New Books / Reviews
Listings and Reviews of New Books Spring 2024
When Indigenous lawyer Jasmine decides to take her mother Della on a tour of England’s most revered literary sites, Jasmine hopes it will bring them closer together and help them reconcile the past.
Twenty-five years earlier the disappearance of Jasmine’s older sister devastated their tight-knit community. This tragedy returns to haunt Jasmine and Della when another child mysteriously goes missing on Hampstead Heath. As Jasmine immerses herself in the world of her literary idols, including Jane Austen, the Brontë sisters and Virginia Woolf, Della is inspired to rediscover the wisdom of her own culture and storytelling. But sometimes the stories that are not told can become too great to bear.
Thomas Cromwell is one of the most famous, or notorious, figures in English history. Born in obscurity in Putney, he became a fixer for Cardinal Wolsey in the 1520s. After Wolsey’s fall, Henry VIII promoted him to a series of ever greater offices, such that in the 1530s he was effectively running the country for the King. That decade was one of the most momentous in English history: it saw a religious break with the Pope, unprecedented use of parliament, the dissolution of all monasteries, and the coming of the Protestantism. Cromwell was central to all this, but establishing his role with precision has been notoriously difficult.
Diarmaid MacCulloch’s biography is the most complete life ever written of this elusive figure, making connections not previously seen and revealing the channels through which power in early Tudor England flowed. It overturns many received interpretations, for example that Cromwell and Anne Boleyn were allies because of their common religious sympathies, showing how he in fact destroyed her. It introduces the many different personalities contributing to these foundational years, all worrying about what MacCulloch calls the ‘terrifyingly unpredictable’ Henry VIII, and allows readers to feel that they are immersed in all this, that it is going on around them. For a time, the self-made ‘ruffian’, as he described himself, ruthless, adept in the exercise of power, quietly determined in religious revolution, was master of events. MacCulloch’s biography for the first time reveals his true place in the making of modern England and Ireland, for good and ill.
Praiseworthy is an epic set in the north of Australia, told with the richness of language and scale of imagery for which Alexis Wright has become renowned. In a small town dominated by a haze cloud, which heralds both an ecological catastrophe and a gathering of the ancestors, a crazed visionary seeks out donkeys as the solution to the global climate crisis and the economic dependency of the Aboriginal people. His wife seeks solace from his madness in following the dance of butterflies and scouring the internet to find out how she can seek repatriation for her Aboriginal/Chinese family to China. One of their sons, called Aboriginal Sovereignty, is determined to commit suicide. The other, Tommyhawk, wishes his brother dead so that he can pursue his dream of becoming white and powerful. This is a novel which pushes allegory and language to its limits, a cry of outrage against oppression and disadvantage, and a fable for the end of days.
Letter writing was a vital part of Christina Stead’s creative life and it grew increasingly important in her last decade. It was how she engaged with the outside world and became the focus of her writing energies. Stead was a vivacious, funny, erudite, expansive and witty correspondent. It was a practice she enjoyed, answering all correspondence she received, including Elizabeth Harrower, Stanley Burnshaw, Dorothy Green and H C Coombs.
Beginning in England in 1973, the letters in Talking into the Typewriter span her return to Australia in 1973 until her death in 1983. Politics, friends and family, literary accolades and achievements, pets and reminiscences are all dissected, canvassed and considered.
Eddie Ayres has a lifetime of musical experience from learning the viola as a child in England and playing with the Hong Kong Philharmonic for many years, to learning the cello in his thirties and landing in Australia to present an extremely successful ABC Classic FM morning radio show. But all of this time Eddie was Emma Ayres.
In 2014 Emma was spiralling into a deep depression, driven by anguish about her gender. She quit the radio, travelled, and decided on a surprising path to salvation, teaching music in a war zone. Emma applied for a position at Dr Sarmast’s renowned Afghanistan National Institute of Music in Kabul, teaching cello to orphans and street kids. In Danger Music, Eddie takes us through the bombing and chaos of Kabul, into the lives of the Afghan children who are transported by Bach, Abba, Beethoven and their own exhilarating Afghan music. Alongside these epic experiences, Emma determines to take the final steps to secure her own peace; she becomes the man always there inside – Eddie.
In 1654, the Thunderclap, an enormous explosion at a gunpowder store, devastedthe city of Delft, killing hundreds of people, including the extraordinary painter Carel
Fabritius, and injuring thousands more.
Framing the story around the life of Fabritius, Cumming illuminates this extraordinary
moment in art history while also writing about her own father, a painter. Like Dutch
art, the story gradually links country, city, town, street, house, interior all the way to
the bird on its perch, the blue and white tile, the smallest seed in a loaf of bread. The
impact of a painting and how it can enter our thoughts, influence our view and
understanding of the world is the heart of this book.
Our whole world is built on math, from the code running a website to the equations
enabling the design of skyscrapers and bridges. Most of the time this math works
quietly behind the scenes, until it doesn’t. All sorts of seemingly innocuous
mathematical mistakes can have significant consequences. Math is easy to ignore
until a misplaced decimal point upends the stock market, a unit conversion error
causes a plane to crash, or someone divides by zero and stalls a battleship in the
middle of the ocean.
Exploring and explaining a litany of glitches, near misses, and mathematical mishaps
involving the internet, big data, elections, street signs, lotteries, the Roman Empire,
and an Olympic team, Matt Parker uncovers the bizarre ways math trips us up, and
what this reveals about its essential place in our world. Getting it wrong has never
been more fun.
Raynor Winn knows that her husband Moth’s health is declining, getting worse by the day. She knows of only one cure. It worked once before. But will he, can he, set out with her on another healing walk?
The Cape Wrath Trail is over two hundred miles of gruelling terrain through Scotland’s remotest mountains and lochs. But the lure of the wilderness and the beguiling beauty of the awaiting glens draw them northwards. Being one with nature saved them in their darkest hour and their hope is that it can work its magic again.
As they set out on their incredible thousand-mile journey back to the familiar shores of the South-west Coast Path, Raynor and Moth map the landscape of an island nation facing an uncertain path ahead.
In August 1949 Jacqueline Bouvier arrives in postwar Paris to begin her junior year abroad. She’s twenty years old, socially poised but financially precarious, and all too aware of her mother’s expectations that she make a brilliant match. Before relenting to family pressure, she has one year to herself far away from sleepy Vassar College and the rigid social circles of New York, a year to explore and absorb the luminous beauty of the City of Light. Jacqueline is immediately catapulted into an intoxicating new world of champagne and châteaux, art and avant-garde theatre, cafés and jazz clubs. She strikes up a romance with a talented young writer who shares her love of literature and passion for culture, even though her mother would think him most unsuitable.
But beneath the glitter and rush, France is a fragile place still haunted by the Occupation. Jacqueline lives in a rambling apartment with a widowed countess and her daughters, all of whom suffered as part of the French Resistance just a few years before. In the aftermath of World War II, Paris has become a nest of spies, and suspicion, deception, and betrayal lurk around every corner. Jacqueline is stunned to watch the rise of communism an anathema in America, but an active movement in France, never guessing she is witnessing the beginning of the political environment that will shape the rest of her life and that of her future husband.
As the youngest child, and only girl, in a family of creative types, Myf Warhurst grew up with the music in her. Whether she was watching Daryl Braithwaite on TV on a Sunday night or listening to the crackle of the needle across vinyl as Agnetha and Anni-Frid took her from rural Victoria to Eurovision, music has always shaped Myf’s life. Later her love of music (and the realisation that a professional pianist gig wasn’t part of the plan) would shape her career. But music isn’t just about memories. It’s a safe place for people who feel different. Songs and lyrics helped Myf make sense of the world and deal with heartbreak and uncertainty. Music steered her hopes and fashion choices, cemented friendships and bonded family. In Time of My Life she shares funny, fabulous and occasionally fraught tales about growing up in a small country town with an unhealthy obsession with Countdown, then working in Australian radio and her experiences on the much-loved music quiz show Spicks & Specks. She spills the backstage beans on work, fame, feminism, failure, love and success.
After WW2 a defeated Germany is divided, and East Berlin becomes the de facto capital of the German Democratic Republic. The Berlin Wall is built which becomes the most powerful and oppressive iconic symbol of the Cold War.
West Berlin Police retrieve the body of a woman who drowned in the Havel River. Erna Klemp, an MI6 agent is assigned to take on the dead woman’s East Berlin identity. As Angela Muller she is sent through an escape tunnel on a perilous operation to East Berlin. Her Mission? To infiltrate the Secret Police Headquarters of the Stasi. The Stasi is the most repressive, hated and feared arm of the GDR Government and responsible for espionage, domestic and political surveillance.
Angela gains promotion to Oberleutnant Axel Hempf’s administration where she must access Stasi secret intelligence, vital in assisting MI6 agents and the East Germans escape to the West. Over time, and against better judgement, a dangerous attraction develops between Angela and Axel. It becomes so powerful and compelling they are unable to resist.
Art restorer and legendary spy Gabriel Allon has slipped quietly into London to attend a reception at the Courtauld Gallery celebrating the return of a stolen self-portrait by Vincent van Gogh. But when an old friend from the Devon and Cornwall Police seeks his help with a baffling murder investigation, he finds himself pursuing a powerful and dangerous new adversary.
The victim is Charlotte Blake, a celebrated professor of art history from Oxford who spends her weekends in the same seaside village where Gabriel once lived under an assumed identity. Her murder appears to be the work of a diabolical serial killer who has been terrorizing the Cornish countryside. But there are a number of telltale inconsistencies, including a missing mobile phone. And then there is the mysterious three-letter cypher she left behind on a notepad in her study.
Gabriel soon discovers that Professor Blake was searching for a looted Picasso worth more than a $100 million, and he takes up the chase for the painting as only he can – with six Impressionist canvases forged by his own hand and an unlikely team of operatives that includes a world-famous violinist, a beautiful master thief, and a lethal contract killer turned British spy. The result is a stylish and wildly entertaining mystery that moves at lightning speed from the cliffs of Cornwall to the enchanted island of Corsica and, finally, to a breathtaking climax on the very doorstep of 10 Downing Street.
The man’s body is found in the early morning light by a local dog walker in the park outside Rosebank, a home for troubled teens in the coastal village of Longwater. The victim is Josh, a staff member, who was due to work the previous night but never showed up. DI Vera Stanhope is called out to investigate the death, with her only clue being the disappearance of one of the home’s residents, fourteen-year-old Chloe Spence. Vera can’t bring herself to believe that a teenager is responsible for the murder, but even she can’t dismiss the possibility.
Vera, Joe and new team member Rosie Bell, are soon embroiled in the case, and when a second connected body is found near the Three Dark Wives monument in the wilds of the Northumberland countryside, superstition and folklore begin to collide with fact. Vera knows she has to find Chloe to get to the truth, and the dark secrets in their community that may be far more dangerous than she could have ever believed possible.
Bill was massive. He had power, intelligence and unmatched courage. In performance and character, he stood above all the other 200,000 Australian horses sent to the Middle East in the Great War. But as war horses go, he had one serious problem. No one could ride him but one man, Major Michael Shanahan. Some even thought Bill took a sneering pleasure in watching would-be riders hit the dust.
Bill the bastard is the remarkable tale of a bond between a determined trooper and his stoic but cantankerous mount. They fought together. They depended on each other for survival. And when the chips were down, Bill’s heroic efforts and exceptional instincts in battle saved the lives of Shanahan and four of his men.
By September 1918, ‘Bill the Bastard’ was known by the entire Light Horse regiment, who used his name not as an insult, but as a term of endearment. Bill had become a legend, a symbol of the courage and unbreakable will of the Anzac mounted force. There was no other horse like Bill the Bastard.
Woo Woo follows Sabine, a conceptual artist on the verge of a photo exhibition she hopes will be pivotal, as she plunges deeper into her neuroses and seeks validation in relationships with her frustratingly rational chef husband, her horde of devoted Gen Z TikTok followers, and even a mysterious, potentially violent stalker.
Accompanying her throughout are Sabine’s strange alter egos, from hyper-realistic puppets of her as a baby to the ghost of conceptual artist Carolee Schneemann, who shows up with inscrutable yet sage life advice. Ella Baxter approaches the desire to see and be seen that defines both the creative and romantic act with humour, empathy, and a good dose of wildness, driving Sabine to a surreal and compelling climax that forces her to reconsider what it means to be an artist and a partner.
On a wild and rugged island cut off and isolated to some, artist Nell feels the island is her home. It is the source of inspiration for her art, rooted in landscape, folklore and the feminine. The mysterious Inions, a commune of women who have travelled there from all over the world, consider it a place of refuge and safety, of solace in nature.
All the islanders live alongside the strange murmurings that seem to emanate from within the depths of the island, a sound that is almost supernatural – a Summoning as the Inions call it. One day, a letter arrives at Nell’s door from the reclusive Inions who invite Nell into the commune for a commission to produce a magnificent art piece to celebrate their long history. In its creation, Nell will discover things about the community and about herself that will challenge everything she thought she knew.
Mick Tranter was born and raised at the edge of the ancient Whipstick Forest, north of Bendigo. When the outbreak of WW2 interrupts his active rural lifestyle, he joins the AIF, and on his last night of leave, he meets and falls in love with a young woman at a Saturday night dance. Love letters and a photo of her go with him to the battlefields of New Guinea and become his talisman. He experiences the harrowing brutality of jungle warfare, only to be posted as missing in action and all communication is lost with his girl and his family. Later, he is found ill and wounded. He survives the war but returns home in a fragile mental state.
Despite the love and care from his mother and his best friend, he is haunted by guilt and shame and enduring sadness over the loss of the girl he loves. He retreats to his beloved Whipstick Forest, but his troubled mind, not relieved by reclusiveness, worsens until he has an epiphany that sets him on the path to atonement.
It’s a normal night in August. Literature professor Arne and artist Tove are with their children at the resort in southern Norway. Their friend, Egil, a driver by day, is staying in a cabin nearby. Kathrine, a priest, is on her way home from a seminar, the journalist Jostein is out on the town, and his wife Turid, who is an assistant nurse, has a night shift.
Above them all, a huge star suddenly appears in the sky. No one, not even the astronomers, knows for sure what kind of phenomenon it is. Is there a star burning itself out? Why then has no one seen it before? Or is it a brand new star? Slowly the interest in the news subsides, and life goes on, but not quite as before, for unusual phenomena begin to occur on the fringes of human existence.
Lowen Ashleigh is a struggling writer on the brink of financial ruin when she accepts the job offer of a lifetime. Jeremy Crawford, husband of bestselling author Verity Crawford, has hired Lowen to complete the remaining books in a successful series his injured wife is unable to finish. Lowen arrives at the Crawford home, ready to sort through years of Verity’s notes and outlines, hoping to find enough material to get her started. What Lowen doesn’t expect to uncover in the chaotic office is an unfinished autobiography Verity never intended for anyone to read. Page after page of bone-chilling admissions, including Verity’s recollection of what really happened the day her daughter died.
Lowen decides to keep the manuscript hidden from Jeremy, knowing its contents would devastate the already grieving father. But as Lowen’s feelings for Jeremy begin to intensify, she recognizes all the ways she could benefit if he were to read his wife’s words. After all, no matter how devoted Jeremy is to his injured wife, a truth this horrifying would make it impossible for him to continue to love her.
Between the Blade and the Heart is the first book in a brilliant new young adult fantasy duology inspired by Norse mythology by New York Times bestselling author Amanda Hocking.
As one of Odin’s Valkyries, Malin’s greatest responsibility is to slay immortals and return them to the underworld. The balance of the world rests on her ability to carry out orders. But when Malin discovers that her mother spared the life of an immortal who was destined to die, her world is thrown into chaos.
As Malin wrestles with the knowledge that her mother might not be who she thought, she’s also thrust into the path of a gorgeous blue-eyed guy named Asher who needs her help slaying the rogue immortal who destroyed his family. Malin, along with her best friend and her ex-girlfriend, must decide where her loyalties lie and whether helping Asher enact his revenge is worth the risk, to the world and to her heart.
What can a diseased brain tell us about being human, living our own lives better and helping those with dementia get the best from theirs? When Wendy Mitchell was diagnosed with young-onset dementia at the age of fifty-eight, her brain was overwhelmed with images of the last stages of the disease – those familiar tropes, shortcuts and clichés that we are fed by the media, or even our own health professionals. But her diagnosis far from represented the end of her life. Instead, it was the start of a very different one. Wise, practical and life affirming, What I Wish People Knew About Dementia combines anecdotes, research and Wendy Mitchell’s own brilliant wit and wisdom to tell readers exactly what she wishes they knew about dementia.
Eilis Lacey is Irish, married to Tony Fiorello, a plumber and one of four Italian American brothers, all of whom live in neighbouring houses on a cul-de-sac in Lindenhurst, Long Island, with their wives and children and Tony’s parents, a huge extended family that lives and works, eats and plays together. It is the spring of 1976 and Eilis, now in her forties with two teenage children, has no one to rely on in this still-new country. Though her ties to Ireland remain stronger than those that hold her to her new land and home, she has not returned in decades.
One day, when Tony is at his job and Eilis is in her home office doing her accounting, an Irishman comes to the door asking for her by name. He tells her that his wife is pregnant with Tony’s child and that when the baby is born, he will not raise it but instead deposit it on Eilis’s doorstep. It is what Eilis does and what she refuses to do in response to this stunning news that makes Tóibín’s novel so riveting.
Long Island is about longings unfulfilled, even unrecognized. The silences in Eilis’ life are thunderous and dangerous, and there’s no one defter than Tóibín at giving them language. This is a gorgeous story of a woman alone in a marriage and the deepest bonds she rekindles on her return to the place and people she left behind, to ways of living and loving she thought she’d lost.
The Horse is an epic history unlike any other. Its story begins more than 5,500 years ago on the windswept grasslands of the Eurasian Steppe. When one human tamed one horse, an unbreakable bond was forged and the future of humanity was instantly rewritten, placing the reins of destiny firmly in human hands.
Since that pivotal day, the horse has carried the fate of civilizations on its powerful back. For millennia it was the primary mode of transportation, an essential farming machine, a steadfast companion, and a formidable weapon of war. Possessing a unique combination of size, speed, strength, and stamina, the horse dominated every facet of human life and shaped the very scope of human ambition. And we still live among its galloping shadows.
From the thundering cavalry charges of Alexander the Great to the streets of New York during the Great Manure Crisis of 1894 and beyond, horses have shaped both the grand arc of history and our everyday lives. Horses revolutionized the way we hunted, traded, travelled, farmed, fought, worshipped, and interacted. They fundamentally reshaped the human genome and the world’s linguistic map. They determined international borders, moulded cultures, fuelled economies, and built global superpowers. They decided the destinies of conquerors and empires. They were vectors of lethal disease, and contributed to lifesaving medical innovations. Horses even inspired architecture, invention, furniture, and fashion.
It’s 1983 in Thatcher’s Britain. Alec Johnston has left his comfortable family home in Cardiff and taken a flat with bikers Minto, Stobes and Black. There he meets Sindy, Minto’s strange and vulnerable young girlfriend. When she starts to view Alec as a possible saviour from her abusive relationship, it earns Alec a big target on his back.
Hide takes us on a dark, unsettling journey: one that begins in a small town in Wales and continues through the vast Australian outback. As the threats get closer, Alec fears this is one journey from which he may never return.
“I need your support. There is no one else I can trust. Please help her. Please help our daughter.”
When ex-Marine Jack Ford receives a letter containing news of a daughter he never knew he had, he feels compelled to return to China, a country he hasn’t visited since 1989 when, as a young American spy, he fell in love with a beautiful student activist and found himself caught up in the horrors of the Tiananmen Square massacre. But why has Xia got in touch now, after a thirty-year silence?
On arrival in Beijing, Jack finds himself accidentally in possession of an explosive piece of information both the Chinese and American governments are desperate to get their hands on. Alone in a strange city, suspected of being a traitor by his own side, not knowing whom to trust, Jack is faced with an impossible should he save his new-found daughter or prevent a new world war from breaking out?
Tippy Chan is eleven and lives in a small town in a very quiet part of the world – the place her Uncle Pike escaped from the first chance he got as a teenager. Now Pike is back with his new boyfriend Devon to look after Tippy while her mum is on a cruise.
Tippy is in love with her uncle’s old Nancy Drew books, especially the early ones where Nancy was sixteen and did whatever she wanted. She wants to be Nancy and is desperate to solve a real mystery. When her teacher’s body is found beside Riverstone’s only traffic light, Tippy’s moment has arrived. She and her minders form The Nancys, a secret amateur detective club.
But what starts as a bonding and sightseeing adventure quickly morphs into something far more dangerous. A wrongful arrest, a close call with the murderer, and an intervention from Tippy’s mum all conspire against The Nancys. But regardless of their own safety, and despite the constant distraction of questionable fashion choices in the town that style forgot, The Nancys know only they can stop the killer from striking again.
The incredible untold story of Ann Lowe, Jackie Kennedy’s wedding dress designer, a Black woman who made some of the most famous dresses of all time, only to be forgotten by history.
1953, New York City. Less than a week before the society wedding of the year where Jacqueline Bouvier will marry John F. Kennedy, Jr, a pipe bursts at Ann Lowe’s dress shop and ruins eleven dresses, including the expensive wedding dress, a dress that will be judged by thousands. A Black designer who has fought every step of the way, Ann knows this is only one struggle after a lifetime of them. She and her seamstresses will find the way to re-create the dresses. It may take all day and all night for the next two weeks to accomplish the task, but they will do it.
1918, Tampa. Raised in Jim Crow Alabama, Ann learned the art of sewing from her mother and her grandmother, a former slave, who are the most talented seamstresses in the state. After Ann elopes at twelve with an older man who soon proves himself to be an abusive alcoholic, her dreams of becoming a celebrated designer seem to be put on hold. But then a wealthy Tampa socialite sees Ann’s talent and offers her an amazing opportunity – the chance to sew and design clothing for Florida’s society elite. Taking her young son in the middle of the night, Ann escapes her husband and embarks on the adventure of a lifetime.
Based on the true story of one of the most famous designers of the twenties through the sixties who has since been unjustly forgotten, By Her Own Design is an unforgettable novel of determination despite countless obstacles and a triumph celebrated by the world.
Here Comes the Sun is a story of succeeding in the face of adversity, about finding and following a purpose, and the potholes that can bring you unstuck. Suffering from ADHD at school, misunderstood, tormented and bullied for years, Andy McCarthy was unable to find his pack. When he dropped out in Year 10, his prospects weren’t good. He had no idea then that his personal drive and dogged determination would lead to incredible success.
At 19, Andy connected his first solar panel and suddenly found himself powered by a desire to accelerate the world’s transition to renewable energy. Where best to make that happen? Coal country, and a place that has provided Victoria with most of its energy for a century, the Latrobe Valley. From tiny beginnings in his home garage, Andy overcame a tide of ridicule, setbacks and opposition to build one of Australia’s largest employers in the renewable energy Gippsland Solar.
But his obsession took a terrible toll. When he was rushed to hospital crippled by panic attacks, Andy realised something had to give. Then, in ways that no one expected, he turned his life around again.
Bushrangers are Australian legends. Ned Kelly, Ben Hall, ‘Captain Thunderbolt,’ and their bushranging brothers are famous. They’re remembered as folk heroes and celebrated for their bravery and their ridicule of inept and corrupt authorities. But not all Australian bushrangers were white men. And not all were seen in this glowing light in their own time. In Boundary Crossers, historian Meg Foster reveals the stories of bushrangers who didn’t fit the mould. African-American man Black Douglas, who was seen as the ‘terror’ of the Victorian goldfields, Sam Poo, known as Australia’s only Chinese bushranger, Aboriginal man Jimmy Governor, who was renowned as a mass murderer, and Captain Thunderbolt’s partner, Aboriginal woman Mary Ann Bugg, whose extraordinary exploits extended well beyond her time as ‘the Captain’s Lady.’ All lived remarkable lives that were far more significant, rich, and complex than history books have led us to believe.
Human society is shaped by many things, but underlying them all is one fundamental force – our fear of death. This is the ground-breaking theory explored in Mortals.
The human mind can grapple with the future, visualising and calculating solutions to complex problems, giving us tremendous advantages over other species throughout our evolution. However, this capability comes with a curse. By five to ten years of age, all humans know where they are heading: to the grave.
In Mortals, Rachel Menzies and Ross Menzies, both acclaimed psychologists whose life’s work has focused on death anxiety, examine all the major human responses to death across history. From the development of religious systems denying the finality of death, to ‘immortality projects’ involving enduring art, architecture and literature, some of the consequences of our fear of death have been glorious while others have been destructive, leading to global conflicts and genocide.
She is a celebrated writer stranded in Paris after her French lover is killed fighting the German invasion. He is an enigmatic foreigner with a dangerous secret, fleeing Nazi-controlled Austria. Only the war could bring them together.
Armed with a precious first edition of Finnegans Wake and an even more precious stash of Chesterfield cigarettes to barter with, Eleanor Gorton Clarke joins the sea of refugees escaping the city for the Spanish frontier. But when a stranger kills two German soldiers to save her life, Eleanor is forced on the run with her mysterious rescuer, pursued by a vengeful detective from the Wehrmacht.
Two strangers from vastly different worlds, the unlikely pair despise each other at first. But as the ruthless hunt for the two fugitives escalates and they are forced to become allies to survive, a powerful attraction erupts between them. As their relentless German pursuer begins to close the net, a heartbreaking discovery forces the great romantic novelist to experience something she was supposed to know all about – the true nature of love.
In his first full-length autobiography, comedy legend and national treasure Billy Connolly reveals the truth behind his windswept and interesting life. Born in a tenement flat in Glasgow in 1942, orphaned by the age of 4, and a survivor of appalling abuse at the hands of his own family, Billy’s life is a remarkable story of success against all the odds. Billy found his escape first as an apprentice welder in the shipyards of the River Clyde. Later he became a folk musician – a ‘rambling man’ – with a genuine talent for playing the banjo. But it was his ability to spin stories, tell jokes and hold an audience in the palm of his hand that truly set him apart. As a young comedian Billy broke all the rules. He was fearless and outspoken – willing to call out hypocrisy wherever he saw it. But his stand-up was full of warmth, humility and silliness too. His startling, hairy ‘glam-rock’ stage appearance – wearing leotards, scissor suits and banana boots – only added to his appeal. It was an appearance on Michael Parkinson’s chat show in 1975 – and one outrageous story in particular – that catapulted Billy from cult hero to national star. TV shows, documentaries, international fame and award-winning Hollywood movies followed. Billy’s pitch-perfect stand-up comedy kept coming too – for over 50 years, in fact – until a double diagnosis of cancer and Parkinson’s disease brought his remarkable live performances to an end. Since then he has continued making TV shows, creating extraordinary drawings… and writing. Windswept and Interesting is Billy’s story in his own words. It is joyfully funny – stuffed full of hard-earned wisdom as well as countless digressions on fishing, farting and the joys of dancing naked. It is an unforgettable, life-affirming story of a true comedy legend. ‘I didn’t know I was Windswept and Interesting until somebody told me. It was a friend who was startlingly exotic himself. He’d just come back from Kashmir and was all billowy shirt and Indian beads. I had long hair and a beard and was swishing around in electric blue flairs. He “Look at you – all windswept and interesting!” I just “Exactly!” After that, I simply had to maintain my reputation…’
Still Alice is a compelling debut novel about a 50-year-old woman’s sudden descent into early onset Alzheimer’s disease, written by first-time author Lisa Genova, who holds a PhD in neuroscience from Harvard University.
Alice Howland, happily married with three grown children and a house on the Cape, is a celebrated Harvard professor at the height of her career when she notices a forgetfulness creeping into her life. As confusion starts to cloud her thinking and her memory begins to fail her, she receives a devastating diagnosis: early onset Alzheimer’s disease. Fiercely independent, Alice struggles to maintain her lifestyle and live in the moment, even as her sense of self is being stripped away. In turns heartbreaking, inspiring and terrifying, Still Alice captures in remarkable detail what’s it’s like to literally lose your mind.
Wendy Mitchell had a busy job with the British National Health Service, raised her two daughters alone, and spent her weekends running and climbing mountains. Then, slowly, a mist settled deep inside the mind she once knew so well, blurring the world around her. She didn’t know it then, but dementia was starting to take hold. In 2014, at age fifty-eight, she was diagnosed with young-onset Alzheimer’s.
Mitchell shares the heartrending story of her cognitive decline and how she has fought to stave it off. What lay ahead of her after the diagnosis was scary and unknowable, but Mitchell was determined and resourceful, and she vowed to outwit the disease for as long as she could.
As Mitchell learned to embrace her new life, she began to see her condition as a gift, a chance to experience the world with fresh eyes and to find her own way to make a difference. Even now, her sunny outlook persists: she devotes her time to educating doctors, caregivers, and other people living with dementia, helping to reduce the stigma surrounding this insidious disease.
What would you do if you had the chance to change a pivotal moment from your past? How far would you go to save someone you loved? These are just two of the fateful choices a woman must face in this highly original and hauntingly evocative detective story of love and loss. At the core of the enigmatic Stella’s story, past and present, is a mystery she is compelled to solve, a beautiful young woman who went missing fifty years ago and a tragedy much closer to home she must try to prevent. As Stella unravels the dark secrets of her family’s past and her own, it becomes clear that everyone remembers the past differently and the small choices we make every day can change our future irrevocably.
From the moment Lucy met her husband’s mother, Diana, she was kept at arm’s length. Diana was exquisitely polite, and properly friendly, but Lucy knew that she was not what Diana envisioned. But who could fault Diana? She was a pillar of the community, an advocate for social justice who helped female refugees assimilate to their new country. Diana was happily married to Tom, and lived in wedded bliss for decades. Lucy wanted so much to please her new mother-in-law.
That was five years ago. Now Diana has been found dead, a suicide note near her body. Diana claims that she no longer wanted to live because of a battle with cancer.
But the autopsy finds no cancer. The autopsy does find traces of poison and suffocation. Who could possibly want Diana dead? Why was her will changed at the eleventh hour to disinherit both of her adult children and their spouses?
Police corruption, an investigation that ends in tragedy and the mystery of a little girl’s silence, three unconnected things that will prove to be linked by one small town.
While Detective Cormac Reilly faces enemies at work and trouble in his personal life, Garda Peter Fisher is relocated out of Galway with the threat of prosecution hanging over his head. But even that is not as terrible as having to work for his overbearing father, the local copper in the pretty seaside town of Roundstone.
For some, like Anna and her young daughter Tilly, Roundstone is a refuge from trauma. But even this village on the edge of the sea isn’t far enough to escape from the shadows of evil men.
Just when Isabel and Jamie finally seem to have some time to connect and unwind, a wealthy Edinburgh resident reaches out to Isabel with an unusual request – he would like her to become the executor of his large Highland estate. Though Isabel initially demurs, he presses on. He has only a short time to live, and, without any direct heirs, is struggling to determine which of his three cousins would be the best caretaker. Should it go to the bohemian artist, the savvy city property developer, or the quiet, unassuming bachelor?
As if this weren’t enough to keep Isabel occupied, she’s also spending more time helping her niece Cat at the deli. Cat, perennially unlucky in love, seems to have finally found her match in the leonine Leo. But Isabel is beginning to suspect that Leo might be interested in more than Cat’s charms, namely her access to the family trust. Isabel will need to rely upon remarkable reserves of intelligence and compassion in order to give all parties exactly what they want and deserve, no more, and no less.
It is 1997, and in a basement flat in Hackney, Isla Green is awakened by a call in the middle of the night: her father phoning from Sydney. Thirty years ago, in the suffocating heat of summer 1967, the Greens’ next-door neighbour Mandy disappeared. At the time it was thought she had fled a broken marriage and gone to start a new life; but now Mandy’s family is trying to reconnect, and there is no trace of her. Isla’s father Joe was allegedly the last person to see her alive, and now he’s under suspicion of murder.
Isla unwillingly plans to go back to Australia for the first time in a decade to support her father. The return to Sydney will plunge Isla deep into the past, to a quiet street by the sea where two couples live side by side. Isla’s parents, Louisa and Joe, have recently emigrated from England, a move that has left Louisa miserably homesick while Joe embraces this new life. Next door, Steve and Mandy are equally troubled. Mandy doesn’t want a baby, even though Steve, a cop trying to hold it together under the pressures of the job, is desperate to become a father.
The more Isla asks about the past, the more she learns: about both young couples and the secrets each marriage bore. Could her father be capable of doing something terrible? How much does her mother know? What will happen to their family if Isla’s worst fears are realized? And is there another secret in this community, one which goes deeper into Australia’s colonial past, which has held them in a conspiracy of silence?