Crime Scene: ROBERT GALBRAITH The Cuckoo’s Calling. Reviewed by Jean Bedford
This is an accomplished and complex crime novel from the alter-ego of J K Rowling. The draft of this review was written before I knew ‘Robert Galbraith’ was the pseudonym of J K Rowling. The knowledge hasn’t changed my opinion of the book, but it...The Godfather: Peter Corris on Radio National
I calculate that I listen to the radio for about 20 hours a week and to only one station – Radio National. Virtually my first action in the morning, after the obvious, is to turn on Fran Kelly’s breakfast program. I listen for about an hour, catching a couple of news...KERRY-ANNE WALSH The Stalking of Julia Gillard: How the Media and Team Rudd Contrived to Bring Down the Prime Minister. Reviewed by Linda Funnell
Leaks, rumours, polls and deniability: Kerry-Anne Walsh paints an ugly picture of Kevin Rudd’s road back to the prime ministership. This book, which details the covert media campaign run by Kevin Rudd and his supporters over the course of the Gillard government, went...EMMA NEWMAN Any Other Name: Book Two of The Split Worlds. Reviewed by Folly Gleeson
Mirrored worlds of urban and traditional fantasy meet in this richly intriguing and inventive series. In all good fantasy it is the edges and borders that throw up the most exciting stories, rather like the way the edges of tectonic plates throw up volcanoes, and the...The Godfather: Peter Corris on druthers
Champion sportspeople are often asked what they would have liked to be were they not the footballers, golfers or swimmers they are. Golfer Nick Faldo, for example, said he would have liked to be a racing-car driver. Sterling Moss said he’d have fancied being a...Crime Scene: ANNIE HAUXWELL A Bitter Taste; ALEX HAMMOND Blood Witness. Reviewed by Karen Chisholm
The second in a series set in London and a debut legal thriller show some of the exciting variety of Australian crime fiction on offer. In A Bitter Taste, Catherine Berlin, still suffering from the injuries incurred in In Her Blood (2012), has been fired from her job...KIRSTEN KRAUTH just_a_girl. Reviewed by Michelle McLaren
More than a coming-of-age story, this novel is a meditation on loneliness in the age of social media. I see him from the train as it pulls in at Newcastle. He’s not bad enough to make me run away. But he’s older than I thought. Old enough to be my …...The Godfather: Peter Corris on lost expressions
A Sunday birthday lunch, old and young gathered around the table. A child asks an adult what she’s doing when it’s perfectly obvious what she’s doing. ‘Making a wigwam for a goose’s bridal,’ she says, not unkindly. Some of us nod sagely, others look puzzled....ANNIE COSSINS The Baby Farmers. Reviewed by Linda Funnell
Sydney in the 1890s: shame, syphilis and infanticide. If you were unmarried and pregnant, or married and unable to afford another child, you had very few choices in Sydney in the late 1800s. There was no contraception, no safe abortion, no support for poor families...M JOHN HARRISON Light: Book One of the Kefahuchi Tract. Reviewed by Keith Stevenson
Hallucinatory, worldly and entertaining science fiction with a lot to say about the human condition. Michael Kearny is a particle physicist working on developing quantum computing. He’s also a serial killer haunted by a horse-headed apparition he calls the Shrander....The Godfather: Peter Corris re cycling
When I was very young, say seven or eight, my father worked in Bruce Small’s bike shop in Moonee Ponds, the north-western Melbourne suburb made famous by Barry Humphries. We lived in Yarraville in the inner-west, and one day I was astonished to see my father, trouser...
Recent Posts
LYNNE OLSON The Sisterhood of Ravensbrück. Reviewed by Ann Skea10 July 2025Lynne Olson documents how, within the horror of a Nazi concentration camp, the [ … ]
SARAH GILBERT Unconventional Women: The story of the last Blessed Sacrament Sisters in Australia. Reviewed by Suzanne Marks8 July 2025Sarah Gilbert’s account of this religious order offers a rare insight into the [ … ]
JENNIFER MILLS Salvage. Reviewed by Robert Goodman3 July 2025The new novel from the author of Dyschronia and The Airways is climate fiction [ … ]
BELINDA LYONS-LEE The Haunting of Mr and Mrs Stevenson. Reviewed by Ann Skea1 July 2025The new novel from the author of Tussaud imagines what might have inspired [ … ]