New Books / Reviews
Reviews of New Books Winter 2026
Out of money and with little to show for his art school education, John-Calum Macleod takes the ferry home to the island of Harris to find that little has changed except for him. In the windswept croft where he grew up, Cal resumes his old life, stuck between the two poles of his childhood: his father John, a sheep farmer, weaver, and pillar of their local Presbyterian church, and his Glaswegian grandmother Ella, who has kept a faltering peace with her son-in-law for decades.
Cal wonders if any lonely men might be found on the barren hillsides of home, John is dismayed by his son’s long hair and how he seems unwilling to be Saved. As lambing season turns to shearing season, everything is poised to change as the threads holding together the fragile community become increasingly entangled.
Detective Sergeant Stilwell knows that his posting on Catalina Island is no paradise, but to most residents, it seems blissfully separated, by twenty-two miles of ocean, from the troubles of Los Angeles County.
But now a threat is coming to his safe haven. Acting on a tip from a confidential informant, Stilwell and his deputies watch a plane land in the middle of the night at the Airport in the Sky, a remote airstrip in the mountains. A duffel bag of drugs is dropped and the deputies move in, but things quickly go sideways. While Stilwell chases the fleeing pickup man into the mountainside brush, shots are fired on the runway and the plane flies off.
One minute Lou is happily employed, with a perfect flat. The next, her home and job have gone. Suddenly she has to start over.
The last thing Lou wants is to move to a tiny Cotswolds village. She certainly doesn’t intend to work for curmudgeonly eighty-year-old Edgar Allsopp. But Edgar is about to make her the kind of promise nobody could ignore. In return, she secretly vows to help him fall in love with life again.
Foxwell is also home to Remy, whose charm and charisma are proving hard to ignore. But Lou hasn’t recovered from the last time she fell for a charmer. She needs a distraction and luckily one’s about to turn up. Secrets never stay hidden for long in Foxwell, nor are promises always kept. And no one could guess what lies ahead.
In twelve luminous stories set across three centuries, The History of Sound examines the unexpected ways the past returns to us and how love and loss are entwined and transformed over generations.
In Ben Shattuck’s ingenious collection, each story has a companion story, which contains a revelation about the previous, paired story. Mysteries and murders are revealed, history is refracted, and deep emotional connections are woven through characters and families.
Madhur Jaffrey grew up in a large family compound where her grandfather often presided over dinners at which forty or more members of his extended family would savour together the wonderfully flavourful dishes that were forever imprinted on Madhur’s palate.
Climbing mango trees in the orchard, armed with a mixture of salt, pepper, ground chillies, and roasted cumin; picnicking in the Himalayan foothills on meatballs stuffed with raisins and mint and tucked into freshly fried “poori”s; sampling the heady flavours in the lunch boxes of Muslim friends; sneaking tastes of exotic street fare, these are the food memories Madhur Jaffrey draws on as a way of telling her story.
Things have never been easy for Oscar, a sweet but disastrously overweight, lovesick Dominican ghetto nerd. From his home in New Jersey, where he lives with his old-world mother and rebellious sister, Oscar dreams of becoming the Dominican J. R. R. Tolkien and, most of all, of finding love.
But he may never get what he wants, thanks to the Fukœ, the curse that has haunted the Oscar’s family for generations, dooming them to prison, torture, tragic accidents, and, above all, ill-starred love. Oscar, still waiting for his first kiss, is just its most recent victim.
Sasha turns her back on her regal heritage, forsakes the life she could have as the princess in a rich kingdom, and trains instead to be a powerful warrior, fighting for the good of the people her father commands.
Sasha is a princess, the like of which the highland country of Lenayin has never seen before. Spurning her royal heritage to be raised by the great warrior, Kessligh, her exquisite swordplay astonishes all who witness it. But Sasha is still young, untested in battle and often led by her rash temper. In the complex world of Lenayin loyalties, her defiant wilfulness is attracting the wrong kind of attention.
During the heyday of the USSR, Russian scientists desperate to create a weapon that no sophisticated defence system could stop turned to one of the oldest killers of all, smallpox. Modifying it to evade the human immune system, they created something so destructive that even they realized that it could never be used. Codenamed HUNTER, the disease was left to rot in an obscure lab in the heart of Russia as the Soviet state collapsed around it.
But now a disgruntled former Russian scientist has defected to a shadowy group of terrorists and has taken passage to the Middle East in a rusty freighter full of so-called freedom fighters. In his case is stored one test tube of this new plague. In the midst of the worst storm in the history of the Mediterranean, only two men can stop him. Commander William Steadman of the attack boat USS Portland and Captain Rem Reonov of the Russian Akula class submarine Gepard hold the fate of the world in their hands, if only their superiors can recognize that they’re on the same side. What no one knows, least of all the hapless terrorists on the freighter, is that HUNTER is already free on the boat and that the end of the world is already upon them.
Born in the town of Sighet, Transylvania, Elie Wiesel was a teenager when he and his family were taken from their home in 1944 to Auschwitz concentration camp, and then to Buchenwald.
Night is the terrifying record of Elie Wiesel’s memories of the death of his family, the death of his own innocence, and his despair as a deeply observant Jew confronting the absolute evil of man.
1350 Three years on from the Siege of Calais: The Black Death has wreaked havoc in Europe.
The Castilians are moving against England. The Essex Dogs have scattered. In Winchelsea, Loveday struggles to keep his tavern afloat in the aftermath of the Death. Nowadays, the only battles he fights are the ones within his own mind.
In Windsor, Romford thrives as a squire at King Edward III’s court, his days as an archer fading into memory. But when an unpaid debt threatens everything he’s built, Romford must call upon the lessons he learned all those years ago: be cunning. Be ruthless. Be quick.
With England still reeling from the Death and the Castilian threat on the rise, the kingdom’s future has never been more uncertain. Each had reasons for leaving the Essex Dogs behind. But a life like that isn’t so easily forgotten. And for these men the fighting isn’t over yet.
.
For the Dogs, the war has only just begun. Caught up in the siege of Calais, in the midst of a brutal eleven-month blockade of a small port on the French coast, the band of brothers known as the Essex Dogs are no longer blindly walking into the unknown.
But the men still have more questions than answers about what faces them and why. What are they really fighting for? And why does the king care so much about taking such a small French town?
Best mates Teddy and Alice are hired hands with flexible moral boundaries. Whatever the mess, they can be relied upon to fix it with no questions asked. But sometimes it’s not as simple as cleaning up.
Teddy is searching the suburbs for a missing teenager with her occasional sidekick Art, while Alice’s mission is to drive one of Australia’s richest men along Victoria’s east coast to his final resting place before anybody finds out he’s dead. But when a surprise revelation sees their cases collide, Teddy and Alice turn the tables on their wealthy employers to shake out the truth.
The Kelly family has always been trouble. When a fire in a remote caravan community kills nine people, including 17-year-old Sabine Kelly’s mother and sister, Sabine confesses to the murders. Shortly after, she escapes custody and disappears.
Recently made redundant from marriage, motherhood and her career, journalist Rachel Weirdermann has long suspected Sabine made her way back to the river, Now, twelve years after the ‘Caravan Murders’, she has the time and the tenacity to corner a fugitive and land the story of the year.
From her place in the store, Klara, an Artificial Friend with outstanding observational qualities, watches carefully the behaviour of those who come in to browse, and of those who pass on the street outside.
She remains hopeful that a customer will soon choose her, but when the possibility emerges that her circumstances may change forever, Klara is warned not to invest too much in the promises of humans.
When a noxious hospital consultant dies of a heart attack, fellow doctor Eitan Rose smells foul play.
But nobody else does, including some quite crucial players like the police and the coroner. Eitan’s colleagues are already treating him with suspicion following his recent breakdown, and are sceptical of his increasingly wild theories. When another doctor dies in similar circumstances, Eitan becomes convinced there is more to these deaths than meets the eye. Is there really a killer marauding the wards or is Eitan losing the plot?
A new book tracing the rich history of Maldon Croquet Club has been launched, bringing together decades of stories, photographs and local archives.
What does the club’s past reveal about Maldon’s own history? (Tarrangower Times)
Based on a true story, The Watchmaker’s War is a gripping, high-stakes tale of Nazi hunters in Australia and the war criminals they pursued, killers with links to the highest levels of Australia’s spy agency. It offers profound insights into the lingering trauma of genocide, posing difficult questions about competing desires for peace and vengeance, and how far a victim should go in the pursuit of justice when the authorities fail to act.
Philomena McCarthy has defied the odds to become a young officer with the Metropolitan Police because her father and her uncles are notorious London gangsters.
On patrol one night, Philomena finds a barefoot child, covered in blood, who says she can’t wake her mother. Meanwhile, three miles away, a London jeweller has a bomb strapped to his chest in his ransacked store and millions are missing. These two events collide and threaten Philomena’s career, her new marriage, and her life.
When Tory’s car and identity are stolen in a quiet regional Australian town, her carefully rebuilt life unravels.
Debt collectors come calling. Her reputation is in tatters. And her husband learns the truth; Tory isn’t who she said she was. Years ago, Tory fled a brutal mistake and the man who made her life a misery, Anton Solo. Now he’s found her. Pregnant, desperate, and with no help from the police, Tory teams up with her fiercely loyal friend Carolyn. The plan? Kill Anton before he kills her. But murder has consequences and some secrets refuse to stay buried.
Two days before Jack O’Rourke’s embarkment to the Western Front in 1916, he leaps into Sydney Harbour to save an elderly Russian man, named Samuel Lomond, from drowning.
What happens when Jack returns from the front and discovers Lomond’s brutal murder, is at the heart of this thrilling historical fiction saga. Suspicious of Constable Flood, the man leading the murder-investigation, Jack takes matters into his own hands. Assisted by the local doctor and his wife, Jack compiles a list of townsfolk who might have killed Lomond, only to uncover a twisted web of deceit and corruption, and the involvement of Russia’s secret police in Lomond’s murder.
Ally D’Aplièse is about to compete in one of the world’s most perilous yacht races, when she hears the news of her adoptive father’s sudden, mysterious death.
Rushing back to meet her five sisters at their family home, she discovers that her father, an elusive billionaire affectionately known to his daughters as Pa Salt, has left each of them a tantalising clue to their true heritage. Ally has also recently embarked on a deeply passionate love affair that will change her destiny forever. But with her life now turned upside down, Ally decides to leave the open seas and follow the trail that her father left her, which leads her to the icy beauty of Norway. There, Ally begins to discover her roots and how her story is inextricably bound to that of a young unknown singer, Anna Landvik, who lived there over 100 years before, and sang in the first performance of Grieg’s iconic music set to Ibsen’s play ‘Peer Gynt’. As Ally learns more about Anna, she also begins to question who her father, Pa Salt, really was. And why is the seventh sister missing?
When a violent brawl erupts at a suburban junior soccer game, some onlookers are shocked. But others saw it coming. Rivalry, parental pressure, coaching bias, inequity, and many other factors have played a part in turning Saturday mornings into a pressure cooker.
Thirteen-year-old Audrey is a talented young football player. But does she want to play for Australia or does she just want to please her father, Ben, whose own thwarted sporting career looms large in his ambitions for his daughter? Audrey’s mother, Jonica, doesn’t know whether to be more concerned about her anxious daughter, her overbearing husband, or the only other girl on the team, Katerina, who is causing trouble on and off the field.
Set partly in London, Venice, and the coast of Capri, the story begins when Allon’s friend, art dealer Julian Isherwood, sells a newly discovered masterpiece attributed to Anthony van Dyck.
When a handwritten letter warns that the painting is a forgery and the mysterious letter writer is subsequently killed, Gabriel is pulled back into action. To expose a bespoke network of forgers, offshore accounts, and corrupt dealers, Allon must effectively become an art forger himself.
When Meddelin Chan ends up accidentally killing her blind date, her meddlesome mother calls for her even more meddlesome aunties to help get rid of the body.
Unfortunately, a dead body proves to be a lot more challenging to dispose of than one might anticipate, especially when it is inadvertently shipped in a cake cooler to the over-the-top billionaire wedding Meddy, her Ma, and aunties are working at an island resort on the California coastline. But things go from inconvenient to downright torturous when Meddy’s great college love and biggest heartbreak makes a surprise appearance amid the wedding chaos. Is it possible to escape murder charges, charm her ex back into her life, and pull off a stunning wedding all in one weekend?
Alexis Turner walks into the police station to report an assault.
By the end of the day, she is nowhere to be found. Soon after she disappears, three identical packages arrive at three very different places, a respected psychologist’s home; a socialite’s mansion, and a struggling single father’s run-down apartment. Inside, each gift is perfectly tailored to its recipient and each will tear apart the life of its intended victim.
It is June 21st, the longest day of the year, and new mother Camilla’s life is about to change forever.
After months of maternity leave, she will drop her infant daughter off at daycare for the first time and return to her job as a literary agent. But, when she wakes, her husband Luke isn’t there, and in his place is a cryptic note. Then it starts. Breaking news: there’s a hostage situation developing in London. The police arrive, and tell her Luke is involved. But he isn’t a hostage. Her husband; doting father; and eternal optimist, is the gunman. What she does next is crucial. Because only she knows what is in the note he left behind that morning.
This is the story of a founding document in Australian democracy and the people who made it. It paints a vibrant picture of the profound and ancient culture of Australia’s first peoples, in all its continuing vigour.
In 1963, a year of race riots in the United States and explosive agitation for civil rights worldwide, the Indigenous people of the Northern Territory were yet to be recognised as full adults. Almost to a person, they were classed as wards of the state, unacknowledged as having any ownership over the land on which they had lived for tens of thousands of years. Throughout the tumultuous year of 1963, leaders of the Yolngu clans worked with white allies on the unprecedented political strategy that culminated in the presentation of four Bark Petitions to Federal Parliament. It was a key moment in the formation of a uniquely Indigenous engagement with Australian politics.
Details the life of Charles Sanger (1880–1953), a legendary bush hermit who lived in the Fryers and Upper Loddon Forests near Mount Alexander for nearly 50 years.
Often dubbed the “Fryers Bushranger,” he was a beloved, elusive local identity.
No one can change the past, but the Midnight Train can take you there. The chance to re-live the moments that meant most. To see what kind of person you really were.
For Wilbur his best days were with Maggie, the love of his life. On his honeymoon in Venice. Before he gave it all away. He wishes he could go back and live differently. But to do so risks everything.
Friday, one thirty p.m. Emily Barnes is finishing work for the week, ready for a break from her laptop. Then she receives a panicked voicemail from her son Zach, punctuated by a gunshot.
By four p.m. she’s driving a stolen car out of Perth, with explicit instructions from Zach’s captors, in three days deliver the car to Gunpowder Creek, a ghost town 900 kilometres deep into the West Australian outback. Miss the deadline and Zach dies. And don’t open the boot. The job should be simple. But there’s someone dangerous roaming those lonely highways. Someone who doesn’t want the car and its cargo to make it to Gunpowder Creek. Someone with cold eyes who has seen death and liked it.
The five members of the St. Tredock Book Club disagree on everything; from the books they read to the biscuits they eat. But when one of the group suddenly disappears and a dead body is discovered at his house, these bibliophiles must put their differences aside to solve the mystery.
Having recently moved to Cornwall, Nova Davies started the book club to impress her new colleagues at the community centre, but so far it’s a disaster. To make matters worse, six thousand pounds is stolen from the community centre during one of her meetings, putting both her job and the whole centre at risk. Suspicion for the theft falls on book club member Michael, especially when a dead body is discovered at his house and Michael disappears.
It’s 1956, and while Melbourne is in a frenzy gearing up for the Olympics, the women of Australia are cooking up a storm for their chance to win the equivalent of a year’s salary in the extraordinary Australian Women’s Weekly cookery contest.
For two women, in particular, the prize could be life-changing. For war widow and single mum Ivy Quinn, a win would mean more time to spend with her twelve-year-old son, Raymond. Mother of five Kathleen O’Grady has no time for cooking competitions, but the prize could offer her a different kind of life for herself and her children, and the chance to control her own future.
When Lou sees an ad for a long-abandoned mining town up for sale, it doesn’t take her long to convince her sister and their oldest friends to go in on the idyllic property buried in the bush, a place where the four families can hide away on weekends, get back to nature and unstick the kids from their screens.
But things start to go wrong before they even arrive for their first camping trip. A rogue deer sends a trailer off the road; a neighbour complains about the fence line and squatters have set up camp down by the river. Soon none of that will matter, though, because by the end of the first night someone will be dead.