Now to Love

Henri Matisse Rooms with A View by Shirley Neilsen Blum, Thames & Hudson, $90 The window was integral to the paintings of French 20th century artist Henri Matisse offering a unique framing for many of his works and for the first time this stunning book analyses its role. Art Historian Shirley Neilsen Blum looks at […]

The Incredible Journey by Sheila Burnford, Random House US, $12.95 I think I saw the film first, a brilliant film, and didn’t read the book until 15 years ago when I fell totally in love with it. It was first published in 1960 and is the most beautiful story about animals – a Labrador, a […]

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro, Allen & Unwin, $22.99 Kathy, Ruth and Tommy were pupils at Hailsham – an idyllic establishment situated deep in the English countryside. The children there were tenderly sheltered from the outside world, brought up to believe they were special, and that their personal welfare was crucial. But for […]

The Lake Of Dreams by Kim Edwards, Viking, $29.95 Kim Edwards’ debut novel The Memory Keeper’s Daughter became a runaway bestseller when it was released in 2006 — and was published in 38 countries, selling millions of copies around the world. Four years later her much anticipated second novel has a lot to live up […]

A Food Lover’s Pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela by Dee Nolan, Lantern, $100 This book is so beautiful it makes me squeak. That grass-green jacket – the colour, I’m told, of the hills on which you walk during stages of the grand six-week (though many do less) pilgrimage of St James, which ends at the […]

Half a Life by Darin Strauss, Hamish Hamilton, $26.95 “Half my life ago, I killed a girl.” She was just 16. Darin Strauss, the author of this memoir and also an acclaimed novelist, was 18 and soberly driving his father’s Oldsmobile when a freak accident – a girl, a bike, an inexplicable collision – changed […]

Harbour by John Ajvide Lindqvist, Text Publishing, $32.95 A remote Swedish island. A six-year old girl who disappears without a trace. A broken father, who returns to mourn the tragedy two years on – and discovers hers is not the first disappearance from the blighted island of Domaro. It is not just the islanders, nursing […]

Life by Keith Richards, Hachette Australia, $49.99 Who knew the old rogue was so popular? I’d always thought of The Rolling Stones’ Keith Richards as a minority taste – yet here’s his autobiography storming the bestseller lists. No small feat given it’s a $50 hardback, huge, and that’s one raunchy life he’s describing. Even allowing […]

The Queen’s Dolls’ House by Lucinda Lambton, Royal Collection Publications, $35 When you’re a royal princess after the ultimate dolls’ house who do you turn to? Who else but the country’s top architect, the guy whose day job is to design stately homes. And so it was that Princess Marie Louise, Queen Victoria’s granddaughter commissioned […]

Fall Girl by Toni Jordan, Text Publishing, $32.95 A favourite passage from this light, bright romantic comedy has Ruby, the matriarch in a family of genteel con-artists, list some “wonderful ideas” for stings. A cream that melts away cellulite. Tablets that fill in wrinkles from the inside. Daily doses of Siberian plant juice to stop […]