Clinical psychiatrist Dr Manjula Datta O’Connor’s non-fiction book Daughters of Durga: Dowries, Gender Violence and Family in Australia (Melbourne University Press 2022) opens with the sobering statistic of a cluster of seven suicides in one small Indian/Australian community in Melbourne; that more than half of these women had contacted police about domestic violence; six of the seven had no driving license; and most were unemployed and isolated. Australian Indian women were shocked. While one woman a week is killed in Australia by their current or former intimate partner, these killings seemed to be prompted by cultural differences and silence around mental health and family violence.

Nicole Madigan is an investigative journalist and writer, and her book Obsession: A journalist and victim-survivor’s investigation into stalking (Pantera Press 2023) is an absolutely unputdownable non-fiction book that reads with the page-turning suspense of a novel but is scaffolded by statistics, real cases and information about police and legal procedures. This is Madigan’s personal story, but she has widened her examination of this subject to include media reports, police action (or inaction), legal avenues, legislative changes, case studies, the effects of stalking on victim-survivors and even the perspective of a stalker who spoke openly about his experience. This is a book that will open your eyes, or – if you are a victim-survivor yourself – validate your emotions.