In Bligh’s Hand by Jennifer Gall, National Library of Australia, $34.95 William Bligh’s water-stained pocket notebook, kept by the sea captain following the mutiny on The Bounty, when he was cast adrift with 18 crew in a 7-metre open boat, is one of our most important historical documents. For years the Bligh family retained the […]

Anne Frank’s Tales From The Secret Annex, Cassell Reference, $27.99 The posthumously published diary of Anne Frank is world famous; 40 million copies published in 70 languages, ranking the inner thoughts of the 13-year-old Jewish chatterbox and would-be journalist, kept in captivity with her family during Nazi occupation of Amsterdam. What this latest collection of […]

The Lightkeeper’s Wife by Karen Viggers, Allen & Unwin, $29.99 Nature can both isolate and enlighten; inspire and depress. Battling the elements can be as much about battling the storms within yourself. In The Lightkeeper’s Wife, there are characters who find nature healing and those who are desperate to escape it. The novel’s eye of […]

The Discovery of Jeanne Baret by Glynis Ridley, Fourth Estate, $29.99 An extraordinary true-life tale of a remarkable “herb woman” from an impoverished peasant family in the Loire Valley region of France, destined to become the first woman to circumnavigate the world — and more importantly to fight eighteenth century moral codes, to blossom as […]

A Guide to Australian Etiquette by Ita Buttrose, Viking, $29.95 “There are those who claim manners no longer matter, but I don’t agree,” writes Ita Buttrose. “Times may have changed but good manners never go out of fashion.” Neither does Ita Buttrose. Many may remember Ita’s original The Guide to Modern Etiquette published in 1985, […]

The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver, Faber & Faber, $23.99 My current literary love affair is with Barbara Kingsolver’s The Lacuna. The story of Diego Rivera and Frida Khalo’s cook, it begins in 1930’s Mexico and ends in post-War America, taking in the hero’s ever-hopeful femme fatale mother, the exiled Trotsky and the ghoulish functionaries of […]

Left Neglected by Lisa Genova, Simon & Schuster, $32.99 Sarah, the main character in Left Neglected (Lisa Genova’s follow up to Still Alice) has a husband she loves, three happy children and is a high powered executive at the top of the corporate food chain. Some would say she has it all, but not the […]

In an exclusive extract from her moving book, Helen Cummings talks about the terror of her abusive marriage and the realisation that she too could have ended up dead had she not left her ex-husband. It started out as an ordinary Newcastle day, one weekend early in March 1984. Something was creating a strange sense […]

22 Britannia Road by Amanda Hodgkinson, Fig Tree, $32.95 There is no shortage of stories inspired by the terrors of World War II and the Nazi occupation of Europe, but Amanda Hodgkinson’s debut novel is so much more than that — beneath the story’s wartime bunker is a complex, intriguing and, in snatched moments, deeply […]

Someone Else’s Son by Sam Hayes, Headline, $32.99 Carrie Kent creates sensational television by manipulating grieving victims of crime, and luring explosive confessions from the perpetrators. She’s rich, famous, and demands perfection in every part of her life, except for her own performance as a mother. It’s not until her own son, Max, is stabbed […]