Apr 8, 2026 | What Am I Reading?
I opened the first pages of FROGSONG (UQP 2026) with somewhat anxious trepidation, because how could author Melissa Manning have written a novel as wonderful as her first book SMOKEHOUSE (an impossibly good collection of interlocked short stories)? But my worries were...
Apr 6, 2026 | What Am I Reading?
IDAHO (Penguin Random House 2017) by Emily Ruskovich is such a delightful, masterful, brilliant, expansive, heartbreaking jewel of a novel, and the rightful winner of the 2019 International Dublin Literary Award (decided by librarians and readers the world over). This...
Mar 28, 2026 | What Am I Reading?
What a strange, enthralling, compassionate, haunting question of a book is I WHO HAVE NEVER KNOWN MEN (Penguin Random House 1995) by Jacqueline Harpman. This slim feminist dystopian volume has a simple yet indecipherable plot and is an absolute delight to read....
Mar 19, 2026 | What Am I Reading?
THIS BOOK!!! BEREFT by Chris Womersley (Scribe Publications 2010) has been on my TBR pile for many years and I can’t believe it took me this long to finally read it. If you love HAMNET by Maggie O’Farrell, then BEREFT will have the same emotional effect on you,...
Mar 14, 2026 | What Am I Reading?
The extraordinary book DEAR MADMAN (&Also Books 2026) by Edwina Shaw is part ancestral memoir, part true crime, part family history, part mystery, part psychological examination and part sociological and cultural analysis. Touching on grief, murder, parenting,...
Mar 10, 2026 | What Am I Reading?
Thriller writer JP Pomare’s latest book THE GAMBLER (Hachette 2026) is the second in a new series about Private Investigator Vince Reid, a character introduced in his previous novel THE WRONG WOMAN. Pomare’s trademark twists and surprising reveals again dominate this...
