Books

I Am Half Sick of Shadows by Alan Bradley, Orion, $32.99. Flavia de Luce may be a delightful innocent, but she’s well acquainted with murder and easy in its company. In her well-stocked chemistry laboratory in a wing of her crumbling family estate, neglected Flavia explores the fascinating world of poisons, while her older sisters […]

The Year After by Martin Davies, Hodder &Stoughton, $32.99. It’s 1919 and, still grimy with Flanders dust, Captain Tom Abbott returns to a strangely muted London. Before the war, he’d vowed never to return to Devon and rose-scented Hannesford Court, the home of the charming Stansbury family. Yet a yearning for music, noise and bustle […]

The Affair by Lee Child, Bantam Press, $32.95. Jack Reacher fans are wildly possessive of him and there’s a guerrilla reader movement against casting Tom Cruise in the upcoming Reacher film. Their passion prompted me to read my first Reacher novel, the 16th in the best-selling series. I got lucky with the chronology. The Affair […]

Tiger Men by Judy Nunn, Random House, $32.95. Spanning 65 years of Tasmanian history from 1853 to 1918, actor and best-selling author Judy Nunn follows the fortunes of three disparate yet inexorably linked families in the sweeping saga Tiger Men. Where the term used to describe the bounty hunters who hunted the Tasmanian tiger into […]

Adventures in Correspondentland by Nick Bryant, Random House, $32.95. For five years, until he hung up his headphones last month, Nick Bryant was the BBC’s man in Australia. For 11 years prior to his posting Down Under, Bryant roamed the globe as a foreign correspondent. His reflections on this time as a microphone-wielding witness to […]

Matilda Is Missing by Caroline Overington, Bantam Australia, $32.95. It sounds like it could be dry and grueling content — a novel about a custody fight for a little girl from a family torn apart by divorce. Yet Matilda Is Missing is so much more than that. It is a gripping and emotional tale of […]

Lola’s Secret by Monica McInerny, Penguin, $29.95. Lola Quinlan’s 12-year-old great grand-daughter approvingly likens her to Lady Gaga; kitted out with panache in pink tights and leopard-print dress. Family saga author Monica McInerney’s 84-year-old creation also loves the internet and slips in smiley emoticons on emails like they are going out of fashion. Lola’s secret […]

Behind the bright smile, the beauty queen turned TV star has had her troubles, as Shari Nementzik finds out. On the surface, The Celebrity Apprentice star Jesinta Campbell appears to have it all – beauty, brains and fame. But only a few years ago the former Miss Universe contestant was the target of school bullies. […]

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 […]