. Nothing to do with him, or a dead man with his face shot off.’ Caleb Zelic returns in Emma Viskic’s third novel Darkness For Light. It’s now a few ... Read Review |
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Last Ones Left Alive, Sarah Davis-Goff26/11/2019 - 1:03pmPandemics, post-apocalyptics, zombie dramas, dystopians – choose your preferred choice of genre labelling here – generally seem to go all out large or small and intense. If you are one of those readers who simply must have delivered a very finite scientific explanation of how the world all goes to hell, you may find that you tend to read novels which pan out to take in all the global devastation and resultant anarchy. These works generally involve shadowy government agencies, roaming gangs of survivors intent on creating violent dictatorships, lots and lots of guns etc. LAST ... Read Review |
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Kiss My Assassin, Dave Sinclair20/11/2019 - 2:09pmI've only ever met one spy (... that I know of), and he wasn't anything like Charles Bishop. Never took on a powerful arms-dealing organisation (as far as I know), never got stabbed, shot at, beaten up, taken prisoner, made friends with a Russian spy, or slept with the enemy either (as far as I know). Now I'm wondering all the things I should have asked, and never did. Reading, after all, is educational and if you take nothing away from the Charles Bishop series by Dave Sinclair, it could be a list of things to bring up in conversation the next time you meet a spy. ... Read Review |
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Between the Stops: The View of My Life from the Top of the Number 12 Bus, Sandi Toksvig19/11/2019 - 3:05pmEvery now and again a break from crime fiction is sought, and everything I've ever seen written or heard spoken about Sandi Toksvig, and every time I've heard her on TV or the radio, makes me convinced that time spent in her company on those mediums is just better. So this was an immediate purchase when I heard people talking about it recently. BETWEEN THE STOPS reads EXACTLY as you'd expect something from Sandi Toksvig to read. You start out on the Number 12 bus, looking out at a streetscape, which leads you to a bit of a chat about somebody from history who did something or had ... Read Review |
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The Invisible Man from Salem, Christoffer Carlsson19/11/2019 - 1:56pmI'm now firmly of the opinion that it takes real skill to stuff up the order of a series to the extent that I seem to manage to do it. One day I'll find a use for that skill, but nowadays it just means I spend my life staring at piles of books thinking, oh buggeration, there's another one I should have read before... Thus THE INVISIBLE MAN FROM SALEM. Which is the first in the Leo Junker series, a series which I've read in the order THE FALLING DETECTIVE (#2); MASTER, LIAR, TRAITOR, FRIEND (#3) (so at least that was right), then THE INVISIBLE MAN FROM SALEM (#1) and now I' ... Read Review |
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The Sisters, Dervla McTiernan19/11/2019 - 1:36pmFlagged as a prequel to McTiernan's acclaimed THE RUIN, THE SISTERS is an audible only novella, set 10 years before the first Cormack Reilly book THE RUIN, which was followed by THE SCHOLAR. McTiernan's two series books have met with considerable acclaim in all parts, and THE SISTERS is very loosely (by the lightest of threads) connected to these. It's really the story of bright-young-copper Carrie Ryan and her sister, newly qualified barrister Aifric whose work collides when Aifric takes on the defence of a man charged with the murder of his girlfriend, and Carrie interferes in an ... Read Review |
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Peace, Garry Disher18/11/2019 - 3:07pmRural noir being the big thing at the moment, it's sad that many seem to have forgotten that there have been superbly talented authors like Garry Disher telling beautifully crafted, intelligent, and informed stories of the urban fringe, and the rural regions for many years. PEACE is the second book now to feature Constable Paul Hirschhausen, following on from BITTER WASH ROAD. As is always the way with a carefully crafted series like this, you can read PEACE first if you missed the earlier novel, although I was grateful that I'd read and remembered well the earlier novel, because ... Read Review |
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Gerard Hardy's Misfortune, Dorothy Johnston18/11/2019 - 1:49pmThe third in a series known as "Sea-Change Mysteries", GERARD HARDY'S MISFORTUNE takes place in Victorian coastal town of Queenscliff, with the pairing of local cops, Chris Blackie and Anthea Merritt back for another outing. In this case, the historic Royal Hotel, site of the local mental asylum and morgue in the early days of white settlement, becomes the scene of a very bizarre murder, when the body of academic Gerard Hardy is discovered in the cellar of the partially renovated hotel. If you're new to this series, Chris Blackie is the head cop, son of a fisherman father ... Read Review |
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Shamus Dust: Hard Winter. Cold War. Cool Murder, Janet Roger12/11/2019 - 4:57pmSHAMUS DUST: HARD WINTER, COLD WAR. COOL MURDER by Janet Roger is set in 1947, in London as it recovers from the destruction and devastation of war. There is bomb damage everywhere, people are struggling with deprivation and loss; and yet the murder of a pimp, shot dead at a local church, is causing shock waves. American Private Investigator, Newman, receives a call from a local Councillor on Christmas Morning, with a vague request to check out an incident at one of the many properties the client owns in the area, which soon becomes Newman's full-blown investigation of a murder, ... Read Review |
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Snake Island, Ben Hobson06/11/2019 - 12:52pm‘Vernon shifted his weight in the seat. He didn’t want violence. Just an audience. Just a sit-down, man to man, with Ernie. He wouldn’t even bring the gun in. Just the kid.’
Everyone has at least one hilarious family portrait. In my family’s case it’s a photo of my father, my two younger siblings and myself. Why is this one hilarious, for a start we’re all in Pipe Band uniform and my father is the only one of us who’s smiling. Looks of abject misery is how I would describe the faces of my brother and sister. Me, I just look glaikit. So what has ... Read Review |