Book

Fifty Animals that Changed the Course of History, by Eric Chaline, Crows Nest, $35 The plus of this beautifully-packaged book on the impact of animals on human history is that it will help you blitz your next trivia night and blind-side your friends; the minus, it could turn you into a crashing bore, arming you […]

Review by Jennifer Byrn Boomerang: The Meltdown Tour, by Michael Lewis, Allen Lane; $39.95 Michael Lewis is the master of making financial journalism accessible. And — perhaps his best trick — funny as well. This tragi-comic romp through European’s current economic disaster is a worthy successor to past hits such as Liar’s Poker and Moneyball, […]

The Marriage Plot, by Jeffrey Eugenides, Fourth Estate $29.95 The marriage plot was the staple of the great English novels of the 19th century so what, you might wonder, is the thoroughly modern author of the Pulitzer prize-winning Middlesex doing re-tilling this field? Subverting it, is the answer. Setting the ideals of happy-ever-after love against […]

Shadow of the Titanic by Andrew Wilson, Simon & Schuster UK, $40 For 705 passengers on the Titanic the sinking wasn’t the end of the story but the beginning of their new lives as “survivors”. Most had suffered the loss of husbands or children, some had to answer for their actions that night, and others […]

Believing the Lie by Elizabeth George, H&S Fiction, $32.99 He’s the 8th Earl of Asherton, but he’s better known as TV sleuth Inspector Lynley. Literature’s most aristocratic investigator is back and he’s undercover in beautiful Cumbria, quietly looking into the supposed accidental death of a member of a wealthy local family. Ian Cresswell has left […]

I’ve Got Your Number by Sophie Kinsella, Random House, $32.95 She’s not a shopaholic but Poppy Wyatt is the kind of charming but bumbling heroine we’ve come to expect from Sophie Kinsella. Somehow Poppy ends up losing an engagement ring and gaining a mobile phone, giving her access to every email, appointment and text message […]

Miles off Course by Sulari Gentill, Pantera Press, $29.99 Communists, facists, sly-groggers, thieves, and older brother Wilfred make 1933 a year to remember for Australian gentleman-painter Rowland Sinclair. Trouble follows him from the manicured croquet lawns of the Hydro Majestic up to the wild High Country and all the way to the front door of […]

Jubilee by Shelley Harris, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, $29.99 Smart and insightful, familiar yet uncomfortable, watertight and believable, Shelley Harris’ debut novel ticks all the boxes for a compelling, original and compact read. With a quirky premise of a newspaper photograph snapped at an English street party to celebrate the Queen’s silver jubilee in 1977, Harris […]

Vincent Van Gogh: The Life by Steven Haifeh and Gregory White Smith, Profile Books , $59.99 Destined for posthumous priceless collectors’ value, it is still hard to conceive that when Vincent Van Gogh died at just 37, his star had yet to ascend. And if Pulitzer prize-winning Jason Pollock biographers Naifeh and Smith’s hypothetical reconstruction […]

Tideline by Penny Hancock, Simon & Schuster UK, $29.99 This chilling psychological thriller navigates through its undercurrent of a 43-year-old woman’s obsession and kidnap of a fifteen year-old-boy, to sway the reader into a dangerous comfort zone. “These boy-men did not exist quite like this when I was young… taller, broader, softer, gentler,” muses voice […]