APE HOUSE, BY SARA GRUEN, ALLEN & UNWIN, $32.99. I so loved Gruen’s last book, Water For Elephants, that I’ve been waiting for this one. And it starts with a bang – a fire-bomb, actually, thrown by animal activists trying to “liberate” a family of Bonobo apes from a research facility, where they are being […]

THE SLAP, BY CHRISTOS TSIOLKAS, ALLEN & UNWIN, $32.95. Melbourne’s inner suburbs and family and friends gather for a barbecue. A child acts brattishly. One of the guests (not his parents) delivers the boy a stinging slap – and sets off a chain of events both extraordinary and familiar, which is the key to this […]

Solo, BY VICKI MCAULEY, MACMILLAN AUSTRALIA, $34.99. When Andrew McAuley set out to cross the Tasman Sea in a kayak, his wife, Vicki, his family and even Andrew himself had grave doubts about the wisdom of the mission. Minutes after he farewelled his wife and young son, he worried about ever seeing them again and […]

Serenade For A Small Family, BY INGRID LAGUNA, ALLEN & UNWIN, $24.99. It’s hard to write this review without thinking of the feelings of the author. After all, Laguna has totally bared her soul on love, babies and her winding road to happiness. And though the first chapters sing with the naïve joy of a […]

A Photographic Portrait: Queen Elizabeth II, BY PHILIP ZIEGLER, THAMES & HUDSON, $90. Queen Elizabeth has been photographed since the day she was born and, largely, by the best photographers. This book pulls together those official portraits we know, with a clutch of revealing, relaxed shots and rarely seen documentary photographs, which offer an insight […]

Trick Of The Dark, BY VAL MCDERMID, LITTLE BROWN, $32.99. Val McDermid is a master of the complex crime thriller and her latest combines flawless, suspense-filled storytelling with a sharp contemporary eye on human behaviour and relationships, which culminate in possibly her most menacing, emotional whodunnit yet. Oxford University in England (where Scottish journalist and […]

BY NIGHTFALL, BY MICHAEL CUNNINGHAM, FOURTH ESTATE, $27.99. Manhattan art dealer Peter Harris is struggling with the kind of concerns only the rich can afford to contemplate at length. Am I happy? What is art? What is beauty? Pulitzer Prize-winning author (for The Hours), Michael Cunningham, writes so exquisitely it’s almost possible to forgive his […]

MINI SHOPAHOLIC, SOPHIE KINSELLA, BANTAM PRESS, $32.95. Beguiling Becky Bloomwood Brandon has many fans. She’s shopped her way through five successful books and her sixth is more of the same kind-hearted blundering and insatiable purchasing. Becky now has a two-year-old daughter, Minnie, in tow and, worryingly, she’s almost like her shopaholic mother. Becky is struggling […]

AT HOME WITH THE TEMPLETONS, BY MONICA MCINERNEY, MICHAEL JOSEPH, $32.95. The Templetons are a feckless, charming English family of seven and they’ve just moved into a stately home in rural Australia. They seem to have it all, especially in the eyes of neighbour Nina Donovan, a lonely young widow with a robust son, Tom. […]

BLUE HEAVEN, BY C.J. BOX, ALLEN & UNWIN, $22.99. If you like Clint Eastwood movies, you will love Blue Heaven. It’s a story that’s just waiting to star and be directed by the movie icon. Twelve-year-old Annie and her brother, William, sick of their mother’s boyfriend, take off to go fishing in the woods. There, […]