by NRB | 12 Apr 2024 | Fiction, Flashback Friday |
It’s Flashback Friday: Jessica Stewart reviews Robinne Lee’s 2017 novel of an older woman and a younger man which is getting renewed attention thanks to a film adaptation. Is there a right way to love? In a thousand ways we are told what is acceptable, ethical,...
by NRB | 11 Apr 2024 | Crime Scene, Fiction |
A new crime novel by Garry Disher is always exciting. In Sanctuary, he introduces a new protagonist: a female lone wolf. Meet Grace. She’s a very good thief, having been taught by experts and practising since she was a kid. Specialising in small, high-value...
by NRB | 9 Apr 2024 | Fiction, SFF |
In Travis Baldree’s latest fantasy novel, his warrior’s quest is not to slay dragons but to save a failing bookstore. Travis Baldree’s second novel can be enjoyed as a standalone or as the prequel to his bestselling Legends and Lattes. If you don’t already adore Viv,...
by NRB | 4 Apr 2024 | Crime Scene, Fiction |
Donna M Cameron’s second novel is both a fast-paced tale of a whistleblower on the run, and a paean to the beauty of the natural world. The instant he ruins his life a vision of his mother explodes in his head. He can’t see her face, yet he knows she is smiling....
by NRB | 26 Mar 2024 | Crime Scene, Fiction |
In Sulari Gentill’s new novel, aspiring writer Theo and her brother Gus become embroiled in increasingly bizarre conspiracy theories. The Mystery Writer is the latest book by the prolific and always intriguing Australian author Sulari Gentill. Set in the USA, as her...
by NRB | 21 Mar 2024 | Fiction |
Liam Murphy’s debut novel is both a road trip across the US and a journey into the past. It’s tempting to invoke the first stanza of Philip Larkin’s famous poem ‘This Be The Verse’ here. That’s because The Roadmap of Loss is about unresolved childhood psychological...
by NRB | 20 Mar 2024 | Fiction |
Through the story of Matilda, Robyn Bishop’s novel reveals the constrained lives of women in rural New South Wales in the late 1800s. It is July 1892 and Matilda is just old enough to help Clara out of her cot, change her nappy and dress her, but not old enough to...
by NRB | 19 Mar 2024 | Fiction |
In this new novel, New Yorker Michael Cunningham takes inspiration from lockdowns and their impact on relationships. In his most recent novel, Day, Michael Cunningham takes on the difficult business of fictionalising the Covid experience. In his Pulitzer-winning novel...
by NRB | 13 Mar 2024 | Fiction |
Tracy Ryan’s latest novel evokes the social divisions of sixteenth-century France and the stories of two independent-minded women. In The Queen’s Apprenticeship, Tracy Ryan tells the stories of two women. One, Jehane/Josse, the daughter of a journeyman printer who...
by NRB | 12 Mar 2024 | Crime Scene, Fiction |
The new novel from the author of The Spiral and The Student delivers a noir excursion into the underbelly of the Gold Coast in the 1980s. Steeped in corruption, incompetence, and alcohol, 1980s Queensland seems like the perfect setting for a distinctly Australian...
by NRB | 7 Mar 2024 | Fiction |
Susan McCreery’s novel recounts the lives of the residents of a block of flats in 1990s Bondi and the complexities of love. A few short sentences and a scene is set, a mood caught, a character revealed: all this is beautifully done. Then short passages are linked...
by NRB | 5 Mar 2024 | Fiction |
The new novel from the award-winning author of Too Much Lip entwines Brisbane’s past and present to reveal the impact of colonisation. As I was reading it, Edenglassie received the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for Fiction. It is an ambitious novel and as I read...
ANNA DOWNES Red River Road and LISA KENWAY All You Took From Me. Reviewed by Justine Ettler3 October 2024These two new crime thrillers from Australian writers Anna Downes and Lisa [ … ]
KATHERINE WILES No Autographs Please. Reviewed by Sally Nimon2 October 2024Katherine Wiles’ life as a professional opera singer seems glossed with [ … ]
ANTONIA PONT The Memory Library. Reviewed by Ann Skea1 October 2024Memories are not merely recounted in Antonia Pont’s novella. How would you like [ … ]
ALINA BELLCHAMBERS The Order of Masks. Reviewed by Amelia Dudley26 September 2024Spies, magic, intrigue, and the human cost of an expanding empire all feature [ … ]