This gritty gothic horror novel of hardship and brutality contains a vile mystery that only time can solve. The Scrimshaw Marionette begins with a prologue set in 1881 on Flukesplade Island, a remote whaling station in the Tasman Sea and an...
Alan Sampson’s memoir explores parenting, education, and the dangers of pursuing a narrow concept of success. This heartfelt winner of the 2015 Finch Memoir Prize is a well-paced story of parenting and career challenges, and the crisis that drove...
My local corner shop has informed me that as a ‘small business’, it will no longer have the Sydney Morning Herald delivered. This, along with the SMH going tabloid and its shrinking size, appears to portend the demise of the daily newspaper. Some...
The author of big historical novels like Black Diamonds and Paper Daisies turns to the novella form in Wild Chicory for a very personal story. What does it take to move your family halfway around the world? Who tells the stories of ordinary people?...
David Mitchell’s new novel is a companion piece to The Bone Clocks, but also a delightful stand-alone read. Slade House began its life on Twitter as the short story ‘The Right Sort’, and as recently as 31 October 2015 Mitchell was tweeting as...
I can’t remember when I first read Wilkie Collins’s ‘sensational’ (to use the contemporary term) novel The Moonstone (1868). It would have been at some time in that ten-year-long period of intensive work as an undergraduate and postgraduate...
