Books

Music act La Spina might be a family affair but if you’re expecting Partridge style harmonies and Von Trapp family matching kitchen-curtain outfits you’re way off- the brother-sister music act say music from their first collaboration will “smack you in the face.” While Anna-Marie, 36, had an established career singing with pop megastars Savage Garden […]

Detective Anna Travis’ worst nightmare comes true when a sadistic killer she helped put behind bars claims he can help her with a murder investigation. A redhead, clad in snappy suits and starched collars, Lynda La Plante’s Detective Inspector Anna Travis has crime investigation in her blood. Her late father was a detective chief superintendent […]

HITCH 22 BY CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS, ALLEN & UNWIN, $35. A memoir from the thinking woman’s crumpled crumpet, the dishevelled but always wildly articulate Christopher Hitchens. The younger son of a British naval officer and an effervescent beauty, he overhears them plotting his future: “If there is going to be an upper class in this country, […]

ROOM BY EMMA DONOGHUE, PICADOR, $32.99. The author has plucked a nightmare straight out of the nightly news – the abduction of a young girl and her incarceration in a locked room – and turned it into a novel as intriguing as it is chilling. The story is told by the captive’s five-year-old son, Jack, […]

INHERITANCE BY NICHOLAS SHAKESPEARE, HARVILL SECKER, $32.95. Andy Larkham, a 30-something pen-pusher about to be dumped by his fiancée, is rushing to attend the funeral of his favourite schoolteacher. He’s one of just two mourners. A stranger takes down their names after the service, though it turns out it’s the wrong man’s funeral. Within a […]

SEX & STRAVINSKY BY BARBARA TRAPIDO, BLOOMSBURY, $32.99. This is Barbara Trapido’s seventh novel and a glorious read it is, with a cast of fabulously flawed characters, whose lives cross and re-cross over decades and continents as they chase their dreams, pick the wrong partners, madden their children, suffer the tyranny of monstrous parents, yet […]

A THOUSAND SPLENDID SUNSBY KHALED HOSSEINI, BLOOMSBURY, $24.95. Afghan-American novelist Hosseini follows up his best-sellingThe Kite Runnerwith another searing epic of Afghanistan in turmoil. Mariam and Laila are two women brought jarringly together by war, loss and fate. With heart-wrenching power and suspense, Hosseini shows how a woman’s love for her family can move her […]

THE SEARCHBY NORA ROBERTS, PIATKUS, $32.99. Since her first book,Irish Thoroughbred, was published by Silhouette in 1981, sassy mother-of-two Nora Roberts has notched up more than 200 novels and is an international best-seller. The Search, book number 206 (she averages five a year), is meticulously crafted in Roberts’ effortless signature style, weaving romance and serial-killer […]

ARTHUR’S WARBY ARTHUR BANCROFT WITH JOHN HARMAN, VIKING, $39.95. An exceptional memoir by 19-year-old sailor Arthur Bancroft, whose secret diary tells a courageous story of mateship, survival and enduring love. Arthur was not only a gifted writer, but also a cartoonist who illustrated letters to his sweetheart, Mirla, now his wife of 65 years. Her […]

THE GOOD DAUGHTER BY HONEY BROWN, VIKING, $32.95.VIKING, $39.95. This novel is as Aussie as an old ute covered in orange dust and as menacing as a blue heeler gone rogue. Rebecca Toyer is a good girl with a bad reputation. When her truckie stepfather leaves her alone for two weeks and a local woman […]