I’m slowly acquainting myself with Angela Carter’s writing, and when I saw The Magic Toyshop in a Sydney bookshop, I had to have it. This is the blurb: One night Melanie walks through the garden in her mother’s wedding dress. The next morning her world is shattered. Forced to leave the comfortable home of her…
One of the much-hyped books this year has been psychological suspense thriller The Nowhere Child by Christian White. The book was the winner of the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award and has been raved about for its intriguing premise (a child kidnapped in the US turns up years later in Australia). Here’s the blurb: ‘Her name is…
The Sunday Girl by Pip Drysdale – this snappy, fast-paced debut thriller hooked me in right from the outset and kept me on tenterhooks. Here’s the blurb: Any woman who’s ever been involved with a bad, bad man and been dumped will understand what it feels like to be broken, broken-hearted and bent on revenge….
Lady Bird and the Fox by Kim Kelly is one of the best historical fiction titles I’ve read in a long time, a claim boosted by the familiarity I felt with the setting (not far from where I grew up). This is the blurb: It’s 1868 and the gold rush is spreading across the wild…
The Girl on the Page by John Purcell is a pacy page-turner that raises interesting questions regarding the divide between commercial and literary fiction. Through the characters of Amy, a commitment-resistant book editor, and Helen, a literary great who is struggling with the manuscript she’s been paid a whopping advance for, this novel gets to…
The British Special Operations Executive (SOE) conducted espionage, sabotage and reconnaissance in occupied Europe during WWII. The Juliet Code focuses on the actions of the operations of the SOE to greater extent through the eyes of British agent and wireless operator Juliet (her story is told in real-time and reflection) as she is asked to…
Eleanor’s Secret by Caroline Beecham is part mystery, part love story, and proved just right for a couple nights’ winter reading. Here’s the blurb: London, 1942 When art school graduate, Eleanor Roy, is recruited by the War Artists Advisory Committee, she comes one step closer to realising her dream of becoming one of the few…
The Golden Man Booker has revealed the shortlist of five books in contention for the Golden Man Booker Prize. This special one-off award (not to be confused with the annual Man Booker Prize), marks the 50th anniversary of the award. It’s aim is to crown the best work of fiction from the last five decades…
Sometimes a book knocks you off your feet and into a completely alien environment – no, I’m not talking sci-fi, but Michael Mohammed Ahmad’s The Lebs. I grew up in Sydney in the same timeframe as this book, but Ahmad’s Sydney is like nothing I’ve ever experienced. ‘Bani Adam thinks he’s better than us!’ they…
‘This is about three deaths. Actually more, if you go back far enough. I say deaths, but perhaps all of them were murders. It’s a grey area. Murder, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. So let’s just call them deaths and say I was involved. This story could be told a hundred…
