What Am I Reading?
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...
Love and Virtue – Diana Reid
If you are a fan of the writings of Sally Rooney and Meg Mason, then you will love the debut novel by Diana Reid, Love and Virtue (Ultimo Press 2021). Set in a contemporary university setting, this is the story of ‘feminism, power and sex’ and as such fits into the...
Wild Place – Christian White
Christian White’s latest psychological thriller Wild Place (Affirm Press 2021) continues to cement his place as one of Australia’s most compelling contemporary crime writers. The writing is smart, clever and taut, the plot is filmic in scope, and the characters are...
Once There Were Wolves – Charlotte McConaghy
Author Charlotte McConaghy gave me one of my favourite reads of last year, Migrations, and her second novel Once There Were Wolves (Penguin Random House 2021) is another fantastic, well-written, exquisite story about the relationships between people, and between...
Cutters End – Margaret Hickey
Move over Jane Harper, and make room Lyn Yeowart, there is a new female writer of Australian outback rural crime noir, Margaret Hickey, and her debut novel Cutters End (Penguin Random House 2021) is as gritty, suspenseful and page-turning as any devoted crime reader...
Lovers of Philosophy – Warren Ward
Whether you are a lover of philosophy, or you are interested in the love lives of philosophers, Warren Ward’s non-fiction, biographical account of seven of the world’s greatest philosophers, and the loves and lovers that inspired and sustained them, entitled Lovers of...
Checkout 19 – Claire-Louise Bennett
Checkout 19 (Penguin Random House 2021) is the much anticipated second book from Irish/British author Claire-Louise Bennett after her acclaimed short story collection Pond. In this highly literary novel, praised by Anne Enright and Roddy Doyle, Bennett writes in a...
If Not Us – Mark Smith
John F Kennedy’s famous quote ‘If not us, who? If not now, when?’ is the perfect epigraph – sitting alongside the words of Greta Thunberg – for the latest YA novel by Mark Smith, If Not Us (Text Publishing 2021). Smith is known for his Road to Winter trilogy of young...
Fury – Kathryn Heyman
Kathryn Heyman is furious, and she has channelled over 30 years of that emotion into her memoir Fury (Allen and Unwin 2021), a confronting, powerful and triumphant story of abuse, poverty, class and ultimately, the joy of knowing your true self and what you are...
The Shadow House – Anna Downes
From Anna Downes, the acclaimed author of The Safe Place, comes another contemporary psychological thriller The Shadow House (Affirm Press 2021). This disturbing novel features contemporary themes with gothic – perhaps even supernatural – overtones in a page-turning...