Notebooks by Betty Churcher, Miegunyah Press, $44.99 She was known as “Betty Blockbuster” when she was the director of the National Gallery of Australia because of her passion for bringing great international art to our shores. And when in 2003 Betty Churcher discovered she was losing her eyesight she set off on a global pilgrimage […]

Hypnotist by Lars Kepler, HarperCollins, $29.99. Riddled with irresistible, nail-biting suspense, this first-class Scandinavian thriller is one of the best I’ve ever read! When a Stockholm family is brutally murdered, surviving son, Josef Ek, remains seriously injured in hospital and in no condition to be questioned by police. Retired hypnotist, Erik Maria Bark, reluctantly agrees […]

The Andren Report by Peter Andren, Scribe, $30. Peter was my first boss at Prime TV in Orange. He nurtured my love of journalism and passion for rural Australia. In 1996, he took his fight to Canberra and created political history by becoming the independent member for Calare. He took on the big parties in […]

Past The Shallows by Favel Parrett, Orion, $26.99 This is an extraordinary book, part psychological family drama, part mystery, part painful rite of passage, all engulfed in the wild isolation and natural richness of the Tasmanian coast. Favel Parrett’s intimate knowledge and understanding of this rugged heel of the world seeps through every pore of […]

Caribou Island by David Vann, Penguin, $24.95. When Vann ‘s first work of fiction, Legend Of A Suicide, was published in 2009, it shot across the literary world like a comet, blazing a tail of prizes and critical acclaim that took pretty much everyone — including the author — by surprise. This novel proves it […]

The Shallows by Nicholas Carr, Atlantic, $32.99. A fascinating book about the way computers and the internet are changing the way we read and absorb information. The basic premise is this: after centuries of linear, literary thinking, book-type thinking, our minds are being rewired into a new kind of mind that operates in short, disjointed, […]

Batavia by Peter FitzSimons, Random House, $49.95. I would rather sail around Antarctica on the Titanic twice than cruise the coast of West Australia on the Batavia. Not only did 74 per cent of women survive the sinking of the Titanic, none of them or their husbands and children were murdered, or compelled to kill, […]

The Shelly Beach Writers’ Group by June Loves, Viking, $29.95. It’s not that her unpleasant husband dumped her that bothers 50-something Gina Laurel, it’s the fact he beat her to it and she hadn’t quite come up with plan b. That’s how former corporate high-flier Gina finds herself house- and dog-sitting at Shelly Beach, with […]

Kill Me Once by Jon Osborne, Century, $32.95. Nathan Stiedowe knows serial killers better than anyone else, except perhaps for FBI Special Agent Dana Whitestone. That’s because Nathan is a serial killer. He’s also a perfectionist, and it’s an unfortunate combination for his victims as he goes about recreating some of the most sickening murders […]

Lasting Damage by Sophie Hannah, Hodder & Stoughton, $32.99. It could be that Connie Bowskill is simply losing her mind. Late one night, while taking a virtual tour on a property website, she sees a woman lying in a pool of blood. Or does she? Seconds later, the gruesome scene is gone. Husband Kit is […]