New Books / Reviews
Listings and Reviews of New Books Summer 2024/2025
It is only after the sudden death of his wife, Birgit, that Kaspar discovers the price she paid years earlier when she fled East Germany to join him: she had to abandon her baby. Shattered by grief, yet animated by a new hope, Kaspar closes up his bookshop in present day Berlin and sets off to find her lost child in the east.
His search leads him to a rural community of neo-Nazis, intent on reclaiming and settling ancestral lands to the East. Among them, Kaspar encounters Svenja, a woman whose eyes, hair, and even voice remind him of Birgit. Beside her is a red-haired, slouching, fifteen-year-old girl. His granddaughter? Their worlds could not be more different— an ideological gulf of mistrust yawns between them— but he is determined to accept her as his own.
Since giving up their city jobs in London and moving to rural France over ten years ago, Janine and husband Mark have renovated their dream home and built a new life for themselves, adjusting to the delights and the peculiarities of life in a small French village.
Including much-loved village characters such as Mr and Mrs Pepperpot, Jean-Claude, Claudette and the infamous Bread Man, in Toujours la France! Janine also introduces readers to some new faces and funny stories, as she and Mark continue their lives in this special part of northern France.
It was a gentle knock. Agnes had been waiting for it. Hoping he would be on time. Such a lovely fella, she thought. ‘Come on through. Got a surprise for you,’ she said. He had one for her too. Phil and Sweet Jimmy are cousins. Phil grows orchids, spider orchids, learnt about them in the nick. Jimmy likes orchids, too, but there are other things he likes even more.
Trish Bennett didn’t like her life. Hadn’t liked it for a long time. Been on the streets. Bit of this for a bit of that. The ‘that’ wasn’t always nice. Then Ahmed found her. Sam is a tea-leaf, a thief. Likes nickin’ anything, always has, until the day he knocked off more than the Volvo. Fell for the sexy and beautiful Sue May from Hong Kong, Frank Testy did. What price for ego? A huge price it turns out.
On a cold November evening, Guido Brunetti and Paola are up late when a call from his colleague Ispettore Vianello arrives, alerting the Commissario that a hand has been seen in one of Venice’s canals.
The body is soon found, and Brunetti is assigned to investigate the murder of an undocumented Sri Lankan immigrant. Because no official record of the man’s presence in Venice exists, Brunetti is forced to use the city’s far richer sources of information: gossip and the memories of people who knew the victim. Curiously, he had been living in a small house on the grounds of a palazzo owned by a university professor, in which Brunetti discovers books revealing the victim’s interest in Buddhism, the revolutionary Tamil Tigers, and the last crop of Italian political terrorists, active in the 1980s.
Possums in the roof, an echidna in the garden, or perhaps a python in the pantry? Living with A Guide for Our Homes and Backyards explores commonly asked questions and issues about encounters with wildlife.
Taking a wildlife-friendly approach, Tanya Loos provides practical information, advice and solutions, based on current guidance from wildlife rescue organisations and the latest research.
Mountains can tell us much about our past. Six iconic peaks in Central Victoria, Mounts Kooroocheang, Beckworth, Greenock, Tarrengower, Alexander and Franklin, tower above the rich volcanic grasslands. Each has borne witness to dramatic changes in Dja Dja Wurrung Country over the past two centuries. Six Peaks Speak tells the unique stories and continuing legacies of these mountains from a multidisciplinary perspective.
The peak-specific stories illustrate how many ‘taken for granted’ aspects of mountains may not be as they seem. Aside from what it reveals about the six peaks, the book showcases ideas and methodologies for creatively reconnecting with and healing other mountains and the people who today live on their flanks, and on Country in between.
Two fugitives, a man and a child, drive all night across a stony desert. As dawn breaks, they roll into an abandoned mine site. From the vehicle they survey a forsaken place – middens of twisted iron, rusty wire, piles of sun-baked trash. They’re exhausted, traumatised, desperate now. But as a refuge, this is the most promising place they’ve seen. The child peers at the field of desolation. The man thinks to himself, this could work.
Problem is, they’re not alone.
So begins a searing, propulsive journey through a life whose central challenge is not simply a matter of survival, but of how to maintain human decency as everyone around you falls ever further into barbarism.
Steve Wheeler is enjoying retired life. He does the odd bit of investigation work, but he prefers his familiar habits and routines: the pub quiz, his favorite bench, his cat waiting for him when he comes home. His days of adventure are over: adrenaline is daughter-in-law Amy’s business now.
Amy Wheeler thinks adrenaline is good for the soul. As a private security officer, she doesn’t stay still long enough for habits or routines. She’s currently on a remote island keeping world-famous author Rosie D’Antonio alive. Which was meant to be an easy job…
Then a dead body, a bag of money, and a killer with their sights on Amy have her sending an SOS to the only person she trusts. A breakneck race around the world begins, but can Amy and Steve stay one step ahead of a lethal enemy?
A controversial entrepreneur is murdered in a remote mountain valley, but this is no ordinary case. Ivan and Nell are soon contending with cowboy lawyers, conmen, bullion thieves and grave robbers.
But it’s when Nell discovers the victim is a close blood relative, that the past begins to take on a looming significance.
What did take place in The Valley all those years ago? What was Nell’s mother doing there, and what was her connection to troubled young police officer Simmons Burnside? And why do the police hierarchy insist Ivan and Nell stay with the case despite an obvious conflict of interest?
Doctor Jack Troy was born and raised in Faha, but his responsibilities for the sick and his care for the dying mean he has always been set apart from the town. His eldest daughter, Ronnie, has grown up in her father’s shadow, and remains there, having missed one chance at love – and passed up another offer of marriage from an unsuitable man.
But in the Advent season of 1962, as the town readies itself for Christmas, Ronnie and Doctor Troy’s lives are turned upside down when a baby is left in their care. As the winter passes, father and daughter’s lives, the understanding of their family, and their role in their community are changed forever.
Set over the course of one December in the same village as Williams’ beloved This Is Happiness, Time of the Child is a tender return to Faha for readers who know its charms, and a heartwarming welcome to new readers entering for the very first time.
It’s footy season in Melbourne, and Helen Garner is following her grandson’s under-16s team. She not only goes to every game (give or take), but to every training session too, shivering on the sidelines at dusk, fascinated by the spectacle.
She’s a passionate Western Bulldogs fan (with an imperfect grasp of the rules) who loves the epic theatre of AFL football. But her devotion to the under-16s offers her something else. This is her chance to connect with her youngest grandchild, to be close to him before he rushes headlong into manhood. To witness his triumphs and defeats, to fear for his safety in battle, to gasp and to cheer for his team as it fights for a place in the finals.
With her sharp eye, her generous wit and her warm humour, Garner documents this pivotal moment, both as part of the story and as silent witness. The Season is an unexpected and exuberant a celebration of the nobility, grace and grit of team spirit, a reflection on the nature of masculinity, and a tribute to the game’s power to thrill us.
England, 1685. Decades after the end of the civil war, the country is once again divided when Charles II’s illegitimate son, the Protestant Duke of Monmouth, arrives in Dorset to incite rebellion against his Catholic uncle.
Armed only with pitchforks, Monmouth’s army is quickly defeated by King James II’s superior forces and charged with high treason. Those found guilty will be hanged, drawn and quartered. As Dorset braces for carnage, the redoubtable Lady Jayne Harrier and a small group of trusted allies – including her courageous son and the independent-minded daughter of a local lawyer – contrive ways to save men from the gallows.
Compelling and powerful, The Players is a story of guile, deceit and compassion during the dark days of The Bloody Assizes. Secrets are kept and surprising friendships formed in a dangerous gamble to thwart a brutal king’s thirst for vengeance…
When human remains are discovered in the forests of regional Victoria, the police are baffled, the locals are shocked, and one group of old friends starts to panic. Their long-held secret is about to be uncovered.
It all began in 1999 when sixteen-year-old Aaron ran away from home, dragging his friends into an unforeseeable chain of events that no one escaped from unscathed …
In The Ledge, past and present run breathlessly, tensely parallel, leading to a cliff-hanger nobody will see coming. This is a mind-bending new novel from the master of the unexpected.
The body of a local teenage boy is found on the beach of a sleepy northern New South Wales town. David went for an evening swim and got into trouble . . . at least, that’s what it looks like.
Three weeks before, Leila, a young backpacker, didn’t turn up for her shift at the local cafe. Benny, the owner, isn’t worried. It happens – backpackers are always on the move. There’ll be another one.
One of the locals, Adrian, has been a help to Benny. He’s found him a nice little sideline. Not exactly legal. Is that all Adrian is arranging on the coast? He once was a cop but has he gone bad? And in the back-blocks outside town, a bikie gang is gearing up for a large consignment from South America.
Murder, drugs, liaisons and lies are stirring up this small coastal town.
It’s 1975, and at the threshold of his writing career Andy McPherson is navigating how to be fully present both for his partner, Jo, and their young daughter.
When forced to take a part-time teaching job Andy meets Lang Tzu, a charismatic and intriguing man. Andy is drawn deeper into a dangerous relationship when Lang asks him to prove his friendship by brokering a risky deal for a much-desired piece of art. Andy finally consents despite Jo’s opposition. In the process, Andy is in fact negotiating his own deal with himself as an artist and is compelled to face up to the conflict between his conception of art as a creative gift and the realities of the art market.
Powerful and perceptive, Miller’s profound and intimate depiction of Jo and her partnership with Andy, and his poignant portrait of Lang’s troubled genius, form the beating heart of this beautiful novel.
It’s autumn in Maine, and the town lawyer Bob Burgess has become enmeshed in an unfolding murder investigation, defending a lonely, isolated man accused of killing his mother. He has also fallen into a deep and abiding friendship with the acclaimed writer Lucy Barton, who lives down the road in a house by the sea with her ex-husband, William. Together, Lucy and Bob go on walks and talk about their lives, their fears and regrets, and what might have been. Lucy, meanwhile, is finally introduced to the iconic Olive Kitteridge, now living in a retirement community on the edge of town. They spend afternoons together in Olive’s apartment, telling each other stories. Stories about people they have known—“unrecorded lives,” Olive calls them—reanimating them, and, in the process, imbuing their lives with meaning.
A woman abandons her city life and marriage to return to the place of her childhood, holing up in a small religious community hidden away on the stark plains of the Monaro. She does not believe in God, doesn’t know what prayer is, and finds herself living this strange, reclusive life almost by accident. As she gradually adjusts to the rhythms of monastic life, she finds herself turning again and again to thoughts of her mother, whose early death she can’t forget.Disquiet interrupts this secluded life with three visitations. First comes a terrible mouse plague, each day signalling a new battle against the rising infestation. Second is the return of the skeletal remains of a sister who left the community decades before to minister to deprived women in Thailand – then disappeared, presumed murdered. Finally, a troubling visitor to the monastery pulls the narrator further back into her past.With each of these disturbing arrivals, the woman faces some deep questions. Can a person be truly good? What is forgiveness? Is loss of hope a moral failure? And can the business of grief ever really be finished?
Aside from the fact that they are brothers, Peter and Ivan Koubek seem to have little in common.
Peter is a Dublin lawyer in his thirties—successful, competent, and apparently unassailable. But in the wake of their father’s death, he’s medicating himself to sleep and struggling to manage his relationships with two very different women—his enduring first love, Sylvia, and Naomi, a college student for whom life is one long joke.
Ivan is a twenty-two-year-old competitive chess player. He has always seen himself as socially awkward, a loner, the antithesis of his glib elder brother. Now, in the early weeks of his bereavement, Ivan meets Margaret, an older woman emerging from her own turbulent past, and their lives become rapidly and intensely intertwined.
For two grieving brothers and the people they love, this is a new interlude—a period of desire, despair, and possibility; a chance to find out how much one life might hold inside itself without breaking.
‘One rainy Friday evening in the winter of 1993, a taxi swept through the streets of East Melbourne, on its way from the city to Richmond. That year was one of the few remaining when a great deal was known of the world, but not yet so much that the world had become over-known. Small gaps remained…’
Edinburgh, 1916:Thomas Wrenfether, a rich Scottish industrialist, is offered the opportunity to take on a startling project – to build a paddle steamer from European cherrywood on the other side of the world, in booming Melbourne, Australia. But nothing goes according to plan.
Melbourne, 1993. Martha is a lonely, frustrated lawyer. One night on impulse she stops at a strange pub in Fitzroy, The Cherrywood, for a bottle of wine. The building and its inhabitants make an indelible impression, and she slowly begins to deduce odd truths about the pub.
Aside from a delay, there will be no problems. The flight will be smooth, it will land safely. Everyone who gets on the plane will get off. But almost all of them will be forever changed.
Because on this ordinary, short, domestic flight, something extraordinary happens. People learn how and when they are going to die. For some, their death is far in the future—age 103!—and they laugh. But for six passengers, their predicted deaths are not far away at all. How do they know this? There were ostensibly more interesting people on the flight (the bride and groom, the jittery, possibly famous woman, the giant Hemsworth-esque guy who looks like an off-duty superhero, the frazzled, gorgeous flight attendant) but none would become as famous as “The Death Lady.” Not a single passenger or crew member will later recall noticing her board the plane. She wasn’t exceptionally old or young, rude or polite. She wasn’t drunk or nervous or pregnant. Her appearance and demeanor were unremarkable. But what she did on that flight was truly remarkable. A few months later, one passenger dies exactly as she predicted. Then two more passengers die, again, as she said they would. Soon no one is thinking this is simply an entertaining story at a cocktail party.
If you were told you only had a certain amount of time left to live, would you do things differently? Would you try to dodge your destiny?
John Gould and his beautiful wife Elizabeth sailed into Australia on a cold spring day in 1838 prepared for the most astonishing adventure of their lives. The Goulds had travelled 20,000 kilometres and crossed three oceans from their London home to find the treasures of Australia’s birdlife and showcase them to the outside world. It had been a rough voyage over and Elizabeth had fallen pregnant again for the seventh time at just 34. There would be little rest for her in illustrating her husband’s exquisite books that had made him England’s celebrated ‘Bird Man’, and a force of nature in both science and publishing. Elizabeth had always been the anonymous wind beneath his wings, always working in his shadow, but perhaps on this voyage, with his new book The Birds of Australia she would finally receive the deserved acclaim for her work.
Gould had studied birds from the Galapagos Islands and helped his fellow naturalist Charles Darwin expound his controversial theory of evolution by natural selection. In Australia, with the help of Aboriginal guides he would admire and befriend, Gould would gaze upon a vast array of Australian wildlife which would generate huge praise – and profits. Gould was and ambitious, hard-nosed businessman, the son of a poor gardener, and scrapped and fought to overcome his station in life. As a young taxidermist, he’d become chief ‘animal stuffer’ for King George IV – once climbing inside the immense corpse of the royal giraffe and preserving it for posterity – then chased fame and fortune preserving exotic birds. With his wife’s beautiful drawings, he became as a lucrative publisher of books sold in Britain, Europe and America.But he was a tough, ruthless man who drove everyone around him, including his wife. The Birds of Australia would become a landmark publication and cement the reputation of the husband and wife team forever, but tragically it was one that Elizabeth would never see.
In the distant highlands, a puma named Dusk is killing shepherds.
Down in the lowlands, twins Iris and Floyd are out of work, money and friends. When they hear that a bounty has been placed on Dusk, they reluctantly decide to join the hunt. As they journey up into this wild, haunted country, they discover there’s far more to the land and people of the highlands than they imagined. And as they close in on their prey, they’re forced to reckon with conflicts both ancient and deeply personal.
One of the most iconic Australians – one who has graced our screen and theatres for over forty years – Noni Hazlehurst is finally telling her story.
Noni Hazlehurst is an icon. A household name, our best-loved actor, she’s graced our screens and theatres with her presence for over forty years – and won our hearts and our respect in the process. From hosting Playschool for more than two decades to acting in films such as Ladies in Black, June Again, Monkey Grip, Candy and Little Fish; serving as host on Better Homes and Gardens, a starring role in fan favourite A Place to Call Home; most recently hosting the SBS miniseries Every Family Has a Secret; all that of course in addition to her theatre work.
In some ways, she is an ordinary woman – a single mother to two boys, she knows about sacrifice, stretching thin and juggling. Yet she is clearly also an extraordinary woman – only the second woman to be inducted into the Logies Hall of Fame in 32 years. She is ordinary, she is extraordinary. She is all class.
The stage is set. Marooned overnight by a snowstorm in a grand country house are a cast of characters and a setting that even Agatha Christie might recognize – a vicar, an Army major, a Dowager, a sleuth and his sidekick – except that the sleuth is Jackson Brodie, and the ‘sidekick’ is DC Reggie Chase. The crumbling house – Burton Makepeace and its chatelaine the Dowager Lady Milton – suffered the loss of their last remaining painting of any value, a Turner, some years ago. The housekeeper, Sophie, who disappeared the same night, is suspected of stealing it.
Jackson, a reluctant hostage to the snowstorm, has been investigating the theft of another The Woman with a Weasel, a portrait, taken from the house of an elderly widow, on the morning she died. The suspect this time is the widow’s carer, Melanie. Is this a coincidence or is there a connection? And what secrets does The Woman with a Weasel hold? The puzzle is Jackson’s to solve. And let’s not forget that a convicted murderer is on the run on the moors around Burton Makepeace. All the while, in a bid to make money, Burton Makepeace is determined to keep hosting a shambolic Murder Mystery that acts as a backdrop while the real drama is being played out in the house.
Young playwright Melina Green has just written a new work inspired by the life of her Elizabethan ancestor Emilia Bassano. But seeing it performed is unlikely, in a theater world where the playing field isn’t level for women. As Melina wonders if she dares risk failure again, her best friend takes the decision out of her hands and submits the play to a festival under a male pseudonym.
In 1581, young Emilia Bassano is a ward of English aristocrats. Her lessons on languages, history, and writing have endowed her with a sharp wit and a gift for storytelling, but like most women of her day, she is allowed no voice of her own. Forced to become a mistress to the Lord Chamberlain, who oversees all theatre productions in England, Emilia sees firsthand how the words of playwrights can move an audience. She begins to form a plan to secretly bring a play of her own to the stage—by paying an actor named William Shakespeare to front her work.
Told in intertwining timelines, By Any Other Name, a sweeping tale of ambition, courage, and desire centers two women who are determined to create something beautiful despite the prejudices they face. Should a writer do whatever it takes to see her story live on . . . no matter the cost? This remarkable novel, rooted in primary historical sources, ensures the name Emilia Bassano will no longer be forgotten.
Ginny Dilboong is a young poet, fierce and deadly. She’s making sense of the world and her place in it, grappling with love, family and the spaces in which to create her art. Like powerful women before her, Ginny hugs the edges of waterways, and though she is a daughter of Country, the place that shapes her is not hers. Determined and brave, Ginny seeks to protect the truth of others while learning her own. The question is how?
And, all the while, others are watching. Some old, some new. They are the sound of the belburd as it echoes through the world; the sound of cars and trucks and trains. They are in trees and paper and the shape of ideas. They are the builder and the built. Everything, even Ginny, is because of them.
Surging out of the sea, the Bass Rock has for centuries watched over the lives that pass under its shadow on the Scottish mainland. And across the centuries the fates of three women are linked: to this place, to each other. In the early 1700s, Sarah, accused of being a witch, flees for her life. In the aftermath of the Second World War, Ruth navigates a new house, a new husband and the strange waters of the local community.
Six decades later, the house stands empty. Viv, mourning the death of her father, catalogues Ruth’s belongings and discovers her place in the past and perhaps a way forward.
It’s June 2021, and Arkady knows that Russia is preparing to invade and subsequently annex Ukraine as it did Crimea in 2014. He is, however, preoccupied with other grievances. His longtime lover, Tatiana Petrovna, has deserted him for her work as an investigative reporter. His corrupt boss has relegated him to a desk job. And he is having trouble with his dexterity and balance. A visit to his doctor reveals that these are symptoms for Parkinson’s Disease.
An acquaintance has asked him to find his daughter, Karina, an anti-Putin activist who has disappeared. In the course of the investigation, Arkady falls for Karina’s roommate, Elena, a Tatar from Ukraine. The search leads them to Kyiv, where rumblings of an armed conflict grow louder. Later, in Crimea, Tatiana reemerges to complicate Arkady’s new romance. And as he gets closer to locating Karina, Arkady discovers something that threatens his life as well as the lives of both Elena and Tatiana.
She wonders if they have discovered her missing yet. Has it broken in the news? Who has been assigned to cover her story? Have they started spooling through her social media and pulling out photographs? Constructing a narrative about who she is and what possible reason any person has to kidnap or kill her?
Kate Delaney has made the biggest mistake of her life. She picked the wrong guy to humiliate on a girls’ night out and now she is living every woman’s worst nightmare. Kate finds herself brutalised, bound and gagged in the back of a car being driven who knows where by a man whose name she doesn’t know, and she is petrified about what’s in store for her.
As president of the Human Rights Commission, Gillian Triggs advocated for the disempowered, the disenfranchised, the marginalised. She withstood relentless political pressure and media scrutiny as she defended the defenceless for five tumultuous years. How did this aspiring ballet dancer, dignified daughter of a tank commander and eminent law academic respond when appreciative passengers on a full airplane departing Canberra greeted her with a round of applause?
Speaking Up shares with readers the values that have guided Triggs’ convictions and the causes she has championed. She dares women to be a little vulgar and men to move beyond their comfort zones to achieve equity for all. And she will not rest until Australia has a Bill of Rights.
‘Victoria and Its Metropolis’ is a large two volume history of Victoria, written in 1888 by Alexander Sutherland. Beautifully presented with many etchings and drawings throughout, this book is the perfect addition to any library of Australian and Victorian history. It contains a huge amount of information on the people of the colony and its early history.
The first volume covers information from the discovery of Australia, through to the exploration of Victoria and the first settlers to the pioneers. It then continues on to discuss immigration, the era of gold, the development of government, agriculture, music and art, literature and the metropolis of Melbourne.
A large portion of the second volume examines the colony by district, which covers many districts throughout the state as well as the metropolitan area. Hundreds of biographical entries are scattered throughout and a comprehensive biographical index is included at the end. This work provides an invaluable resource for all local and social historians of Victoria and the metropolis of Melbourne.
