World building is the real star of Lotus Blue, the debut science fiction novel for Australian author Cat Sparks. Very quickly in this novel Sparks creates a vision of a future Australia – an already ancient land – that’s further weighed down by...
At the start of every week I run my eye along the offerings of Foxtel’s History Channel hoping to see a program that will interest me. Mostly, but not always, I find something. Back when I first got pay TV (we were living in the country then, when...
Scoundrel Days takes the reader into each unfolding moment of Frazer’s getting of wisdom. Brentley Frazer has changed names in this memoir to protect the privacy of particular individuals, but every word of it rings true. Children who grew up...
We have a copy of Jane Rawson’s new novel From the Wreck to give away. To go in the draw, simply email us at editors@newtownreviewofbooks.com.au with WRECK in the subject line and your name and address in the body of the email by 6pm Thursday...
Jane Rawson’s new novel has its feet planted in the earth as well as in the ocean and the stars. Rawson says that she began this book as an attempt to record and make sense of historical facts from her family’s past. She knew that her...
In 1986, when Jean was working as a commissioning editor for Transworld Publishing, she recommended a book to me. It was an historical novel by Robert Goddard, published that year. The title was Past Caring and the publishers, who had some of their...
