What Am I Reading?
Cilka’s Journey – Heather Morris
Cilka’s Journey (Echo Publishing 2019) is the companion novel to Heather Morris’ international bestseller The Tattooist of Auschwitz. Apparently based on the true story of Cilka Klein, a minor character in the first book, this second novel follows Cilka’s journey,...
The Tattooist of Auschwitz – Heather Morris
The very first words written in The Tattooist of Auschwitz (Echo 2018) by Heather Morris are these: ‘This is a work of fiction, based on the first-hand testimony of one Auschwitz survivor; it is not an authoritative record of the events of the Holocaust.’ I think it’s...
Griffith Review66 The Light Ascending – edited by Ashley Hay
You know when you open the pages of a new Griffith Review that the writing within will be thought-provoking, opening your mind to new authors and voices you have not heard before, and cementing the talent of established authors that you already know and love. Each...
Islands of Australia: Travels Through Time – Tony Wheeler
It’s that time of year again, with Christmas approaching, when we begin to think about the perfect present for an international friend, a relative with the travelling bug, or just the person who has everything, and this beautiful coffee table book Islands of...
All Hands – Megan McGrath
Megan McGrath’s collection of short stories All Hands (Spineless Wonders 2019) was a runner-up in the 2019 Carmel Bird Digital Literary Award, a platform which is a great way of accessing current electronic stories that feature writers that are pushing their writing...
Peace – Garry Disher
When Garry Disher won the Ned Kelly Lifetime Achievement Award, he was described by the Australian Crime Writers Association as ‘a giant not only of crime fiction but of Australian letters’. With over 50 titles published across multiple genres, he is best known for...
No Place for an Octopus – Claire Zorn
Award-winning YA author Claire Zorn brings us a beautiful and heart-warming story alongside her own glorious watercolour illustrations in her first picture book No Place for an Octopus (UQP 2019). This is a simple story about a child discovering and appreciating the...
Snake Island – Ben Hobson
Most writers find themselves inevitably drawn back to similar themes in their work. They might tell completely different stories but with the same questions and curiosities at their heart. For Ben Hobson, that magnetic pull is to explore masculinity: What is it to be...
The Wife and the Widow – Christian White
Christian White’s best-selling debut The Nowhere Child took the world by storm, and his second novel The Wife and the Widow (Affirm Press 2019) is another psychological crime thriller that will have readers on the edges of their seats. With engaging characters, an...
The Bee and the Orange Tree – Melissa Ashley
Author Melissa Ashley came to prominence when her debut novel, The Birdman’s Wife, expertly re-imagined the life of Elizabeth Gould. Following this theme of uncovering the lives of fascinating but largely forgotten women from history, her second novel The Bee and the...
Dead Man Switch – Tara Moss
Best-selling author Tara Moss is a sought-after public speaker, an advocate for women’s and children’s rights, a UNICEF Ambassador for Child Survival AND an accredited private investigator. But her career as an author began 20 years ago with her debut novel Fetish,...
Silver – Chris Hammer
After being a journalist for 30 years, Chris Hammer’s second novel Scrublands took Australia by storm, and now he has released the sequel Silver (Allen and Unwin 2019). Although this crime story can be read as a stand-alone, readers of Scrublands will delight in the...