Bertie Plays the BluesBy Alexander McCall Smith, NewSouthBooks, $29.95

If Precious Ramotswe of the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency is the Alexander McCall Smith character I most admire, six-year-old Bertie Pollack is the one I most want to help.

The latest of McCall Smith’s popular Scotland Street novels finally gives us a sliver of hope that Bertie will not lose his childhood completely to his obnoxiously intellectual mother.

His neighbours are going through their own personal upheavals: Big Lou is looking for love with an Elvis Presley impersonator, a handsome charming threat to the engagement of Angus and Domenica comes knocking, and Elspeth and Matthew adjust to life with triplets and the nudist colony next door.

If you like to read in bed and are not looking for anything too taxing or depressing, McCall Smith’s novels are perfect.

Bertie Plays the Bluesis another philosophical and warm offering from Edinburgh’s most loved export after shortbread and tartan.

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The Cut By George Pelecanos, Orion, $32.99

Stephen King and Barack Obama are just two of George Pelecanos’ legion of fans. If you haven’t read him before, you might still know his work from the cult television hit The Wire — a gritty, understated, crime drama set in the gang-ridden streets of Baltimore.

The Cut moves the action to Washington, D.C., where soldier-turned-private detective Spero Lucas woos women and out-muscles and outsmarts gangsters and drug dealers with varying degrees of success.

Spero doesn’t always operate on the right side of the law, although in D.C., as in The Wire, the line between the police and criminals is often blurred.

Pelecanos’ prose is spare and masculine. In Spero, he’s created a man’s man, a three-dimensional character who’s flawed but likeable, tough but sensitive.

The plot intensifies slowly but steadily, building to a believable but suspenseful climax. The seedy, violent world of low-level crime comes alive in The Cut; the most authentic crime novel I’ve read in years.

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The Sense Of An Ending By Julian Barnes, Random House, $29.95.

Julian Barnes’ books seem to get shorter as he ages, but that doesn’t mean they’re any less engrossing.

This one, more of a novella than a full-blown novel, has been long-listed for the Booker Prize and finds the author back in a contemplative mood.

The start is a little irritating, with our central character Tony and his somewhat smug schoolfriends trading smart-arse banter to impress in class.

But persevere, because what follows is surprisingly intense and searching as Tony, now in his 60s, looks back on his friendship with the burningly intelligent Adrian Finn, who stole his girlfriend and then committed suicide as a young man.

Tony’s effort to reconnect with those memories and understand what really went on and why such a bright light was so suddenly snuffed out, all seen through his self-deluding hindsight, provides the backdrop for a smart and taut plot. It delivers several sharp turns that leave you reeling.

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The Doll: Short StoriesBy Daphne Du Maurier, Virago, $24.99.

Published posthumously, these 13 forgotten short stories — penned by famed Jamaica Inn author Daphne Du Maurier, most of them when she was in her 20s — make for riveting, if somewhat shocking reading.

The eponymousThe Dollis the scene-stealer: a macabre tension-filled tale of a man discovering that the girl he loves is spurning his advances because she lives with a life-sized mechanical male doll.

Five of these stories were unearthed by a lifetime Du Maurier devotee and bookseller, the collection reveals a raw (yet by no means naive) sexual side to the creator of haunting tales that led to film classics such as Hitchcock’sThe Birds.

The disturbingEast Windis set on a remote island where inhabitants intermarry and live “blindly, happily, like children, content to grope in the dark…”.

FrustrationandWeek-Endreveal skilfully cynical depictions of love (and a wedding ring) slipping down the drain.

What is remarkable and exciting is that mature-headed DM was so ahead of her years and time. Depraved gothic satyrs and maudlin reeling sailors leer temptingly from the pages, alongside conservative courting couples, country lanes, motor cars and the altogether deceptive world of potted meat.

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You’ll Be Sorry When I’m Dead by Marieke Hardy, Allen & Unwin, $29.99.

A threesome with a prostitute is a provocative way to open this brilliant new novel by Melbourne writer Marieke Hardy.

Yet it is the chapters on her mundane life experiences that sparkle. Hardy quickly tires of prostitutes and dumps her boyfriend. From here, she moves easily into stories about caravanning with her parents, going to the footy in Melbourne and being a child actor.

The book is partly made up of extended newspaper columns, which in a less skilled writer, might struggle as a novel.

Yet there are some delightful literary devices which give this genre an instant freshness. For example, she gives her ex-lovers the right of reply at the end of a chapter where she has laid bare their relationship.

In another case, she relives her obsession with left-wing author Bob Ellis, which paints an unflattering picture of the larger-than-life character, but she still gives Ellis the final say.

Hardy, who is the grand-daughter of writer Frank Hardy, has made her name from her provocative and shamelessly pro-Labor Party column in Melbourne’s The Age newspaper.

In this book she continues to shock, but there is a quirky sweetness to her character that dampens some of the seediness.

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The Briny CafeBy Susan Duncan, Bantam Australia, $32.95.

They say the best fiction writers draw from experience. So when high-flying magazine editor Susan Duncan left the hustle of Sydney to live in a house on Pittwater — accessible only by boat and built for Dorothea Mackellar in 1925 – it’s not much of a stretch to imagine where her latest novel is set.

While poet Dorothea penned I Love A Sunburnt Country, Susan inspired the nation with her first bookSalvation Creek, in which she told of retreating to an idyllic home on the outskirts of Sydney after the sudden death of her husband and brother within three days of each other.

Her new novelThe Briny Cafédraws on that new lifestyle, telling the romantic — and mysterious — tales of the characters drawn to life on the water.

Interspersed with quirky news snippets from theCook’s Basin News(the one-page newsletter for the community), you’ll fall in love with this gentle, character-filled tale of life on the edge.

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Tasting India By Christine Manfield, Lantern, $89.95.

Sydney chef and restaurateur Christine Manfield has a special place in her heart for India.

“On each and every visit, I surrender myself to the procession of life before me, as India begins to pulsate through my veins,” she says.

This exceptional, lavish book is a visual and culinary expression of that exhilarating passion.

Part travelogue, part recipe book, Christine delves into the country’s diverse regional cuisines, gathering recipes and unique experiences as she travels.

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Cain by José Saramago, Harvill Secker, $29.95.

You know that Woody Allen film Zelig, about a man who inexplicably bobs up in the background at key moments of history?

Well, that’s what Cain — the murderous brother of Abel in the Bible — does in this last satirical novel by Nobel laureate Jose Saramago. And boy, does this Cain like an argument.

He first takes God to task over the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden (“if he really didn’t want them to eat that fruit, it would have been easy enough simply not to have planted the tree or surrounded it with barbed wire”) then reappears at all the Old Testament high points — the walls of Jericho, at the foot of Mt Sinai with Moses, even on board Noah’s ark — constantly niggling about what he sees as the flaws and cruelty in God’s judgment.

In its way, it’s as provocative and irreligious as anything written by Richard Dawkins but Saramago’s tone is witty rather than fierce. It’s certainly a brave last book to write.

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The Quarry by Johan Theorin, Doubleday, $32.95.

The Swedish crime wave rolls on. The interesting thing is how good these books are; turns out there was a talented crowd banked up behind Stieg Larsson.

And within the genre is emerging a sub-genre centred on remote islands; the winter locks them off, bad things happen there.

Author Theorin — winner of last year’s CWA International Award — has chosen the Baltic island of Oland where traditions run deep, including faerie-stuff — which normally I don’t enjoy but here serves as a shadow, a mysterious twist, to a strong story.

Per Morner is preparing for his children’s Easter visit to the island when his estranged father, video porn-peddler Jerry, rings and begs for help.

There’s a mysterious fire, several murders, and some link to the dank, green overgrown quarry at the bottom of Per’s garden.

The novel starts slowly but builds compulsively, sucking the reader into a world completely other to our own.

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This is Di Morrissey’s 20th book, arriving 20 years after she published her first — though she’ll be selling a lot more copies, having spent those years building a strong and supportive base of readers.

As the title suggests, The Opal Desert is set in and around Australia’s remote opal fields, in a small imaginary town not far from Lightning Ridge where three women, spanning three generations, have come to sort out challenges in their lives.

Kerrie is the new widow, who sacrificed her own art career to help promote her husband’s and must now beat her own path; Shirley is close to 80 and lives as a recluse beneath the opal fields after being abandoned by her great love; and young Anna is a promising athlete — but can she find the will and discipline to become a champion?

The fourth character in the book is Opal Desert itself — sometimes dry, sometimes shimmering, where the women find friendship and a way forward for each one.

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