by NRB | 12 Mar 2012 | The Godfather: Peter Corris |
Mad Dog: William Cyril Moxley and the Moorebank Killings is the first non-fiction book (not counting a few ‘as told to’ autobiographies and some co-edited anthologies) since my history of prize fighting in Australia, Lords of the Ring, in 1980. All fiction in between....
by NRB | 7 Mar 2012 | Fiction |
This new novel from the author of The Dressmaker features a cross-stitching cross-patch and swings between comedy and pathos. Thousands of fans embraced Rosalie Ham’s first novel, The Dressmaker, when it appeared in 2000. Set in the little country town of...
by NRB | 1 Mar 2012 | The Godfather: Peter Corris |
photo by Lorrie Graham Patrick Gallagher, the publisher at Allen & Unwin Australia, asked me some time ago if I’d ever thought of writing a novel à la Lee Child. I had to admit I hadn’t read Lee Child. I checked with Jean, who consumes eight novels a week,...
by NRB | 28 Feb 2012 | Fiction |
This debut is a sharp plunge into dark water. Bad things happen in Tasmania: from Marcus Clarke to Richard Flanagan and Carmel Bird, our novelists have been delivering stories inspired by the island’s ancient forests, wild seas and brutal history. Favel Parrett...
by NRB | 26 Feb 2012 | The Godfather: Peter Corris |
photo by Lorrie Graham My wife gave me a Kindle for my birthday. I was sceptical but willing. At first I thought to download (that is, have her download – my IT skills are few), some Conrad, Hardy and Trollope, not (shudder) Henry James. These classics are...
by NRB | 19 Feb 2012 | Crime Scene, Non-fiction |
Why watch Underbelly when this factual account of the 1970s Kiwi-led drug empire is so gripping? Richard Hall’s The Mr Asia Connection (originally published as Greed: the Mr Asia Connection in 1981) traces the rise of Terry Clark from small-time, small-town boy in New...
by NRB | 17 Feb 2012 | Fiction |
From wartime Sydney to Papua New Guinea, love, bigotry and bebop infuse Mandy Sayer’s latest novel. It’s hard to conceive of a time when there were laws in the US against whites and blacks marrying each other – though Australians can hardly be complacent: there was a...
by NRB | 17 Feb 2012 | Non-fiction |
McQueen’s sketches from Australia’s past provoke questions for the present. ‘History-making is not confined to prime ministers and generals, gold medallists and prima donnas,’ writes Humphrey McQueen, and in this broad, generous and meticulously compiled book, he...
by NRB | 11 Feb 2012 | Fiction |
Robert Drewe’s Ned Kelly gets under the skin. Nine years before Peter Carey published his Booker-winner The True History of the Kelly Gang, he gave a cover endorsement to Robert Drewe’s Our Sunshine, claiming it would ‘forever change the way we see Ned...
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