Book

The Life by Malcolm Knox, Allen & Unwin, $32.99. The Life is what a famous world champion surfer can expect to enjoy, a magic combination of international trips, adoring fans and the right to raid the hotel mini-bar. The Life is what poor, parentless Dennis Keith from Coolangatta, Qld, works for, and achieves, and is […]

Lucky Bunnyby Jill Dawson, Sceptre, 29.99. Queenie Dove was what many would call a wicked girl. Childhood thief, liar and truant. Her father is carted off to jail, her mother to a mental hospital, so Queenie relies on wit to survive the Depression and the Blitz, while her body blossoms (and she discovers wired brassieres) […]

The Monsoon Bride by Michelle Aung Thin, Text Publishing, $29.95. This is a first novel, shortlisted for the Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards unpublished manuscript fellowship last year — so why, I kept wondering, does the story seem vaguely familiar? Then I twigged: it’s (Graham) Greene-land. Meeting place of colonial upheaval, moral ambiguity and tropical sex, […]

The Traitor’s Emblem by Juan Gomez-Jurado, Orion, $32.99. They call Gomez-Jurado the Spanish Ken Follett and it’s not difficult to see why. With characters such as a despicable Nazi, a beautiful Jewish girl and a young patriot haunted by a decades-long mystery, The Traitor’s Emblem is vintage Follett. It’s 1919, and in a mansion in […]

The Ridge by Michael Koryta, Arena, $24.99. Just like Deputy Sheriff Kevin Kimble and local journalist Roy Damus, you’ll ever so slowly be convinced that there’s something not quite human about the dramas unfolding at Blade Ridge. There are the unexplained car wrecks, drownings and suicides. And they’re made even stranger by the number of […]

Portrait of A Spy by Daniel Silva, Harper Collins, $32.99. Gabriel Allon could have been acknowledged as the world’s greatest art restorer if that occupation hadn’t merely been a cover for his true talent. This sensitive and loyal man, a lover of Renaissance art, is Israel’s top assassin. The only thing he can’t seem to […]

Cleopatra: A Life by Stacy Schiff, Virgin, $45. The richest woman in the world, queen of an enlightened empire, and the lover of two great Roman leaders, Cleopatra made such an impact in her lifetime that she has never been forgotten. From Plutarch to Shakespeare, through to Elizabeth Taylor, there’s always room for another Cleopatra, […]

Empire Day by Diane Armstrong, HarperCollins, $32.99. “It’s strange,” muses one of Armstrong’s struggling-to-settle Eastern European immigrees to Sydney in Australia’s post-war melting pot. “A huge country with hardly any people, an empty centre and no history.” “That’s exactly why I love it,” responds her husband. “A country without a past, but with a big […]

Surviving Maggie by John Fingleton, HarperCollins, $29.99. Surviving his drunken mother, Maggie, ultimately meant that Harold Fingleton was destroyed, in this despairingly bleak tale of history repeating. What Harold, the author’s father, achieved was to halt the descent into a third generation, protecting his five children to a greater degree from his own alcoholism, although […]

Smut by Alan Bennett, Faber & Faber, $24.95. British master Alan Bennett subtitles his latest Two Unseemly Stories, perfectly summing up these short peeks behind the suburban blind at the unconventional sexual lives of two apparently conventional, middle-aged women. For the widowed Mrs Donaldson, taking in lodgers to help make ends meet, it’s the offer […]