New Books / Reviews

Without doubt, she was a divisive character, her daughters squabbling about the ‘real Muv’ for even longer than they argued about their political differences. Was she a scapegoat or saint, mother or manager? Even later biographers couldn’t quite pin her down. Just who was this elusive woman who nurtured such colourful children?

Yeongju is burned out. With her high-flying career, demanding marriage, and bustling life in Seoul, she knows she should feel successful, but all she feels is drained.

Haunted by an abandoned dream, she takes a leap of faith and leaves her old life behind. Quitting her job and divorcing her husband, Yeongju moves to a quiet residential neighbourhood outside the city and opens the Hyunam-dong Bookshop.
The transition isn’t easy. For months, all Yeongju can do is cry. But as the long hours in the shop stretch on, she begins to reflect on what makes a good bookseller and a meaningful store. She throws herself into reading voraciously, hosting author events, and crafting her own philosophy on bookselling. Gradually, Yeongju finds her footing in her new surroundings.

Authors Juniper Hayward and Athena Liu were supposed to be twin rising stars. But Athena is a literary darling while June is a nobody. Who wants stories about basic white girls?, June thinks.

So when June witnesses Athena’s death in a freak accident, she acts on impulse, stealing Athena’s just-finished masterpiece, an experimental novel about the unsung contributions of Chinese labourers during World War I. So what if June edits Athena’s novel and sends it to her agent as her own work? So what if she lets her new publisher rebrand her as Juniper Song, complete with an ambiguously ethnic author photo? This piece of history deserves to be told, whoever the teller. That is what June believes, and The New York Times bestseller list agrees.

Katherine O’Dell is an Irish theatre legend. As her daughter Norah retraces her mother’s celebrated career and bohemian life, she delves into long-kept secrets, both her mother’s and her own.

Katherine began her career on Ireland’s bus-and-truck circuit before making it to London’s West End, Broadway, and finally Hollywood. Every moment of her life is a star turn, with young Norah standing in the wings. But the mother-daughter romance cannot survive Katherine’s past or the world’s damage. With age, alcohol, and dimming stardom, her grip on reality grows fitful and, fuelled by a proud and long-simmering rage, she commits a bizarre crime

CeCe D’Aplièse has never felt she fitted in anywhere. Following the death of her father, the elusive billionaire Pa Salt, so-called by the six daughters he adopted from around the globe and named after the Seven Sisters star cluster, she finds herself at breaking point. Dropping out of art college, CeCe watches as Star, her beloved sister, distances herself to follow her new love, leaving her completely alone.

In desperation, she decides to flee England and discover her past; the only clues she has are a black-and-white photograph and the name of a woman pioneer who lived in Australia over one hundred years ago.

It is late at night on a notorious council estate in east London. A van garishly painted with a grinning clown’s face on the side is being driven erratically. When the police pull over the driver to question him, they discover, inside the van, the body of a young woman. A murder suspect, an arrest, a confession. A case done and dusted? But their suspect claims his victim is not his first, but his third.

Five years earlier, a 13-year-old girl disappeared in broad daylight on a busy London street. DCS James Langton headed the investigation and left no stone unturned. The fact that case was not solved has haunted him ever since. The enquiry has opened up again but, unable to lead it due to ill health, Langton brings in DCI Anna Travis. Meanwhile the murder team begins the laborious task of verifying the details of the confessions and uncovering the identity of the second victim. And then the suspect changes his story. They know they have a murderer in custody but is he a serial killer or just a compulsive liar?

Six months after the body of Josh Reynolds, a London nightclub owner, was found and determined by police and coroner to be a suicide, DCS James Langton tasks DCI Anna Travis to review the case.

Reynolds died from a single gunshot wound to the head, the gun held in his right hand. But details are emerging that suggest someone else may have fired the gun… As soon as she wraps up the case, Langton tells Anna, she can join him at the FBI Academy in Virginia for training. Meanwhile, a Senior FBI Agent, Jessie Dewar, crime scene expert, is seconded to Anna’s team as part of her research and immediately the competence of the original investigation team is questioned.

For Australia, a new nation with a relatively small population, the death of 60,000 soldiers during World War I was catastrophic. It is hardly surprising, then, that Australians evaluating the consequences of the conflict have tended to focus primarily on the numbing number of losses ― on the sheer quantity of all those countrymen who did not return. That there must have been extraordinary individuals among them has been implicitly understood, but these special Australians are unknown today. This book seeks to retrieve their stories and to fill the gaps in our collective memory. Farewell, Dear People contains ten extended biographies of young men who exemplified Australia’s gifted lost generation of World War I. Among them are accounts of an internationally acclaimed medical researcher; a military officer described by his brigadier as potentially an Australian Kitchener; a rugby international who became an esteemed administrator and a rising Labor star; an engineer who excelled on Mawson’s Antarctic mission; a visionary vigneron and community leader who was renowned for successful winemaking at an unusually young age; a Western Australian Rhodes scholar assured of a shining future in the law and/or politics; a Tasmanian footballer who dazzled at the highest level; and a budding architect from Melbourne’s best-known creative dynasty who combined an endearing personality with his family’s flair for writing and drawing.

John Cantwell, Queensland country boy, enlisted in the army as a private and rose to the rank of major general. He was on the front line in 1991 as Coalition forces fitted bulldozer blades to tanks and buried Iraqi troops alive. He served in Baghdad in 2006 and saw what a car bomb does to a crowded marketplace. He was commander of Australian forces in Afghanistan in 2010 when ten of his soldiers were killed. He came home in 2011 to be considered for the job of chief of the Australian Army. Instead, he ended up in a psychiatric hospital.

Exit Wounds is the deeply human account of one man’s tour of the War on Terror, the moving story of life on a modern battlefield: from the nightmare of cheating death in a field strewn with mines, to the utter despair of looking into the face of a dead soldier before sending his body home to his mother. Cantwell hid his post-traumatic stress disorder for decades, fearing it would affect his career.

In this third title in Joel Shepherd’s gripping quartet, we are reunited with the fearless heroine Sasha, Errollyn and the other familiar characters from Sasha and Petrodor.

The net is really closing in now, with the whole of Rhodia at war and the serrin – the beautiful and dangerous people from beyond the Bacosh – fighting for survival. The revolutionary politics of Tracato, and the clandestine attempts by the feudalists to hold onto power, are gripping and full of intrigue. The characters who were developing in the previous title blossom into their roles here, sharing the arena with Sasha, giving this novel an extra dimension that readers will love.

No period in British history has more resonance and mystery today than the sixteenth century. New Worlds, Lost Worlds brings the atmosphere and events of this great epoch to life.

Exploring the underlying religious motivations for the savage violence and turbulence of the period-from Henry VIII’s break with Rome to the overwhelming threat of the Spanish Armada-Susan Brigden investigates the actions and influences of such near-mythical figures as Elizabeth I, Thomas More, Bloody Mary, and Sir Walter Raleigh.

On a freezing night in January 2013, a hooded assailant hurled acid in the face of the artistic director of the Bolshoi Ballet.

The crime, organized by a lead soloist, dragged one of Russia’s most illustrious institutions into scandal. The Bolshoi Theatre had been a crown jewel during the reign of the tsars and an emblem of Soviet power throughout the twentieth century. Under Putin in the twenty-first century, it has been called on to preserve a priceless artistic legacy and mirror Russia’s neo-imperial ambitions. The attack and its torrid aftermath underscored the importance of the Bolshoi to the art of ballet, to Russia, and to the world.

The tiny South Island town of Franz Josef is perched precariously on New Zealand’s Alpine Fault. It already faces devastating earthquakes, floods and landslides. And now it harbours a killer.

When a body is discovered suspended in a glacier, detectives Nick Chester and Latifa Rapata are sent to investigate. More victims surface, as does a web of corruption stretching from the international aid industry to the blood-soaked fields of a civil war.

What antique would you kill for?

Freya Lockwood is shocked when she learns that Arthur Crockleford, antiques dealer and her estranged mentor, has died under mysterious circumstances. She has spent the last twenty years avoiding her quaint English hometown, but when she receives a letter from Arthur asking her to investigate, sent just days before his death, Freya has no choice but to return to a life she had sworn to leave behind. Joining forces with her eccentric Aunt Carole, Freya follows clues and her instincts to an old manor house for an advertised antiques enthusiast’s weekend. But not all is as it seems.

It’s 1679 and into the tumult, politics and colour of Restoration London and its lively theatre scene comes the fierce and opinionated Tribulation Johnson.

Cast out from her family as ungodly and unworthy, Tribulation is determined to forge her own remarkable path. Arriving in London, Tribulation is astonished to discover that the widowed cousin she’s been sent to live with is none other than the most infamous woman in the former spy and traitor’s mistress, the playwright and polemical poetess, Aphra Behn. Tribulation cannot believe her good fortune as she is thrust into city life and the heady, mercurial milieu of the theatre. Under Aphra’s guidance, Tribulation is encouraged to write, think and speak for herself. But women aren’t supposed to have a voice, or ideas, let alone wield a pen and write for a living, and there are harsh consequences for those who don’t obey society’s rules.

Featuring 80 diverse and cook-able recipes for home by the city’s best food innovators. With added context about why chefs do things the way they do, it’s a book that will teach people how to cook, not just follow a recipe. The featured dishes are not about taking something out of a restaurant and serving it at home, but about the perfect dish for home.

This is a celebration of the diversity, positivity and innovation that defines Melbourne food culture, and which evolved into something even more special in 2020. That year changed dining in Melbourne and how we think about chefs, restaurants and their place in our lives. We turned to chefs and our city’s food community for lessons and inspiration on how to cook simple things well. We couldn’t go to restaurants, so we brought the restaurants to us.