Reviews

In Faithless, Alice Nelson’s third novel, we follow Cressida as she writes a letter to her former lover, Max, dissecting the psychology of their relationship. Born the daughter of Lord Farley and his mistress, Cressida and her brother Lucian are part of a second, unacknowledged family. They share an idyllic childhood in India, growing up on…

If anyone knows how to argue with finesse it is Bo Seo. The journalist and author is a two-time winner of the Debating World Championships and a former debate coach. In his debut book, Good Arguments, he distills many of the lessons he learnt over the years so that we may know how to debate with…

It’s no secret that Greek Mythology retellings are having something of a moment. Madeline Miller‘s The Song of Achilles – published in 2011 – was one of the most talked about books on TikTok this year; and in the last couple of years, we’ve had novels which focus on the forgotten women’s perspectives within these…

There are echoes of The Lovely Bones in Joanna Morrison’s debut novel, The Ghost of Gracie Flynn. Narrated by Gracie, the story is told as if her ghost is talking directly to the infant daughter of one of Gracie’s university friends, Sam. Gracie, Sam, Robyn and Cohen were a tight knit foursome, once upon a time, but…

The protagonist of Adriane Howell’s debut novel, Hydra, has a very distinctive voice. An antiquarian with dreams of becoming a specialist at the auction house where she works; Anja has developed her own taxonomy of classifying objects based on the way they make a person feel rather than on where they are from, who made them…

Dr Lachlan McIver has had an extraordinary career. An Associate Professor, he has worked with Médecins Sans Frontières and the World Health Organisation, specialising in tropical diseases and rural medicine. Life & Death Decisions takes readers into high-stakes environments: natural disasters and civil war zones where the term ‘life and death decisions’ really counts. This…

In Brooke Dunnell‘s Fogarty Award-winning debut novel, The Glass House, Julia Lambett returns to her childhood home in Perth to move her father into care. The timing, as is usually the case in such novels, couldn’t be worse. Julia and her husband Rowan have taken to sleeping in separate beds; with some sort of unspoken issue…

Debra Dank’s We Come With This Place is an outstanding and remarkable book. It’s an unforgettable read, packed with rich detail regarding Dank’s own family history; but also the broader story of Country and people.  It is a vivid and profound story that is told with great honesty and depth. I have never before felt…

Steven Rowley’s The Guncle is a great read – funny, and with loads of quirky moments. Hollywood star, Patrick or Gay Uncle Patrick (GUP) escapes from the rat race from Hollywood, instead hiding away in Palm Springs to help get over a big loss in his love life.  Patrick doesn’t have much time to wallow…

In her latest book, author Joan Beaumont brings us fresh insight into a major part of Australian history.  Australia’s Great Depression offers a comprehensive history of a fledgling nation, shattered by the Great War, and how it survived the worst economic crisis of its history. In telling this story Beaumont uncovers the sources of resilience…

We all have it. But how much do we know about it? Writer and publisher, Phillipa McGuinness offers us a comprehensive text about skin in her latest book. Across twelve chapters, she covers many different topics in what can feel like a tad dense read at times. This is a well-researched book and McGuinness is…

Question: What do you get if you mash up Charlotte Wood‘s The Natural Way of Things, Anna North’s Outlawed and Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale? Answer: Kathryn Hore’s latest novel, The Stranger.  Set in an unspecified frontier-like future on an unnamed continent, in a small, gated town called Darkwater, The Stranger is a twist on the classic story prompt, a stranger comes…

The Three Lives of Alix St Pierre treads familiar territory for seasoned Natasha Lester readers, namely the streets of Paris during and immediately after the Second World War. The novel opens with Alix about to leave her Swiss finishing school to pursue her dream of working in fashion. She is devastated to leave her closest…

It was twenty years ago that many of us first saw author Nigel Marsh at play. Back then Marsh was the self-proclaimed “Fat, Forty & Fired” corporate type whose career had derailed. Many people could relate, so he followed up his debut with Fit, 50 & Fired Up. Another decade on, and he comes to…

 – With pull quotes on its cover from the likes of Charlotte Wood, Tony Birch and Laura Elvery, Anne Casey-Hardy’s debut collection of short stories, Cautionary Tales for Excitable Girls promises to be something special – and it does not disappoint. Often exploring themes of coming of age, motherhood, loss and friendship, these stories are about…

In his memoir What Goes Unsaid, critically acclaimed Mexican author Emiliano Monge has turned his attention to his own family tree and decided that it’s time to write about his grandfather’s deceit, and the affect it had on his family. In March 1958, Carlos Monge McKay drives to a quarry and fakes his own death. Four…

In 1925, Perth woman Audrey Jacob shot dead her former fiance, Cyril Gidley in the middle of the ballroom at Government House in front of hundreds of witnesses. Yet she did not go to jail for her crime. Now, almost one hundred years later, historian and author Leigh Straw has delved into this case for…

Terry Pratchett: A Life with Footnotes is the long awaited biography of the heralded fantasy author Terry Pratchett, written by his PA and close friend of several decades, Rob Wilkins. It is a captivating and in-depth account of Pratchett’s early life, family, (often reluctant) schooling, career before books, career during books, and many achievements over…

If it’s seemed this year like Ultimo Press are the ones to watch, then this latest novel by Eliza Henry-Jones is no exception. Pick it up for its gorgeous, moody cover, but stay for the complex and well thought-out plot and its cast of intriguing characters who almost seem to walk off the page. Salt…

Off the coast of a tiny forgotten town called Elston-Fright, lies a rock-that-doesn’t-exist. On that rock live three wicked child-snatching children. But someone else lives there too. A ghost. She’s fashioned a body made of wax with seaweed for hair and abalone shells for eyes. She’s found a friend, a huntsman spider named Simon. And…

My Heart is a Little Wild Thing is the sophomore novel from Australian writer, Nigel Featherstone. It is the story of Patrick, the beleaguered youngest son of a family from country New South Wales who has suppressed his own needs and desires for most of his life. Now the only member of his family in…

Author Chris Flynn was the mastermind behind my favourite novel of 2020, Mammoth. Now he’s back with a new collection of short fiction/stories, Here Be Leviathans. And, it’s quite probably my favourite book of 2022. Collected over a period of ten years, the stories in Here Be Leviathans show an author who is full of…

The curse on Lakesedge and its young lord has been lifted. But it has come at a great cost. Leta, desperate to save the boy she loves, has made a deal with the Lord Under. Sacrificing herself to mend the Corruption that has ravaged Lakesedge, she is damned to walk the world Below. Yet her…

Portable Magic, the latest book by Shakespeare scholar Emma Smith, is more than just a book about books. Or rather, it’s not exactly what you would expect from a book about books. Instead of being a cultural history of books, reading and publishing, it’s a thematic account of books as physical objects. Divided into chapters about…

In Victoria Lee’s A Lesson in Vengeance, eighteen-year-old Felicity Morrow has returned to Godwin House; the oldest and most haunted of the student houses at Dalloway school, a girl’s academy set high in the Catskill mountains in the U.S. She has returned after a year away, a year in which she was recovering from the…

The Cairndale Institute isn’t like other schools. Taking in children with specific skills, known as Talents, it’s not only a chance to grow and learn; but also a refuge from a world not ready for their powers. Charlie Ovid can heal himself from just about any injury. Komako can manipulate dust to do extraordinary things….

Holly Black breaks away from YA and into adult fiction in her latest novel Book of Night, a gritty urban fantasy about a woman who just can’t seem to stay out of trouble. After a life of petty crime nearly gets her killed, Charlie Hall decides it’s time to go straight. But when she stumbles…

Runaways is the true story of two powerful modern day woman who escape the confines of culture and history. In this memoir, co-authors Shelley Davidow (from South Africa) and Shaimaa Khalil (from North Africa) delve into their pasts and recall how their friendship has shaped them as individuals. Over two decades their loving friendship has…

Gina Rushton’s debut book, The Most Important Job In The World, explores a simple question where the answers are anything but. The award-winning journalist goes on a deep dive to ask whether we should be parents. The result is something that will resonate with both parents and non-parents alike. Writers are often told to write about…

Katerina Gibson was the winner of the 2021 Commonwealth Short Story Prize (Pacific Region) for their story “Fertile Soil”. Last month, their debut collection Women I Know was published by Scribner, an imprint of Simon & Schuster. Described as ‘unpicking the stitches of gender and genre’, the seventeen stories in Women I Know explore various iterations of…