Book

Cain by José Saramago, Harvill Secker, $29.95. You know that Woody Allen film Zelig, about a man who inexplicably bobs up in the background at key moments of history? Well, that’s what Cain — the murderous brother of Abel in the Bible — does in this last satirical novel by Nobel laureate Jose Saramago. And […]

The Quarry by Johan Theorin, Doubleday, $32.95. The Swedish crime wave rolls on. The interesting thing is how good these books are; turns out there was a talented crowd banked up behind Stieg Larsson. And within the genre is emerging a sub-genre centred on remote islands; the winter locks them off, bad things happen there. […]

This is Di Morrissey’s 20th book, arriving 20 years after she published her first — though she’ll be selling a lot more copies, having spent those years building a strong and supportive base of readers. As the title suggests, The Opal Desert is set in and around Australia’s remote opal fields, in a small imaginary […]

Snowdrops by A.D. Miller, Atlantic, $19.99. In Moscow, a snowdrop is not a flower but a slang term for a corpse which “blooms” during spring when the snow melts and exposes the body beneath. A useful way to conceal a murder … This literary thriller starts as thirtysomething expatriate lawyer Nick Platt discovers his own […]

Rules of Civility by Amor Towles, Sceptre, $29.99. Take The Great Gatsby, throw in a little Breakfast At Tiffany’s, and mix it up with a whole lot of attitude in a cocktail shaker and you’ve got Rules of Civility, a sophisticated coming of age story set in 1938 Manhattan. Katey Kontent is a typist in […]

I Am Half Sick of Shadows by Alan Bradley, Orion, $32.99. Flavia de Luce may be a delightful innocent, but she’s well acquainted with murder and easy in its company. In her well-stocked chemistry laboratory in a wing of her crumbling family estate, neglected Flavia explores the fascinating world of poisons, while her older sisters […]

The Year After by Martin Davies, Hodder &Stoughton, $32.99. It’s 1919 and, still grimy with Flanders dust, Captain Tom Abbott returns to a strangely muted London. Before the war, he’d vowed never to return to Devon and rose-scented Hannesford Court, the home of the charming Stansbury family. Yet a yearning for music, noise and bustle […]

The Affair by Lee Child, Bantam Press, $32.95. Jack Reacher fans are wildly possessive of him and there’s a guerrilla reader movement against casting Tom Cruise in the upcoming Reacher film. Their passion prompted me to read my first Reacher novel, the 16th in the best-selling series. I got lucky with the chronology. The Affair […]

Tiger Men by Judy Nunn, Random House, $32.95. Spanning 65 years of Tasmanian history from 1853 to 1918, actor and best-selling author Judy Nunn follows the fortunes of three disparate yet inexorably linked families in the sweeping saga Tiger Men. Where the term used to describe the bounty hunters who hunted the Tasmanian tiger into […]

Adventures in Correspondentland by Nick Bryant, Random House, $32.95. For five years, until he hung up his headphones last month, Nick Bryant was the BBC’s man in Australia. For 11 years prior to his posting Down Under, Bryant roamed the globe as a foreign correspondent. His reflections on this time as a microphone-wielding witness to […]