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 […]

THE WHISPERER BY DONATO CARRISI, ABACUS, $32.99. The Whisperer, written by a newly discovered Italian writer, spent a year on Italy’s best-seller lists. Dishevelled criminologist Goran Gavila and young policewoman Mila Vasquez are on the hunt for a child abductor. When six small severed arms are found buried in a forest, the search becomes frantic. […]

THE MEMORY OF LOVE BY AMINATTA FORNA, BLOOMSBURY, $32.99. Set in Sierra Leone, the book interweaves the story of two generations. Professor Elias Cole tells of life on campus in Freetown in the late 1960s, his passion for the beautiful Saffia and his relationship with her charismatic but dangerously politically active husband. Listening to this […]

TIGERLILY’S ORCHIDS BY RUTH RENDELL, HUTCHINSON, $32.95. Ruth Rendell is such a master of mystery that not only is it impossible to guess the identity of the killer, for a long while it’s hard to figure out who is going to die. Luckily, not one of the characters that live in the apartments of London’s […]