by NRB | 10 Oct 2023 | Non-fiction |
Kate Fullagar puts the lives of Wangal man Bennelong and Governor Arthur Phillip into a larger context beyond the brief years they spent together. What we regard as the modern history of Australia commenced with Britain establishing a colony in New South Wales in...
by NRB | 5 Oct 2023 | Crime Scene, Fiction |
A dementia diagnosis reveals clues to a decades-old mystery in this new novel from the author of The Secrets of Strangers – Charity Norman’s third to be shortlisted for NZ’s Ngaio Marsh Awards. In June 1994, 21-year old Emily Kirkland had been working at a petrol...
by NRB | 3 Oct 2023 | Fiction |
Briohny Doyle’s third novel explores the impact of multiple losses in a single life, exacerbated by the effects of the pandemic. ‘What should survive and how? And how do you know when survival has transpired?’ This is the central question posed in Why We Are Here, the...
by NRB | 28 Sep 2023 | Fiction |
Set in New York, Anna Kate Blair’s debut novel explores the art of curation, sexuality, modernism, and knowing one’s own mind. This is a novel to savour, its language crystalline, its acute observations tumbling one after the other. In the opening paragraph,...
by NRB | 26 Sep 2023 | Non-fiction |
From the ancient megalodon to Jaws, Big Meg feeds our fascination with huge and dangerous marine creatures. I was fascinated by the prospect of Big Meg: The story of the largest and most mysterious predator that ever lived, but I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. I...
by NRB | 21 Sep 2023 | Non-fiction |
In this account of Ben Roberts-Smith’s defamation case, Chris Masters also examines the mental health challenges faced by veterans. Let us begin with the proposition that war is madness, and explore it through the lens of a particular soldier named Ben Roberts-Smith....
by NRB | 19 Sep 2023 | Crime Scene, Fiction |
Fast paced, heart-wrenching, darkly comic, Dominic Hoey’s new crime novel is dark and unrelenting. Do you remember when I was a hero, Eddy? Back when everyone thought I saved you, before my face looked like a broken dinner plate. Mt Albert girl, 15, rescues brother...
by NRB | 14 Sep 2023 | Crime Scene, Fiction |
Chris Womersley’s latest novel explores the intersection of the supernatural and the suburban in this coming of age story. Australian author Chris Womersley has an eclectic back catalogue; even his two connected novels – Cairo and The Diplomat – are very...
by NRB | 12 Sep 2023 | Fiction |
Part literary romance, part cultural odyssey, Doll’s Eye is a lively challenge to the tropes of contemporary Australian Holocaust fiction. Author, physician, Jew, lover of science, nature and language: these bright strands of Leah Kaminsky’s real-life identity...
by NRB | 7 Sep 2023 | Crime Scene, Fiction |
Steeped in a sense of culture, people and place, Blood Matters is crime fiction set at the heart of a family and community. Author Renée is a towering figure in New Zealand. A legendary playwright, novelist and activist, Renée is of Māori (Ngāti Kahungunu), Irish,...
by NRB | 5 Sep 2023 | Non-fiction |
Anna Funder reveals the significant and unacknowledged contribution of Mrs Orwell to the famous writer’s career. Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them … The process has to be...
by NRB | 31 Aug 2023 | Crime Scene, Fiction |
Set in Florence in 1537, The Darkest Sin is the second novel featuring Cesare Aldo, an officer of the feared Otto di Guardia e Balia. This series currently includes The City of Vengeance and The Darkest Sin, with a third volume, Ritual of Fire, on the way. The first...
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 [ … ]