Now to Love

Arnold Schwarzenegger has been photographed wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with the slogan ‘I survived Maria’ just three months after his wife left him after discovering he had fathered a love child with their housekeeper. Maria Shriver ended her 25-year marriage to Arnold in May when it emerged that he had cheated on her with their […]

Life can change in a heartbeat Four minutes and eight seconds. That’s how long my husband, Michael Dunhill, was dead. Four minutes and eight seconds. That’s how long it took for my husband to become a complete stranger to me. To read the first chapter of Skipping a Beat click here. Win our Book of […]

On Canaan’s Side, Faber and Faber, $29.99. Sebastian Barry woos with words. His lyrical prose carries you off on a warm and engrossing journey conjuring incredibly special characters, gently etched at first then skilfully coloured in as the story deepens. On Canaan’s Side is told through narrator 89-year-old Lilly Bere, who as the novel opens […]

Bossypants by Tina Fey, Sphere, $32.99. Before she perfected her Sarah Palin impersonation, Tina created and played the sparky, sharp-tongued Liz Lemon on TV’s 30 Rock. Before that, she was first female head writer in the legendary boys’ club of Saturday Night Live. Now she’s queen of American comedy and this memoir shows you why […]

The Last Werewolf by Glen Duncan, Text, $32.95. You think I’m joking? A book on werewolves? Oh, but such an elegant, tongue-in-hairy-cheek take on the genre it makes you wonder why anyone wastes their time on those dreary and insipid vamps, eternal enemies of the lycanthrope tribe. Our hero (so to speak) is Jake Marlowe, […]

The Roving Party by Rohan Wilson, Allen & Unwin, $27.99. The Vogel literary award has been recognising and rewarding young writers for 30 years now, and this year’s winner is an absolute stand-out. Yes, it is dark and it tells a brutal story of a party of “rovers” (read thugs and killers) roaming the harsh […]

Friends Like These by Wendy Harmer, Allen & Unwin, $32.99. Write what you know, is the standard advice to authors. And as a top-rating and high-earning radio presenter, Wendy Harmer spent long enough on Sydney’s so-called A-list to know it inside out. Now she’s “ratting on it”, as she puts it, and a highly amusing […]

Exposed by Liza Marklund, Bantam Press, $32.95. Annika Bengtzon is a young journalist eager to leave her dead-end relationship and quiet hometown and earn a full-time job on Stockholm’s tabloid Evening Post. Josefin Liljeberg also wants to be a reporter, but she’s a stripper in a seedy club owned by her violent boyfriend and, before […]

An Uncertain Place by Fred Vargas, Harvill/Secker, $32.95. Commissaire Adamsberg, chief of Paris’ Serious Crimes Squad, will live to rue the day he discovers 17 severed feet outside London’s Highgate Cemetery. Like all good fictional detectives, he’s a bit of a loner, quietly rebellious and loved by all his (mostly) loyal officers. The feet will […]

The Voyagers by Mardi McConnochie, Viking, $29.95. Shore leave, Sydney, 1943, and quietly determined US sailor Stead heads straight for the home of the girl he met and fell in love with during three magical days in 1938. Back then, Marina was a sheltered girl on the verge of a career as a world-famous pianist. […]