SAMANTHA SHANNON The Bone Season. Reviewed by Folly Gleeson
The Bone Season offers a parallel future of clairvoyants and alien races in a complex and vibrant thriller. This is a very grim story threaded with startlingly good flashes of originality. That is not to say that brave young women, invading aliens and mind...FIONA MCFARLANE The Night Guest. Reviewed by Kylie Mason
This mesmerising and suspenseful novel examines isolation, trust and the vagaries of memory. Ruth Field and her cats reside in a house set among the dunes on the New South Wales South Coast. Ruth is a widow who lives a self-contained life, her hours and days filled by...The Godfather: Peter Corris on the changing foodscape
My eight-year-old grandson has recently expressed a preference for snow peas over avocado when required to eat something green. His young brother has stuck with avocado. Another grandson enjoys lashings of parmesan cheese on his spaghetti bolognaise while his cousin...MATT MURPHY Weight of Evidence. Reviewed by Linda Funnell
Forgery, drunkenness, prejudice, injustice – the notorious Newtown Ejectment Case of the 1850s provides a fascinating slice of colonial life. Scandalous land deals are nothing new in New South Wales. The Newtown Ejectment case ran for 10 years in the middle of the...ROSS FITZGERALD and KEN SPILLMAN (eds) Australia’s Game: Stories, Essays, Verse & Drama Inspired by the Australian Game of Football. Reviewed by Nicole Hayes
Footy – for spectators and participants – has the power to connect and the power to crush. There’s much to love in this book. As a lifelong footy fan, I hunted through this collection for the things that interest me most: stories written by or...The Godfather: Peter Corris on his favourite western films
Of my three favourite western films,* one was based on a novel, one was an adaptation of a foreign film and one was an original screenplay. In chronological order they are: 1 The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948). Based on the 1927 novel by the mysterious and...EVELYN CONLON Not the Same Sky. Reviewed by Candida Baker
Evelyn Conlon sidesteps the traps of historical fiction in this moving story of four young Irishwomen sent to Australia during the Great Famine. ‘Australia without the Irish would be unimaginable. Australia without the Irish would be unthinkable. Australia without the...Crime Scene: DAVID WHISH-WILSON Zero at the Bone; STUART LITTLEMORE Harry Curry, Rats and Mice. Reviewed by Karen Chisholm
Frank Swann PI moves through the wild and sometimes dangerous world of 1970s mining-boom-town Perth, and in the law courts of Sydney, Harry Curry rests his case. In Zero at the Bone, the second book in this series, Frank Swann has moved more sideways than on. Working...The Godfather: Peter Corris on election day 2013
I was worried about voting. My eyesight is poor and I’d heard that the ballot paper for the Senate, as well as being a metre long, was in 12-point print. There was talk of magnifying glasses being available but I took one of mine along (I keep one in my work room and...TERRY PRATCHETT and STEPHEN BAXTER The Long War. Reviewed by Folly Gleeson
Humans, trolls, bad governments and parallel worlds: Pratchett and Baxter offer a rich cast of characters and provocative ideas in their latest novel. There is so much going on in this sequel to The Long Earth that it is a wonder the authors can hold it...ROBERT MACKLIN Dark Paradise: Norfolk Island – Isolation, Savagery, Mystery and Murder. Reviewed by Peter Corris
From convicts to mutineers to modern scandals, Robert Macklin taps the history of Norfolk Island. Robert Macklin has successfully woven together the stories of the early settlement of New South Wales, the history of the penal colony on Norfolk Island and later...
Recent Posts
2026 Summer Surprise Giveaway12 February 2026Surprise! Here’s a very special giveaway of four recent novels. Take your [ … ]
WRIGHT THOMPSON The Barn: The murder of Emmett Till and the cradle of American racism. Reviewed by Braham Dabscheck10 February 2026Wright Thompson’s account of the 1950s murder of a Black teenager in [ … ]
JOSHUA BLACKBURN The Language-Lover’s Lexipedia. Reviewed by Ann Skea5 February 2026Joshua Blackburn has compiled a treasure-trove of the humorous, the obscure, [ … ]
MARIAN WILKINSON Woodside vs The Planet: How a company captured a country. Reviewed by Braham Dabscheck3 February 2026Australian governments are addicted to fossil-fuel exports that harm the [ … ]