STARTED EARLY, TOOK MY DOG, KATE ATKINSON, DOUBLEDAY, $32.95.

Tracy Waterhouse retired from the West Yorkshire police force with a shell so thick there was scarcely anything left inside.

Now over 50 and doing the rounds as security chief of her shopping centre, she spots prostitute and druggie Kelly Cross cruelly dragging a little girl. In a moment of madness, she “buys” the child, thus setting her life off course. So begins Atkinson’s fourth novel featuring private investigator Jackson Brodie and though we know the ex-cops will coincide, it’s a slow and enjoyable burn as plots intertwine and new crimes pile on old. Here, as in her other Brodie books, Atkinson delivers the staples of crime – corrupt cops, high body count, missing children – with a tilt at the conventions and a lightness of touch.

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MEDIUM RAW, BY ANTHONY BOURDAIN, BLOOMSBURY, $35.

Knives at 20 paces! Bad boy Bourdain is back. As fans of his best-selling Kitchen Confidential know, he is a writer who never uses a polite phrase if an obscenity is available.

“A loud, egotistical, one-note arsehole” is how one critic described him, which strikes Bourdain as “entirely fair and appropriate”. He’s vicious, funny and angrier than any man should be who’s gone from cook – he won’t claim the title of chef – to TV star. His energy fuels a book that is partly a re-telling of that journey, partly an excuse to drop bombs on anyone or anything that bugs him – from Eurotrash diners to overpriced food to Ronald McDonald. Yet his heart is still in the kitchen and no one writes better about the actual experience of eating and the glory of good, unfussy food.

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APE HOUSE, BY SARA GRUEN, ALLEN & UNWIN, $32.99.

I so loved Gruen’s last book, Water For Elephants, that I’ve been waiting for this one. And it starts with a bang – a fire-bomb, actually, thrown by animal activists trying to “liberate” a family of Bonobo apes from a research facility, where they are being taught to communicate with humans.

Their language skills are so astonishing – and the Bonobos so loveable – that a rogue businessman has the idea of making them stars of a reality TV program. A mixture of romance and drama follows as their injured keeper and an out-of-work journalist work to free the apes – while raising questions about the relationship between humans and creatures with whom we share 99.4 per cent of our DNA. Gruen has done her homework and loves her animals, but her good intentions do rather get in the way.

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THE SLAP, BY CHRISTOS TSIOLKAS, ALLEN & UNWIN, $32.95.

Melbourne’s inner suburbs and family and friends gather for a barbecue. A child acts brattishly. One of the guests (not his parents) delivers the boy a stinging slap – and sets off a chain of events both extraordinary and familiar, which is the key to this book’s success.

It touches on the hot-button issues, not in a soap opera way, but with a sharp feel for the assumptions and follies that underpin our (supposedly) comfortable domestic lives. Parenting, schooling, ageing, marriage, sexuality, drugs, the lot. I know people who hate this book and say they recognise no one in these intriguing but often monstrous characters. I admire it hugely, congratulate the publishers on this re-issue and most especially Tsiolkas for turning his fierce, edgy intelligence to the way we are

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Solo, BY VICKI MCAULEY, MACMILLAN AUSTRALIA, $34.99.

When Andrew McAuley set out to cross the Tasman Sea in a kayak, his wife, Vicki, his family and even Andrew himself had grave doubts about the wisdom of the mission.

Minutes after he farewelled his wife and young son, he worried about ever seeing them again and told an on-board camera that “I don’t think I’ll ever do anything as dangerous as this trip ever again”. He died in the attempt. In Solo, Vicki combines his diary and video commentary with her memories to tell the emotional story of why he went ahead with his adventure and why she let him go. Even though many will find his mission foolhardy, this couple’s love story and Vicki’s feelings about the thoughts she never shared make her story both moving and compelling.

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Serenade For A Small Family, BY INGRID LAGUNA, ALLEN & UNWIN, $24.99.

It’s hard to write this review without thinking of the feelings of the author. After all, Laguna has totally bared her soul on love, babies and her winding road to happiness.

And though the first chapters sing with the naïve joy of a very modern love story, as she meets her dream man, Benny, there is deep sadness to come, written in such a heartbreakingly honest manner that we defy you to keep a dry eye. As Ingrid endures rounds of IVF, she finally falls pregnant with twin sons, but goes into labour dangerously early. If they are born that day, the nurse in an Alice Springs hospital tells her, “They will probably gasp for air and then they will stop breathing”.

Yet if they stay inside Ingrid’s womb for one more magical day, there is a hospital in Adelaide with an excellent neonatal intensive care unit which will take her. So, she must make it through to the morning – to 23 weeks and one day pregnant. “Another contraction gripped my lower body and I rolled onto my side with a groan,” Ingrid writes. “There’s still some hope,” the doctor tells her … Despite the pain and anguish, this is a thoroughly readable memoir about love, courage and building a family.

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A Photographic Portrait: Queen Elizabeth II, BY PHILIP ZIEGLER, THAMES & HUDSON, $90.

Queen Elizabeth has been photographed since the day she was born and, largely, by the best photographers.

This book pulls together those official portraits we know, with a clutch of revealing, relaxed shots and rarely seen documentary photographs, which offer an insight into the queen’s sometimes troubled, but always scrutinised life. What comes through most is the sense of duty that has powered the monarch’s every move and emotion.

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Trick Of The Dark, BY VAL MCDERMID, LITTLE BROWN, $32.99.

Val McDermid is a master of the complex crime thriller and her latest combines flawless, suspense-filled storytelling with a sharp contemporary eye on human behaviour and relationships, which culminate in possibly her most menacing, emotional whodunnit yet.

Oxford University in England (where Scottish journalist and author McDermid studied) is the hotbed for female undergraduate hook-ups and a breeding ground for brilliant careers. Female forensic psychiatrist Dr Charlie Flint and millionaire “misery memoir” novelist Jay Macallan Stewart both babysat “Maggot”, the daughter of philosophy fellow and surrogate campus mum, Dr Corinna Newsam, while at Oxford. When Magda “Maggot” Newsam’s husband, Patrick, is murdered and she begins a gay relationship with Jay, Corinna pitches one former student against the other.

Did Patrick Carling’s business partners really murder him, or is there a female serial killer with an honours in murder on the loose? McDermid lays the distinctive foundations, wings witty emails, posts sensational newspaper reports and even weaves Jay’s best-selling autobiography, Unrepentant, effortlessly into the plot.

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BY NIGHTFALL, BY MICHAEL CUNNINGHAM, FOURTH ESTATE, $27.99.

Manhattan art dealer Peter Harris is struggling with the kind of concerns only the rich can afford to contemplate at length. Am I happy? What is art? What is beauty?

Pulitzer Prize-winning author (for The Hours), Michael Cunningham, writes so exquisitely it’s almost possible to forgive his protagonist his self-absorption. Peter has been married to art magazine editor Rebecca Harris for nearly 20 years, but when her self-destructive brother comes to stay, Peter starts to question his marriage, his career and more. The climax is satisfying, yet underwhelming. This is not a novel for the casual reader. The motives, meanings and metaphors will provide material for the keen literary analyst.

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MINI SHOPAHOLIC, SOPHIE KINSELLA, BANTAM PRESS, $32.95.

Beguiling Becky Bloomwood Brandon has many fans. She’s shopped her way through five successful books and her sixth is more of the same kind-hearted blundering and insatiable purchasing.

Becky now has a two-year-old daughter, Minnie, in tow and, worryingly, she’s almost like her shopaholic mother. Becky is struggling with Minnie and her own retail addiction. She’s also looking for a home and planning a surprise party for her husband. Yes, it’s a recipe for disaster. Author Sophie Kinsella has hit the jackpot with this character. Mini Shopaholic is not quite as witty as the first book, The Secret Dreamworld Of A Shopaholic, but Becky’s adventures are entertaining and perfect for the bus or train commute.

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