Book

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 […]

French Children Don’t Throw Food by Pamela Druckerman, Random House, $29.95. The idea of Paris is enough to make those of us who don’t live there go weak at the knees — the Renaissance lofty garrets filled with starving artists, the oh-so-chic slender women who seem to get sexier as they age, the sophisticated bars […]

After the Darkness by Honey Brown, Viking, $29.95 There’s a sense of foreboding craftily interwoven with the darkness of sexual desire running right from the first to the last sentence in this achingly powerful suspense thriller. Although it takes a while to realise how every tiny observation and throwaway comment forms a tile in the […]

How to be a Man , by Glenn O’Brien, Hardie Grant, $29.95 A handsome volume to encourage gentlemanly behaviour — the ideal gift for the modern man seeking advice on hair (“nothing perfectly symmetrical”), clothes (“real men wear good socks”) and how to deliver a stinging insult (“be precise and specific; anyone can launch a […]

The Flight Attendant’s Shoe by Prudence Black, New South, $49.95 On a chilly international flight the other day, I asked the harried attendant for a blanket. “No blankets on this plane”, she said, before scuttling off with my $3 for a bottle of water. Ah, the glamour. If it’s tough on passengers, think what it […]

How I Became A Famous Novelist, By Steve Hely, Black Inc, $19.95 Pete Tarslaw is a washed-up but well-read loser who works out that the easiest way to make a fortune (plus impress his old girlfriend) is to write a best-selling novel. He analyses what works, draws up a list of rules (note to self: […]

George Harrison: Living in the Material World by Olivia Harrison published by Abrams $49.95 He was the quiet Beatle. The spiritual Beatle. Not as charismatic as the pretty ones, John and Paul, and on stage he would sometimes stare out at the screaming girls and look as though he would rather be elsewhere. George Harrison’s […]

Women’s Stuff by Kaz Cooke, Viking; $59.95 Not so much a book as a 770-page compendium of womanhood, jam-packed with sensible advice on everything from food to moods to workplace bullies to money management (including a caution against sugar daddies). There’s almost no condition, disorder or problem it doesn’t address, which gets a bit overwhelming […]

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy by John Le Carre, Sceptre (Hachette), $19.99 One of the world’s most iconic spy thrillers has stood the test of time. First published in 1974, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is back on shelves to coincide with the release of the film adaptation. George Smiley is a sadder man than his name […]

Sarah Thornhill by Kate Grenville, Text Publishing, $39.95 The daughter of convicts, Sarah Thornhill has grown up a comparatively wealthy young woman on the banks of the Hawkesbury River in the Colony of New South Wales. But a mysterious missing brother, the strange behaviour of her father, and a thwarted love affair will lead her […]

Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? By Jeanette Winterson, Random House. $29.99 At six weeks old, the baby who would become the successful novelist Jeanette Winterson was given up for adoption. And so started a life story that would inspire the bestselling book and television series Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit. Her […]

Lady Almina and the Story of the Real Downton Abbey by Lady Fiona Carnarvon, Hodder & Stoughton, $32.99 The perfect gift for lovers of the television series Downton Abbey, a show filmed at magnificent Highclere Castle, home of Lady Almina, Countess of Carnarvon, from 1895 until 1923. The much loved but illegitimate daughter of a […]

Shannon Bennett’s France: A Personal Guide to Fine Dining in Regional France by Shannon Bennett and friends, Miegunyah Press, $44.99 This pretty little hardback is more than a guide for those fabulous few who summer in the South of France. It’s a mouth-watering armchair holiday in itself, complete with gorgeous recipes, expert tips on wine […]

Powderfinger Footprints, by Powderfinger with Deno Scatena, Hachette, $45 For twenty years Australian band Powderfinger topped music charts and rocked packed venues. For most of that time they let their music do the talking. But now they’ve teamed up with author Dino Scatena to tell the story of the band, from its beginnings at Brisbane […]

11.22.63 by Stephen King, Hodder & Stoughton$32.99 Perhaps only seasoned storyteller Stephen King could accomplish changing the course of history, in his vast time-travelling debut masterpiece 11.22.63 — the date of John F. Kennedy’s assassination — while effortlessly weaving political and social detail, human behavioural observation and abundant humour. “I knew where I was… the […]

Australia Story of A Cricket Country edited by Christian Ryan, Hardie Grant $89.95 Melbourne journalist Christian Ryan has created the ultimate cricket book in this incredible tome which is certain to thrill any cricket fan. It’s not just another almanac, this is an homage to the Australian game with eulogies and deep thinking discussions from […]

What Bird Is That? By Neville W Cayley, Australia’s Heritage Publishing, $69.95 First published in 1931, What Bird Is That? became a standard for budding Australian bird watchers. Author Neville Cayley’s impetus was to encourage and inspire people to appreciate and recognise our natural bird life and what started as his “little bird book” fast […]

The Freudian Slip by Marion Von Adlerstein, Hachette, $32.99 It’s being pitched as Australia’s answer to Mad Men in novel form and while Marion Von Adlerstein’s debut novel is not nearly as multi-layered as the hit US TV show about the advertising industry in the 50s and 60s, it oozes the aura of the era […]

Never Knowing by Chevy Stevens, Allen & Unwin, $23.99 Sara has never felt she really fitted in with her adoptive family. It’s not that she’s not loved or nurtured, just that she’s different and deep down believes she could never really match up to her parents’ birth children — her two sisters. So in the […]

The Thread by Victoria Hislop, Headline, $29.99. There’s a lot of history in The Thread, but Victoria Hislop’s lightness of touch and warm lyrical style make it a lesson you genuinely relish. This is the author’s third novel set in Greece and here, in the multicultural city of Thessaloniki, she delves much deeper into the […]

Di Morrissey has 19 best-selling books under her belt and another one on shelves now — but despite her success she still feels nervous about every new release. Here, Di discusses her fear of failure, her cadetship at The Weekly and why she once wished she wrote sex books instead of novels. AWW: Did you […]

Kinglake-350 by Adrian Hyland, Text Publishing, $32.95. This is an important book, the first to tackle the horror of Black Saturday, February 7, 2009, when the small settlements around Kinglake in Victoria were hit by the worst bushfires in the nation’s recorded history. We all remember the story but here are the details, writ large […]

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 […]

The Hare With Amber Eyes by Edmund de Waal, Vintage $24.95. The book that sold itself is how I think of Hare. A word-of-mouth sensation, published last year but still selling strongly and dazzling readers wherever it goes. It’s a true but scarcely grabby plot: the author, a noted ceramicist, inherits his great uncle Iggy’s […]

All that I Am by Anna Funder, Hamish Hamilton, $32.95. Anna Funder’s long-awaited first novel has one of the great opening lines: When Hitler came to power I was in the bath. The place, Berlin; the year, 1933, and this homely image is a reminder of how mighty historical events can twist and destroy individual […]

Animal People by Charlotte Wood, Allen & Unwin, $29.99. Stephen is having a bad day. Another argument with his mum, a run-in with the neighbour’s dog, he skittles a pedestrian, then his bus seems to have a bomb on board. All this while tossing up which of the 50 ways he’ll choose to leave his […]

Far To Go By Alison Pick, Headline Fiction, $29.99 Even in retrospect, it’s almost impossible to comprehend evil on such a massive scale as Hitler’s Nazi Party. That inability explains a lot about why Jewish families such as Alison Pick’s fictional Bauers didn’t try to flee until it was much too late. Secular and wealthy, […]

Bertie Plays the BluesBy Alexander McCall Smith, NewSouthBooks, $29.95 If Precious Ramotswe of the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency is the Alexander McCall Smith character I most admire, six-year-old Bertie Pollack is the one I most want to help. The latest of McCall Smith’s popular Scotland Street novels finally gives us a sliver of hope […]

The Cut By George Pelecanos, Orion, $32.99 Stephen King and Barack Obama are just two of George Pelecanos’ legion of fans. If you haven’t read him before, you might still know his work from the cult television hit The Wire — a gritty, understated, crime drama set in the gang-ridden streets of Baltimore. The Cut […]

The Sense Of An Ending By Julian Barnes, Random House, $29.95. Julian Barnes’ books seem to get shorter as he ages, but that doesn’t mean they’re any less engrossing. This one, more of a novella than a full-blown novel, has been long-listed for the Booker Prize and finds the author back in a contemplative mood. […]

The Doll: Short StoriesBy Daphne Du Maurier, Virago, $24.99. Published posthumously, these 13 forgotten short stories — penned by famed Jamaica Inn author Daphne Du Maurier, most of them when she was in her 20s — make for riveting, if somewhat shocking reading. The eponymousThe Dollis the scene-stealer: a macabre tension-filled tale of a man […]

You’ll Be Sorry When I’m Dead by Marieke Hardy, Allen & Unwin, $29.99. A threesome with a prostitute is a provocative way to open this brilliant new novel by Melbourne writer Marieke Hardy. Yet it is the chapters on her mundane life experiences that sparkle. Hardy quickly tires of prostitutes and dumps her boyfriend. From […]

The Briny CafeBy Susan Duncan, Bantam Australia, $32.95. They say the best fiction writers draw from experience. So when high-flying magazine editor Susan Duncan left the hustle of Sydney to live in a house on Pittwater — accessible only by boat and built for Dorothea Mackellar in 1925 – it’s not much of a stretch […]

Tasting India By Christine Manfield, Lantern, $89.95. Sydney chef and restaurateur Christine Manfield has a special place in her heart for India. “On each and every visit, I surrender myself to the procession of life before me, as India begins to pulsate through my veins,” she says. This exceptional, lavish book is a visual and […]

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 […]

Matilda Is Missing by Caroline Overington, Bantam Australia, $32.95. It sounds like it could be dry and grueling content — a novel about a custody fight for a little girl from a family torn apart by divorce. Yet Matilda Is Missing is so much more than that. It is a gripping and emotional tale of […]

Lola’s Secret by Monica McInerny, Penguin, $29.95. Lola Quinlan’s 12-year-old great grand-daughter approvingly likens her to Lady Gaga; kitted out with panache in pink tights and leopard-print dress. Family saga author Monica McInerney’s 84-year-old creation also loves the internet and slips in smiley emoticons on emails like they are going out of fashion. Lola’s secret […]

What The Family Needed by Steven Amsterdam, Sleepers Publishing, $24.95. There’s something fresh and engaging about Steven Amsterdam’s writing — a lightness of touch with some of life’s more troubling human scenarios sprinkled with a frisson of other worldliness; in this instance the idea that we may all have a special power that could reveal […]

Subjected to incalculable child abuse, Kim Noble’s young mind shattered into multiple personalities when she was just three years old. In an exclusive extract from her autobiography, this extraordinarily brave woman explains how she survived, became a mother and what it feels like to live a life literally in pieces. Kim Noble was born on […]

The Hypnotist’s Love Story, by Liane Moriarty, Macmillan Australia, $32.99. Australian author Liane Moriarty is a regular choice for our Great Read and with The Hypnotist’s Love Story she’s done it again. This is a gripping romance with a thriller edge that probes the rather in-vogue subject of stalking in an intriguing way. The tale […]

He said the mysterious death of his two wives was just bad luck, but “evil husband” Tom Keir was finally brought to justice after 15 years, thanks to a tireless police officer and devoted mum. Here, they tell their story to Jordan Baker. She was marrying the man she loved, the man who had been […]

In Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness Alexandra Fuller braids a multilayered narrative around the perfectly lit, Happy Valley-era Africa of her mother’s childhood; the boiled cabbage grimness of her father’s English childhood; and the darker, civil war- torn Africa of her own childhood. At its heart, this is the story of Fuller’s mother, […]

The Psychopath Test by Jon Ronson, Picador, $32.99. Remember Al “Chainsaw” Dunlap? The Packer family’s corporate cost-cutter of the early ’90s? Well, he’s exhibit A in Jon Ronson’s new investigation into the madness industry — specifically, whether many leading CEOs and politicians are in fact diagnosable psychopaths. Lord knows how Ronson persuaded him but he […]

Amexica: War Along The Borderline by Ed Vulliamy, Random House, $35. A tough, gritty — and most disturbingly, true — report from the Mexican-US border, where drug cartels wage war on each other, and anyone gets in their way. More than 28,000 have been killed since the official war on drugs was declared five years […]

Gilgamesh by Joan London, Random House, $23.95. This is an oldie-but-goody, recommended with such enthusiasm by a fellow reader I felt I had to give it a go — and so enjoyed the experience I am now passing it on. Drawing on the epic of Gilgamesh, the world’s oldest known poem, it is both a […]

A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan, Corsair, $24.95. “Time’s a goon, right? You gonna let that goon push you around?” As if anyone can stop the clock. This exciting novel, winner of this year’s Pulitzer Prize for fiction, takes us on a wild ride across 40 years in the lives and loves, […]

Until Thy Wrath Be Past by Asa Larsson, Quercus, $32.99 The first chapter of Until Thy Wrath Be Past is so shockingly powerful, beautiful and terrifying, I forgot to breathe. It sat on the bedside table as I took a few deep inhalations before I could continue, but once picked up again it was only […]

A Decline in Prophets by Sulari Gentill, Pantera Press, $29.99. Travel back in time to 1932 and book yourself a first-class suite on the luxurious passenger liner RMS Aquitania, but take care, for among your fellow well-heeled passengers is an elegant ruthless killer. Also travelling the seas in style is wealthy young Australian pastoralist and […]

The Girl From Baghdad by Michelle Nouri, William Heinemann Australia, $29.95. Born to a wealthy Iraqi father and a beautiful Czech mother, Michelle Nouri experienced the best and worst of Saddam Hussein’s Baghdad and Communist Eastern Europe. From her spoiled childhood as her father’s princess to her grotty Prague flat, Michelle’s true life story has […]

The Book of Lies by Mary Horlock, Text Publishing, $32.95. Like many 15-year-old girls, Catherine Rozier has a flare for the dramatic and a loose association with the truth, so did she really, as she claims, kill her best friend? It’s 1985 and Catherine lives on the island of Guernsey, a place that suffered terribly […]

The Stranger’s Child by Alan Hollinghurst, Picador, $32.99. Seven years after British author Alan Hollinghurst won the Booker Prize, his follow-up novel displays much of that playful quality of writing and engrossing acuteness of characterisation, but in a new world which spans several decades. This well-made tale starts just before the World War I and […]

Pictures Of You by Caroline Leavitt, Allen & Unwin, $27.99. There’s something rather satisfying about a book you can’t instantly classify, that can’t be neatly filed away as a romance, a mystery or an emotional drama. That is the very joy you’ll find in Pictures Of You, which magically combines all three. The tipping point […]

A Field Full of Butterflies: Memories of a Romany Childhood by Rosemary Penfold, Orion, $22.99. When Rosemary Penfold’s mother left her “gadje” (non-roaming) life to marry a Romany, who could not read or write, she never looked back. “We were her life,” writes UK-born gypsy Rosemary, now 73, who along with her three brothers, was […]

Boat People: Personal Stories From The Vietnamese Exodus 1975-1996 edited By Carina Hoang, Freemantle Press, $45. In 1979, Carina Hoang, then 16, fled her Vietnamese homeland with her younger brother and sister in a 25-metre wooden boat crammed with 373 others. They were part of the greatest mass exodus in human history as 1.5 million […]

IMPROby Keith Johnstone, Bloomsbury Publishing, $29.95 The improvisation training I did in my 20s has made me the performer I am today. It taught me to be open, to listen, to act with spontaneity. The book that literally changed my life in this domain was, and still is,IMPROby Keith Johnstone. He’s a teacher with great […]

The Vault by Ruth Rendell, Random House, $32.95. Ruth Rendell’s latest outing sees the return of her much-loved detective Inspector Wexford. Now retired, Wexford is enjoying the quiet life with his wife and his books, until a chance meeting with an old acquaintance on a London street sees him drawn into a case involving the […]

The Language Of Flowers, by Vanessa Diffenbaugh, Picador Australia, $32.99. This debut novel by an American foster mum and art teacher sparked a bidding war last year, with Picador winning the coveted title. It’s now set to be published in more than 30 countries, with a heavy-handed drum roll that is in danger of putting […]

When young Arwa imagined the man she would spend her life with, a rugby league player was not top of her thoughts, she tells Michael Sheather. Then she met Hazem. Love sometimes appears in the most unexpected places. For Arwa El Masri, wife of rugby league star Hazem El Masri, it arrived with a jolt […]

Elizabethby J. Randy Taraborrelli, Pan Macmillan, $24.95. The obituary writers were probably right when they claimed Elizabeth Taylor was the last Hollywood icon, but she was also the first celebrity to live every moment of her life publicly. Operations, romances, tragedies, break-ups, rehab, never before had a star shared everything with the world. Yet Taraborrelli […]

Life can change in a heartbeat Four minutes and eight seconds. That’s how long my husband, Michael Dunhill, was dead. Four minutes and eight seconds. That’s how long it took for my husband to become a complete stranger to me. To read the first chapter of Skipping a Beat click here. Win our Book of […]

On Canaan’s Side, Faber and Faber, $29.99. Sebastian Barry woos with words. His lyrical prose carries you off on a warm and engrossing journey conjuring incredibly special characters, gently etched at first then skilfully coloured in as the story deepens. On Canaan’s Side is told through narrator 89-year-old Lilly Bere, who as the novel opens […]

Bossypants by Tina Fey, Sphere, $32.99. Before she perfected her Sarah Palin impersonation, Tina created and played the sparky, sharp-tongued Liz Lemon on TV’s 30 Rock. Before that, she was first female head writer in the legendary boys’ club of Saturday Night Live. Now she’s queen of American comedy and this memoir shows you why […]

The Last Werewolf by Glen Duncan, Text, $32.95. You think I’m joking? A book on werewolves? Oh, but such an elegant, tongue-in-hairy-cheek take on the genre it makes you wonder why anyone wastes their time on those dreary and insipid vamps, eternal enemies of the lycanthrope tribe. Our hero (so to speak) is Jake Marlowe, […]

The Roving Party by Rohan Wilson, Allen & Unwin, $27.99. The Vogel literary award has been recognising and rewarding young writers for 30 years now, and this year’s winner is an absolute stand-out. Yes, it is dark and it tells a brutal story of a party of “rovers” (read thugs and killers) roaming the harsh […]

Friends Like These by Wendy Harmer, Allen & Unwin, $32.99. Write what you know, is the standard advice to authors. And as a top-rating and high-earning radio presenter, Wendy Harmer spent long enough on Sydney’s so-called A-list to know it inside out. Now she’s “ratting on it”, as she puts it, and a highly amusing […]

Exposed by Liza Marklund, Bantam Press, $32.95. Annika Bengtzon is a young journalist eager to leave her dead-end relationship and quiet hometown and earn a full-time job on Stockholm’s tabloid Evening Post. Josefin Liljeberg also wants to be a reporter, but she’s a stripper in a seedy club owned by her violent boyfriend and, before […]

An Uncertain Place by Fred Vargas, Harvill/Secker, $32.95. Commissaire Adamsberg, chief of Paris’ Serious Crimes Squad, will live to rue the day he discovers 17 severed feet outside London’s Highgate Cemetery. Like all good fictional detectives, he’s a bit of a loner, quietly rebellious and loved by all his (mostly) loyal officers. The feet will […]

The Voyagers by Mardi McConnochie, Viking, $29.95. Shore leave, Sydney, 1943, and quietly determined US sailor Stead heads straight for the home of the girl he met and fell in love with during three magical days in 1938. Back then, Marina was a sheltered girl on the verge of a career as a world-famous pianist. […]

Madeleineby Kate McCann, Bantam Press, $35. She loved Harry Potter,Dr Whoand her favourite toy Cuddle Cat, and when four-year-old Madeleine McCann was abducted on Thursday, May 3, 2007, in Portugal, the whole world knew who she was. Ever since that day, her British doctor parents Kate and Gerry have fought to find her and clear […]

The Chicken Chronicles: A Memoir by Alice Walker, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, $35. Hatched as a blog and raised by her agent into a book, Alice Walker’s (of Pulitzer Prize-winning The Color Purple fame) The Chicken Chronicles, is both a practical day-in-the-yard guide to caring for her “girls” — bullied Gertrude Stein, rebellious Hortensia and sensuous […]

Never A Dull Moment by Sarah Baker, Murdoch Books, $39.99. Do you remember the time when TVs, iPads, Facebook, Gameboys and all that jazz weren’t the only way to while away an evening? In fact, back in those days, families and friends would come together to play games and have fun. Take a journey back […]

The Colour Of Tea by Hannah Tunnicliffe, Pan Macmillan, $32.99. Grace’s life is unravelling. She feels lost in eclectic, buzzing Macau, where her husband Pete is managing the opening of a casino. Devastated that her dream to have children is cut short, her marriage becomes strained and their sadness remains unsaid, causing them to drift […]

Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee, Random House Australia, $24.95. My husband recommended this to me after he had read it when we were away travelling two years ago. It shattered me! The central character makes a massive error in judgement and is literally disgraced and cast out of his place of work, and goes away to […]

To Be Sung Underwater by Tom McNeal, Little, Brown, $29.99. Judith Whitman believes in the sort of love that “picks you up in Akron, Ohio, and sets you down in Rio de Janeiro”. Yet after finding just that kind of love as a teenager, she ended up marrying someone else instead. Now in her 40s, […]

He is best known as a comedian, but now Anh Do has cemented his place in Australia’s literary scene, taking out the top prize at the Australian Book Industry Awards. Do’s novel The Happiest Refugee was named book of the year at Monday night’s award ceremony in Melbourne. The book explores his family’s journey to […]

Florence Broadhurst: Her Secret & Extraordinary Lives by Helen O’Neill, Hardie Grant, $69.95. Helen O’Neill’s sumptuous coffee table book on Australia’s home design queen Florence Broadhurst first came out in 2006 and this new deluxe edition is bigger with much more of a design focus. Aficionados will notice more of Broadhurst’s signature prints and patterns […]

Blue Monday by Nicci French, Michael Joseph, $29.99. Nicci French is actually the pseudonym of UK crime writing husband and wife duo Nicci Gerrard and Sean French, and while the split personality of their voice is not immediately apparent, the duo’s books certainly benefit from the carefully crafted pace changes and character analyses that you […]

The Tiger’s Wife by Téa Obreht, Orion, $29.99. There are two tigers in this book. One is a semi-mythical creature that lives in the jungles surrounding the old Balkan village of Galina, an object of superstition, fear and dangerous gossip. It features in many of the stories told to a young doctor, Natalia, by her […]