What Am I Reading?
Where Truth Ends – Mark Smith
Is it ever okay to do the wrong thing for the right reason? Or to do the right thing for the wrong reason? In author Mark Smith’s fifth book (his second crime novel for adults) WHERE TRUTH ENDS (Pan Macmillon 2026), he explores these questions amidst the contemporary...
Phantom Days – Angela O’Keefe
What an extraordinary, spare, glittering literary gem is PHANTOM DAYS (UQP 2026) by Angela O’Keefe. In her trademark prose style – ethereal, strange, beguiling and with a whimsical sense of wonder, O’Keefe presents a story of two women, mother and daughter, Maggie and...
Once We Were Wildlife – Inga Simpson
Indisputably one of the top wildlife and environmental writers in Australia, Inga Simpson (also an accomplished photographer) captures Country, land, climate issues, species extinction, habitat and the sheer wonder of individual animals, birds, fish, insects, plants,...
Life Drawing – Emily Lighezzolo
Emily Lighezzolo’s debut novel LIFE DRAWING (UQP 2026) explores the female body from a multitude of perspectives: the physical changes of puberty, childbirth, menopause and aging; how females consider their own bodies over time; the male gaze and how it affects...
One Night at Silver Lake – Katherine Scholes
ONE NIGHT AT SILVER LAKE (Penguin Random House 2026) by Katherine Scholes is a fascinating insight into life in the 1960’s in the dual settings of Tanzania (gaining independence) and Tasmania. The author’s work is informed by her own experiences of growing up in...
Frogsong – Melissa Manning
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...
Idaho – Emily Ruskovich
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...
I Who Have Never Known Men – Jacqueline Harpman
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....
Bereft – Chris Womersley
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,...
Dear Madman – Edwina Shaw
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,...
The Gambler – JP Pomare
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...
Days Without End – Sebastian Barry
Ah, the sheer pleasure of reading humanity’s tragedy and joy in the perfect words of Sebastian Barry. His novel DAYS WITHOUT END (Faber and Faber 2016) is a glittering gem: a gritty and visceral war story, a tender and wise love story. The novel explores physical and...