Books

When Jo Fincham went on The Farmer Wants A Wife, she found a husband – the father of her baby – and peace of mind. If ever there was evidence that life can take a 180-degree turn from darkness into the light, it is in Jo Fincham’s face as she cradles her newborn daughter Darcy. […]

What The Family Needed by Steven Amsterdam, Sleepers Publishing, $24.95. There’s something fresh and engaging about Steven Amsterdam’s writing — a lightness of touch with some of life’s more troubling human scenarios sprinkled with a frisson of other worldliness; in this instance the idea that we may all have a special power that could reveal […]

It could have been ugly, but the fiery politician and the singer are now like sisters. A red-haired controversy magnet who didn’t like black people – that’s how Deni Hines viewed Pauline Hanson and her politics before the pair met on Nine’s reality series The Celebrity Apprentice.The famous singer was sure she’d butt heads with […]

The Hypnotist’s Love Story, by Liane Moriarty, Macmillan Australia, $32.99. Australian author Liane Moriarty is a regular choice for our Great Read and with The Hypnotist’s Love Story she’s done it again. This is a gripping romance with a thriller edge that probes the rather in-vogue subject of stalking in an intriguing way. The tale […]

Well bred, well connected and with a reputation for making magic, Jacquetta of Luxembourg has a fascinating tale to tell. Bestselling author Philippa Gregory continues her series, The Cousins’ War, with The Lady of the Rivers, mother of the White Queen. To read the first chapter of The Lady of the Rivers by Philippa Gregory […]

At 58, farmer John is ready to find love again. After spending the past 14 years as a widower, the Farmer Wants a Wife contestant has opened his heart in the hopes of finding a new partner to share his life with. “The nights start to get very lonely,” John says. “I am in the […]

In Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness Alexandra Fuller braids a multilayered narrative around the perfectly lit, Happy Valley-era Africa of her mother’s childhood; the boiled cabbage grimness of her father’s English childhood; and the darker, civil war- torn Africa of her own childhood. At its heart, this is the story of Fuller’s mother, […]

The Psychopath Test by Jon Ronson, Picador, $32.99. Remember Al “Chainsaw” Dunlap? The Packer family’s corporate cost-cutter of the early ’90s? Well, he’s exhibit A in Jon Ronson’s new investigation into the madness industry — specifically, whether many leading CEOs and politicians are in fact diagnosable psychopaths. Lord knows how Ronson persuaded him but he […]

Amexica: War Along The Borderline by Ed Vulliamy, Random House, $35. A tough, gritty — and most disturbingly, true — report from the Mexican-US border, where drug cartels wage war on each other, and anyone gets in their way. More than 28,000 have been killed since the official war on drugs was declared five years […]

Gilgamesh by Joan London, Random House, $23.95. This is an oldie-but-goody, recommended with such enthusiasm by a fellow reader I felt I had to give it a go — and so enjoyed the experience I am now passing it on. Drawing on the epic of Gilgamesh, the world’s oldest known poem, it is both a […]