by NRB | 31 Oct 2024 | Non-fiction |
Part memoir, part guidebook, part history, Twenty-Two Impressions shows the strangeness and wonder of the tarot. In 1442, an apprentice beats sheets of gold leaf out of a coin, 100 sheets to the florin, as dictated by the guild. This gold, together with paints made...
by NRB | 29 Oct 2024 | Non-fiction |
Eric Beecher’s vital new book provides a history of world journalism, good and bad, with a pessimistic view of the future. Beecher knows his territory. In his youth he was an investigative journalist at the Melbourne Age during the glory days of Graham Perkin’s...
by NRB | 24 Oct 2024 | Fiction, SFF |
Tim Winton’s new novel dives into a post-climate-change world where violence seems the only solution. The opening of Tim Winton’s new novel Juice cannot help but put readers in mind of Cormac McCarthy’s seminal work The Road. A man, possibly an ex-soldier, and a young...
by NRB | 22 Oct 2024 | Fiction |
Emily Tsokos Purtill’s debut novel ranges across continents to tell the stories of five generations of Greek women. Sia’s quick Greek lesson: µári – máti : eye; also a small jewellery charm, usually blue with a black dot, worn to protect the...
by NRB | 17 Oct 2024 | Non-fiction |
Australia’s Covid response may have had problems, but Steven Hamilton and Richard Holden argue that our country fared far better than others. A mere four years ago our lives were turned upside down by the Covid pandemic. For the overwhelming majority of us, Covid now...
by NRB | 15 Oct 2024 | Fiction |
Pulitzer-winner Elizabeth Strout explores themes of isolation and connection in her new novel featuring two of her most-loved characters. Elizabeth Strout, author of Oliver Kitteridge, My Name is Lucy Barton and Oh William! (among others), has an ability to capture...
by NRB | 10 Oct 2024 | Fiction |
Harriet Constable’s debut novel takes inspiration from a real-life Venetian prodigy who was both a student of and rival to Vivaldi. Anna Maria della Pietà is destined for greatness. At eight, she knows it as surely as string knows bow, as lightning knows storm, as...
by NRB | 8 Oct 2024 | Non-fiction |
Opus Dei likes to operate in the shadows; Gareth Gore brings its activities – including allegations of human trafficking – into the light. In 2017 Banco Popular Español, the sixth-largest bank in Spain, collapsed. Gareth Gore, a journalist with the International...
by NRB | 3 Oct 2024 | Crime Scene, Fiction |
These two new crime thrillers from Australian writers Anna Downes and Lisa Kenway bring fresh takes to the genre. Writers groups are an increasingly popular way for new and established novelists to workshop and complete their manuscripts. It’s always been difficult...
by NRB | 2 Oct 2024 | Non-fiction |
Katherine Wiles’ life as a professional opera singer seems glossed with sunshine in this memoir. You will sing and it will work out. You will find your place in the world. Just keep knocking on all those doors. Katherine Wiles has always had this voice in her head,...
by NRB | 1 Oct 2024 | Fiction |
Memories are not merely recounted in Antonia Pont’s novella. How would you like to share someone else’s memories? No, not to just listen to them or read them, but to experience them, to be where they were, do what they were doing, hear what they heard (voices, birds,...
by NRB | 26 Sep 2024 | Fiction, SFF |
Spies, magic, intrigue, and the human cost of an expanding empire all feature in Australian author Alina Bellchambers’ debut fantasy. Growing up on the run from mysterious criminals with her mother, Mira has always dreamed of having safety and stability; of being able...
JUNE WRIGHT Mother Paul series. Reviewed by Karen Chisholm6 December 2024June Wright has faded from view, but in 1948 her novel Murder in the Telephone [ … ]
ANDREW O’HAGAN Caledonian Road. Reviewed by Catherine Pardey5 December 2024This new novel from the author of Mayflies is set in London, but Glasgow is [ … ]
IAIN RYAN The Dream. Reviewed by Ben Ford Smith3 December 2024Iain Ryan’s latest novel continues his fascination with 1980s Queensland and [ … ]
MARINA YUSZCZUK Thirst. Reviewed by Ann Skea28 November 2024Argentinian writer Marina Yuszczuk puts her twist on the vampire novel in [ … ]