Book

No Regrets Edith Piaf by Carolyn Burke, Bloomsbury, $32.99. “There has never been anyone like her; there never will be … ” wrote long-time platonic friend Jean Cocteau of Edith Piaf, “… her Bonaparte-like forehead, her eyes like those of a blind person trying to see … a voice that rises up from deep within, […]

The Girl In The Polka Dot Dress by Beryl Bainbridge, Hachette, $29.99. This is the novel British author Beryl Bainbridge was writing in the last decade of her life and right up to the moment she died in July last year. At her bedside was Brendan King, who had edited many of her 17 novels […]

When My Husband Does The Dishes by Kerri Sackville, Ebury, $32.95. Billed as what marriage looks like after three children and 150 years of togetherness, this memoir will have you giggling all the way to the laundry basket. Kerri Sackville is a 40-something wife, mother and writer. While she loves her husband The Architect, admiring […]

A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, $35. I first read A Suitable Boy when I was 12 years old and it was at this time that I became fascinated with India and its rich culture. Set in post-independence India, it explores the lives of various characters and how they adapt to this […]

Pop Star: Book 3 — Dork Diaries by Rachel Renée Russell, $14.99. Looking for a book for young readers? Fourteen-year-old Nikki Maxwell, self-confessed dork, must navigate the perils of a posh new school and the CPP (cute, cool and popular) group led by cruel queen-bee Mackenzie. Along the way, she finds friends, gains confidence and […]

For your chance to win lunch with the Queen of Crime, Lynda La Plante go to http://www.lunchwithlynda.com.au Q and A with Lynda La Plante She fainted at her first post-mortem, visited a Russian morgue where bodies were strung up naked, and almost tried her hand at prostitution for a night, all in the name of […]

When a Perth family set out on a two-year round-the-world trip on a catamaran, they didn’t count on being shipwrecked on a remote island in the Pacific. Sue Williams recounts their adventures. Lashed by nine-metre waves and brutal winds in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, Jennifer Barrie and her husband, Andrew, fought desperately to […]

Before I Go To Sleep by S.J. Watson, Text Publishing, $32.95. Every morning, Christine wakes in an unfamiliar bedroom next to a man she doesn’t recognise, with no idea how she got there. Alarmed, ashamed — she can see his wife’s clothes — she goes to the mirror and sees a woman 25 years older […]

Caleb’s Crossing by Geraldine Brooks, HarperCollins, $32.99. Geraldine Brooks has a rare gift for unearthing small, overlooked historical facts which she then shapes and spins into great human stories. She’s done it three times already (with Year of Wonders, March, and People of the Book) and excels with this, her fourth. The nugget this time […]

The Butterfly Cabinet by Bernie McGill, Hachette, $29.99. The first chapter sets up the classic elements of fiction. A fortress-like castle on an isolated Irish headland. A proud, wealthy family shattered by their young daughter’s death. An old retainer who finds the black-bound diary her Mistress wrote in prison and decides, finally, she must tell […]