Beautiful Malice, by Rebecca James, Allen & Unwin, $24.99. Rebecca James has been hailed as the “next J.K. Rowling”, not because her book has anything to do with wizards, but because it was the subject of a frenzied, worldwide bidding war that pushed advances past $1million. Often, things don’t live up to the hype, but […]

Secret Daughter, by Shilpi Somaya Gowda, Morrow , $23.99. A fabulously turbulent family drama set in two great cities, Los Angeles and Mumbai. The two settings are almost characters themselves, the smog, the traffic jams and the teeming, chaotic nature of the East alongside the clipped lawns and somewhat antiseptic, sliced-white-bread nature of the West […]

The Winter of Our Disconnect, by Susan Maushart, Bantam $34.95. The author’s three children didn’t remember a time before email or instant messaging or Google. They didn’t just use the media, they “inhabited” it. And so Maushart embarks upon The Experiment, to live without any of it; pull the plug on the family’s entire armoury […]

Trust, by Kate Veitch, Penguin $32.95. Life can change at any given minute, so watch out. And you may think you know those you love, but you don’t. Not really. Susanna, the central character in this gripping emotional drama, learns this as her life goes into a tailspin. Not even her 20 plus years rock-solid […]

Gran’s Kitchen, by Natalie Oldfield & Dulcie May Booker, Hardie Grant Books, $45. Ninety-five-year-old Dulcie May Booker’s recipes and cooking tips have the wonderful whiff of a bygone era. Dulcie grew up in a rural farming community in Weymouth, Auckland, and started cooking as a child on her family’s coal range, winning prizes for her […]

This Body of Death, by Elizabeth George, Hodder & Stoughton, $32.99. With any long-running series, loss of potency can be a huge issue as characters cease to develop and plots stagnate. But the 16th novel in Elizabeth George’s bestselling series featuring Scotland Yard’s sharp killer catcher DI Lynley is a thrilling exception. The multi-layered stories […]

Solar, by Ian McEwan, Jonathan Cape, $32.95. I’m an McEwan tragic, I admit. So, I thought, if anyone was going to pull off the coup of turning the subject of climate change into a compelling novel, it was surely the master. Rather than lecture, he’s given us a black comedy –a farce, almost – centred […]

Talking About Jane Austen in Baghdad, by Bee Rowlatt and May Witwit, Penguin, $22.95. There’s not a lot of Jane Austen in this true story of an unlikely friendship between a tough-minded Iraqi lecturer on literature and a BBC journalist, but if the title reels in readers, all to the good, because this is a […]

Beatrice and Virgil, by Yann Martel, Text Publishing, $32.95 Beatrice is a donkey, Virgil a howler monkey. They are loyal friends with a taste for philosophy – or at least they were. Now, after an epic journey, they’re no more than stuffed specimens in a taxidermist’s window, where they attract the interest of a successful […]

Reading By Moonlight, by Brenda Walker, Hamish Hamilton, $29.95. One woman’s journey through the books that saved her life. Not changed it, not improved it, but saved it when, out of a bright blue sky, the unimaginable happened and she was diagnosed with breast cancer. Perth-based author Brenda Walker did what she had to do […]