What Am I Reading?
Dragon Skin – Karen Foxlee
Every story that multi award-winning author Karen Foxlee creates brims with magic, heart and beauty, and features young people with big dreams, challenging obstacles and a knack for discovering parts of themselves they never knew existed. Her latest middle-grade...
Falling – T.J. Newman
Falling (Simon and Schuster 2021) by T.J. Newman is an absolutely edge of your seat, runaway thriller with a knock-out premise and knife-edge anxiety. Written with inside aviation knowledge (the author was a flight attendant), Falling is the ultimate hostage/terrorist...
After Story – Larissa Behrendt
Larissa Behrendt’s novel After Story (UQP 2021) is a blending of narratives, styles and themes, with appeal to those who love the traditions of English literature such as Shakespeare and Austen, and equally those who want to learn more about First Nations history. It...
Please Don’t Hug Me – Kay Kerr
I heard author Kay Kerr read an extract from her debut novel Please Don’t Hug Me (Text 2020) before it was published, at an Avid Reader event for author Graeme Simsion. She read the part about driving (straight through) a roundabout during a driving test and it was...
The Silent Patient – Alex Michaelides
A compulsive, page-turning psychological thriller, the New York Times bestselling book The Silent Patient (Orion Hachette 2019) by Alex Michaelides has sold over a million copies. This is an engrossing and immersive story about a psychotherapist and the patient who...
Wild Abandon – Emily Bitto
There are so many wonderful aspects to Emily Bitto’s novel Wild Abandon (Allen and Unwin 2021). She is a writer in complete control of her words and of the story. Every sentence is carefully crafted. This is a novel about endangered wildlife, capitalism, war,...
The Last Guests – JP Pomare
JP Pomare is making a name for himself as a writer of twisty, psychological crime thrillers that focus on complex domestic situations threaded through with sinister or malevolent subtext. His latest novel The Last Guests (Hachette 2021) is Pomare at the top of his...
Andal’s Garland – Helen Burns
Andal’s Garland (Odyssey Books 2020) by Helen Burns is an immersive experience of Indian life, culture and history. The book simultaneously intertwines two stories: the life of the young girl Andal, an eighth century Tamil poet; and a contemporary Australian woman who...
Beautiful World, Where Are You – Sally Rooney
It’s difficult to pinpoint exactly what it is about Sally Rooney’s writing that makes it so special, but her latest novel Beautiful World, Where Are You (Faber and Faber 2021) is yet another example. Featuring four friends in Ireland, the book describes the minutiae...
The Stoning – Peter Papathanasiou
Yet another fantastic Australian outback rural crime noir novel debut for your holiday reading: The Stoning (Transit Lounge 2021) by Peter Papathanasiou. The first in a planned series (yay!), The Stoning features Detective Sergeant George Manolis, a richly captured...
The Great Escape from Woodlands Nursing Home – Joanna Nell
Practising GP and author Joanna Nell has made a name for herself writing novels that explore the complexities of ageing – the celebrations, the sadness, the unfulfilled expectations, the unrequited love, the thrill of discovering new technology, the completeness of...
Empires – Nick Earls
Author Nick Earls’ Wisdom Tree series of novellas was a triumph, and he has built on those skills to write Empires (Vintage Penguin Random House 2021), a novel comprised of five sections that could each easily stand alone but together are more than the sum of their...