Up until now, award winning Australian author Chris Womersley’s novels have been stand-alones. And the same could be said about his latest novel The Diplomat. But it is a sequel of sorts – to his 2013 novel Cairo. Or if not a sequel then at least a companion piece or spiritual successor. And given it…
Mieko Kawakami is probably best known for her second novel in translation – Breasts and Eggs. Her third novel to be translated in to English All the Lovers in the Night (also translated by Sam Bett and David Boyd) is a deep character piece. The book focusses on a woman who has difficulty forming relationships,…
Alice Clark-Platts’ debut novel was The Flower Girls, an unsettling look at children who kill other children. Her most recent book, The Cove takes the domestic thriller to a small island off the coast of Malaysia and then turns up the heat on all of its main characters. Expat Brits Lou and Adam live in…
The Greek myths continue to fascinate and challenge both writers and readers. The last few years in particular have seen a number of authors tackling and re-imagining Greek mythology. From established authors like Colm Tóibín, Pat Barker and Mark Haddon to newer authors like Madeline Miller and Jennifer Saint. Saint’s first book Ariadne, began with…
Former professional snowboarder Allie Reynolds wrote what she knew in her debut thriller Shiver. That book centred around the reunion of a group of old friends at an isolated ski resort when things start to go wrong. The world of professional snowboarding and the competitive nature of the characters comes very much into play in…
In 2018, singer and actor Janelle Monáe released a concept album called Dirty Computer. Its release was accompanied by a 45 minute long narrative film starring Monáe and Tessa Thompson. The film explained that people were called computers and the “dirty” computers were people who had run foul of the system, people who were different,…
Nghi Vo’s new novel Siren Queen is both a celebration of and warning about the golden years of Hollywood. Vo creates a mesmerising world with fantasy elements just below the surface in which people can literally sell their souls for a shot at stardom. She effortlessly combines these elements with a queer, Asian-American viewpoint to…
With major flooding in Northern New South Wales and Southern Queensland fresh in the minds of Australians, Dinuka McKenzie’s debut The Torrent, another entry in the ever growing Australian rural crime genre, hits with renewed relevance. The cold open is the discovery of a body, washed away by the flooding and caught in a stormwater…
Jennifer Egan returns to the world of her Pulitzer Prize winning novel A Visit from the Goon Squad in her new novel The Candy House. The Candy House revisits the same characters and their children and hangers on and is delivered in the same connected short story style that jumps around in time and occasionally…
Stella Rimington, former head of MI5, is probably now as well known for her series of espionage thrillers featuring English agent Liz Carlysle. The Devil’s Bargain is well within the spy genre but breaks out some new characters. It is currently a stand alone but is in some ways an origin story for a new…
