In the last newsletter I mentioned that predictability is overrated. I think this time around I should note that MtTBR induced panic is, on the other hand, misunderstood, and underestimated. I have a ridiculously bad case of it. Doesn't seem to matter HOW many books I get through in a month, there are always more - just sitting there with there looking all tempting and fascinating, and I don't know how I'm supposed to keep up. It's probably not normal but I do fantasise about breaking a leg.. at least then I could claim infirmity and stay in one place, surrounded by books, coffee, dogs, cats and the occasional gin. Nobody else around here would be thrilled but I'd be beyond relieved.
Apropos of nothing other than timing I saw The Guardian wrote a piece over the weekend about a TV adaptation of The Death of Bunny Munro. In the middle of last week's refactoring of older posts on this site, I came across my review of that book again. I mean I'm a huge fan of Cave's work, but that book got me so hard in the feelings, that I think I'm going to have to read it again. Stand by for floods more tears, and a big decision on whether I can watch the show - no matter how good Matt Smith is reported to be in it.
Anyway, onto what you're really here for.
Reviews
Slow off the reviewing mark again sorry, but those that I did get to where a pretty impressive bunch of books. Firstly MISCHANCE CREEK by Garry Disher - reviewed for Newtown Review of Books. Interesting twist on the world of conspiracy theorists that is echoed in DUST by Michael Brissenden. EVERYONE IN THIS BANK IS A THIEF by Benjamin Stevenson made me laugh a lot and is directly responsible for a minor obsession with Duolingo now. PACIFIC HEIGHTS by S.R. White made me acutely aware that no matter how many books I read there are always authors / books that I miss, and MURDER IN THE CATHEDRAL by Kerry Greenwood made me even more aware what we've lost. Finally SOFTLY CALLS THE DEVIL by Chris Blake is a great second novel, the first (written under a pseudonym) barnstorming the 2018 Ngaio Marsh Awards. Unfortunately THE HIDDEN by Bryan Brown didn't quite hit the spot this time out, even with the wonderful, dry, voice that this author is building.
As always the reviews to be finalised list is embarrassingly long. I'm trying to catch / keep up.
Recent Arrivals / Upcoming Releases (Australia / NZ)
Released 22/2/2025: A week away from his pending marriage to Simone, Jake abruptly disappears. Without a trace. Has he changed his mind? Highly unlikely. Has he been kidnapped? Simone senses Jake is about to die, a horrible, excruciating death. She needs to find him, fast, before it's too late. Senior FBI agent, Clement Oddsworth, manages a specialist team investigating terrorist acts. When two consecutive clinics are blown up, a religious sect becomes his prime suspect. They appear like a peaceful community, but people are dying whenever they protest. What's the connection? Does the leader know more than he lets on?
Released 4/3/2025: Dominic Salt and his three children are caretakers of Shearwater, a tiny island not far from Antarctica. Home to the world’s largest seed bank, Shearwater was once full of researchers. But with sea levels rising, the Salts are now its final inhabitants, packing up the seeds before they are transported to safer ground. Despite the wild beauty of life here, isolation has taken its toll on the Salts. Raff, 18 and suffering his first heartbreak, can only find relief at his punching bag; Fen, 17, has started spending her nights on the beach among the seals; 9-year-old Orly, obsessed with botany, fears the loss of his beloved natural world; and Dominic can’t stop turning back towards the past, and the loss that drove the family to Shearwater in the first place.
Released 29/7/2025: When Detective Stayer takes a job in the idyllic Australian beach town of Thoorgala, he hopes it will offer a chance to reconnect with his sister, Ruby, who he has barely spoken to in fifteen years.
Released 1/8/2025: Desley Barron is ready to prove her doubters, and herself, wrong about her flagging writing career. She's won a spot at an exclusive writing retreat in the Blue Mountains. Only instead of feeling creative, Desley finds her insecurity increases while the ghost stories about the house have her jumping at shadows.
Released 13/10/2025: When his sole poetry collection is found in the case of a gruesomely murdered violinist, the police think Huntley did it. But he's innocent, and the best way to prove it is to find the killer himself. (This one is on the next up review piles).
Released 14/10/2025: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It. (I haven't read this one yet but himself has and was seriously impressed. With the book - not the enshittification of the Internet and the way too many users are complicit in the entrapment).
Released 15/10/2025: At two o’clock, the Australian High Commissioner, Her Excellency Helen Armstrong, will open a hostel for the Junior Shiners, a rugby team for Suva’s street kids. As DI Joe Horseman is the Shiners’ driving force, the ceremony is his dream come true. But Ms Armstrong fails to turn up. Seriously troubled, Horseman instigates a Missing Person investigation at once. And he leads the search himself. (This one is on the currently reading pile - the 6th book in the Fiji Islands Mystery series).
Released 21/10/2025: For 150 years, women have been going missing. And all of the investigators who went in search of them - from 1877 to the present day - have disappeared, too. Now Sam Speedman, a most unique private detective, is on the case.
Released 4/11/2025: Detective Sergeant Kiara Lui has just broken up a loud brawl between two blokes in front of the Warrigal Public Library. But just as she's about to leave the scene, a man inexplicably plummets from the sky and slams into the bike rack right in front of her, dead.
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Released 2/12/2025: On a cold, snowy winter's night in 1999, Sander and Killian leave a house party together, in a small town in rural Sweden. The very best of friends, they imagine they will remain so forever. (This is on my pre-order list because I have really enjoyed everything by this author in the past and I'm really trying to life my #ScandiNoir game again).
Released 6/1/2026: A fugitive sister. A dangerous father. A terror cell hiding in plain sight. Kit McCarthy hasn't seen her identical twin sister, Billie, in more than a decade. The sisters don't see eye to eye, which is understandable, considering Kit's a police officer and Billie followed their violent father into a life of crime.
Released 19/3/2026: Deep in the Australian wilderness, a famed sinkhole renowned as a stunning freediving spot attracts people from all over the world. But there's a dark, puzzling mystery when a local sports hero - and the glamorous face of a high-adrenaline video channel - is found dead far beneath the surface.
Other Locations and Not So Recent Releases:
Released 1/3/2014: Paradise turns to terror when half-starved, AK47 toting gunmen, led by a soldier of fortune called Drake, board Peter and Victoria Holt-Bennett's luxury catamaran off the coast of Guinea. Terrorised and violated, the hostages must attempt to raise five million dollars to save themselves, and their four year old child.
Released 6/11/2015: When nine-year-old best friends Charlie and Amy disappear, two families are plunged into a living nightmare. A text message confirms the unthinkable: that the girls are the victims of a terrifying kidnapping.
Released 20/5/2016: When Detective Kim Stone and her team are sent to Westerley, a forensic research facility, they discover the body of a young woman, her mouth filled with soil. But she doesn’t belong there. It seems a killer has discovered the perfect cover for their crime.
Released 20/10/2016: When a body is hauled from the River Tyne, Sarah Tucker heads to Newcastle for a closer look. She identifies the dead woman, but putting a name to the corpse only raises further questions. Did the woman kill herself? Why was she wearing the jacket a murderer had stolen years before? And what's brought Sarah's former sparring partner Gerard Inchon to the same broken-down hotel where she's staying? (I've got the first 4 in this series now in a combination of audio and ebook formats. Now to shuffle them because I'm really enjoying the TV series staring Emma Thompson).
Released 20/10/2016: Linköping's top detective, Malin Fors, is about to take on a case that's a little too close for comfort. Her daughter has just discovered a dead body. It is that of a 79-year-old resident at the nursing home where she works. He's been hanged by his own alarm cord.
Released 1/9/2017: Tim Rogers of You Am I has always been a complicated man: a hard-drinking musician with the soul of a poet; a flamboyant flâneur; a raconteur, a romantic and a raffish ne'er-do-well. In this offbeat, endearing memoir, Tim walks us through years jam-packed with love, shame, joy, enthusiasms, regrets, fights, family - and music, always music.
Released 23/8/2018: Melissa Sanderson is the perfect wife and mother. She dotes on her daughter, and lives in her dream home in a quiet cul-de-sac in the suburbs.
Released 29/11/2020: This collection of 25 Hercule Poirot adventures by Agatha Christie are compiled from short stories written for The Sketch magazine from March to December 1923. (This has been added to the stacks because Agatha Christie, unsurprisingly, is where my obsession with crime fiction started and this collection had slipped me by until I noticed it on the Kobo website recently).
Released 2/9/2021: When a weather-beaten body is found on Clifton Downs, the police are quick to dismiss it as a quarrel among the unhoused community. George Cross is a detective with experience of being overlooked. Unwilling to do the same to others, he sets out to find out what really happened to the dead man.
Released 2/9/2021: When a ravaged body is discovered on a building site in Bristol, the first job is to identify who it is. Luckily, DS George Cross is known for spotting clues that others miss.
Released 19/10/2022: Julia Malmros is thriving. A former police officer making her way in the world of crime fiction, she’s turning popularity into fame by writing the next book in a world-renowned suspense series. To help her research, Julia connects with Kim Ribbing. More hacker than man, Kim bears a dark past that’s the very antithesis of the promising future she has planned for herself. They share an undeniable spark—yet it’s likely to implode. (Now if somebody could explain to me why I missed this when it came out I'd be grateful!)
Released 21/6/2023: The Night Library on the outskirts of Tokyo isn't your ordinary library. It's only open from seven o'clock to midnight. It exclusively stores books by deceased authors, and none of them can be checked out -- instead, they're put on public display to be revered and celebrated by the library's visitors, akin to a book museum.
Released 28/3/2024: Two bodies are discovered in a Stockholm park, one a policeman and the other an unidentified young woman. With the police believing the woman to be nothing more than unfortunate collateral damage, they focus on the murder of the police officer. But Detective Vanessa Frank takes a different approach and her investigation turns out to be more personal than she could have imagined.
Released 27/2/2024: On a cold November night, a farmhouse burns to the ground. Inside a young woman is found dead—not from the fire but murdered. To the people in the rural community of Marbäck, this becomes a reference point: a before and after. For ten-year-old Isak Nyqvist, it sets in motion something he cannot control, igniting his future into an unpredictable inferno. (On my recent arrivals because to my shame - missed it when it came out).
Released 1/11/2024: Things have not been going well for Zoe Ann Weiss. Once a young novelist full of promise, now she has a failed debut under her belt, a mountain of debt, a dead-end job, and an agent who's about to drop her if she doesn't write something new and brilliant soon.
Released 16/1/2025: Structured around these nine childlike drawings, each holding a disturbing clue, Uketsu invites readers to piece together the mystery behind each and the over-arching backstory that connects them all. Strange Pictures is the internationally bestselling debut from mystery horror YouTube sensation Uketsu—an enigmatic masked figure who has become one of Japan's most talked about contemporary authors.
Released 27/3/2025: Expert on body language and memory, and consultant to the Oslo Police, psychologist Kari Voss sleepwalks through her days, and, by night, continues the devastating search for her young son, who disappeared on his birthday, seven years earlier.
Released 3/7/2025: A sinister hidden room. A dead space between two walls. A sealed cellar. A child's face glimpsed at a window. Every house hides secrets.
Released 11/9/2025: Can you find the clues and solve the murder first? Six people with links to the world of crime writing have been invited to play a game this Christmas by the mysterious Midwinter Trust.
Released 11/9/2025: As a lover of classic crime stories, it’s perhaps no surprise that twenty-seven-year-old schoolteacher Kaede encounters everyday mysteries more often than your average person. Solving them is another matter, though, and the person she always heads to for guidance is her beloved grandfather – who, despite having dementia, retains a keen sharpness of mind. From impossible locked-room murders to confounding missing person cases, the granddaughter and grandfather team ‘weave stories’ in master-and-apprentice fashion to get to the bottom of a variety of cases. All the while, a shadow slowly closes in on Kaede, posing a more insidious threat . . .
Released 10/3/2026: At the height of Australian summer, a serial killer dubbed The Shark stalks a beachside suburb, targeting young female swimmers whose bodies are later found on the shoreline.
Released 31/3/2026: Rena and Tom have been planning this trip for years: just the two of them, retired, setting out into remote bush country to enjoy nature's dramatic beauty--and each other's company. When Tom dies unexpectedly just before they are to depart, Rena almost cancels, but there's nothing left at home but painful memories. She hits the road in her kitted-out truck, vowing to follow the itinerary she and Tom had mapped, hoping the trip will at least distract her from her devastating loss.
Released 7/7/2026: In a tense return to the Bloodstorm series, past choices come back to haunt those who were wronged—and the ever-blurring lines between good and evil make them question what is right. (Needless to say this has been pre-ordered so I don't stuff this up again).
As always I've undoubtedly missed something, so feel free to nudge me if there is anything that should be included next time around. Whenever that is.
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