Rhett Davis’s debut Hovering won the 2020 Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for best unpublished manuscript. This award has a reputation over recent years of identifying quality emerging Australian writers. Past winners have included Jane Harper, Peggy Frew, Miles Allinson, Christian White and Maxine Beneba Clarke. So to say there is some expectation around this novel…
Emma Stonex’s debut novel The Lamplighters is based loosely on the true story of the disappearance of three lighthouse keepers from a remote lighthouse in 1900. Stonex relocates the event to a more recent time and a slightly different location but maintains the mystery and the mythology that surrounds those who spent their lives to…
Charlie Parker walks the world alone, but in his dreams and in the thinner moments between the worlds of those who breathe and those who no longer can, there visits two particular ghosts. The Dirty South is a prequel novel, long awaited for, however may not go back quite as far in the life of…
The story of the younger years of an ordinary man, August celebrates the beauty of the small things and the purity of experiences that can be had in living a simple life. A thoughtful novel that seems oddly placed in time, August has much to say about what it is to grow up as a…
What is always surprising about cults is that they consistently manage to attract seemingly intelligent people who leave their ordered lives to join bizarre communities run by petty tyrants with delusions of grandeur. What is sadly not surprising is that at the centre of cults there are often innocents, the children. There’s a few plot…
Choosing 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…
Rural 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…
Stella is the only child of Adam, a pastor, and Ulrika, a lawyer. Stella is now of legal age and looks forward to soon taking an Asian holiday with her best friend since childhood, Amina. The two teenagers have been through much together and of course, know a lot more about each other’s true selves…
Allegra in Three Parts made me cry, I’m not going to hide it. Grab your tissues, because this story of a young girl (Allegra, aged 11 and three-quarters) who has to be one person for one grandmother, another for the other, and a third for her dad, really tugs at the heartstrings. Allegra’s being brought…
Three generations of women come together for a heartfelt story in Love and Other Battles by Tess Woods: Jess, the free-spirited hippie, her reserved daughter Jamie, and Jamie’s vulnerable teenage daughter, CJ. This is the blurb: Three generations of women. Three heartbreaking choices. One unforgettable story. 1969: Free-spirited hippie Jess James has no intention of…
