Books

Red Wolf by Lisa Marklund, Bantam Press (Random House, Emma Caddy) $32.95 Annika Bengtzon may be a wife, and the mother of two small children, but she’s also one of the most courageous and determined investigative reporters in Sweden. Still suffering psychologically from her last run-in with a psychopath, Bengtzon takes a break from crime […]

Out of the kitchen, the My Kitchen Rules contestants reveal it’s all ghosts, guns and brawls. It’s not just a flair for food and their likeable personalities that helped this couple on the road to TV fame. Reade Chandler, a contender on My Kitchen Rules with wife Donna, reckons there was some help from above. […]

The 2011 Biggest Loser contestants share their family secrets with Woman’s Day. Leigh: Living with mum is driving me crazy If you think living with your parents is bad, trying adding your partner to the equation – and then subtracting all the walls. This is the intense form of open-plan living Leigh Westren has been […]

They met on The Farmer Wants A Wife and now they’re planning the rest of their lives together. It took only nine months for Scott Warby to decide he wanted to spend the rest of his life with Clare Spark, the girl who stole his heart on season four of The Farmer Wants A Wife. […]

The first episode of the Oprah Winfrey Show‘s “Ultimate Australian Adventure” has aired on US television overnight with three more episodes planned throughout the week. The first episode, which airs tonight across Australia, includes Oprah’s visit to Hamilton Island, cuddling a koala and meeting Prime Minister Julia Gillard in Melbourne. The second episode will take […]

Australian chef Pete Evans is a busy man. Apart from being co-owner and executive chef of Hugo’s, he has just released a product range in David Jones, has his name associated with a Breville Pizza Maker and is the author of four books. His latest, My Party, shows you how to throw the perfect bash […]

He has sung with some of the biggest names in the music industry, appeared on Oprah’s show six times and just released his fifth album. But there is a lot more to Josh Groban than meets the eye. The 29-year-old Los Angeles-born singer, who got his break singing a duet of ‘The Prayer’ with Celine […]

FOR THE LOVE OF NATURE: E. E. GOSTELOW’S BIRDS & FLOWERS BY CHRISTOBEL MATTINGLEY, NATIONAL LIBRARY OF AUSTRALIA, $29.95. An unexpected gem of a book, not just for the delicate colour plates of Australian wildflowers and birds, but for the story of the man who painted them. Born in 1866, Ebenezer Edward Gostelow was a […]

TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD BY HARPER LEE, RANDOM HOUSE, $21.95. Fifty years old. Thirty million copies sold. Does Harper Lee’s classic of injustice and courage in a small town in the Deep South really warrant this celebratory edition? Can it be as good as we remember from school? Yes and even better. The familiar tale […]

A TINY BIT MARVELLOUS BY DAWN FRENCH, PENGUIN, $32.95. Families are the current Big Subject in fiction, so I was interested to check out UK comedian Dawn French’s first novel, which arrives with the tag, “Everyone hates the perfect family. So you’ll love the Battles”. Well, I didn’t love them at first. Written in the […]