by NRB | 12 Mar 2013 | Crime Scene, Fiction, Non-fiction |
History, mystery, truth and fiction; these two books expose the underbelly of south-east Queensland. In complete control of the genre, Matt Condon adds his own secret herbs and spices to his collection of murder mysteries: an uncanny knack for writing great...
by NRB | 7 Mar 2013 | Fiction |
This sure, funny novel of an Indigenous woman and her land is alive with the tensions of new ways of belonging. Meaning is a messy act. Its fusing of memory, testimony and narrative is a selective one that shapes cadence and line out of life’s awkward arrhythmia....
by NRB | 28 Feb 2013 | Fiction |
Three women battle the elements, men and each other in the quest to be the first to set foot on Antarctica. Ingrid Christensen has lived the last twenty years waiting for her husband, Lars, to make good on his promise to take her to Antarctica. In that time, Ingrid...
by NRB | 26 Feb 2013 | Crime Scene, Fiction |
This novel of murder and military intelligence in wartime Melbourne is inspired by history. While The Holiday Murders isn’t, sadly, a new William Powell book, Robert Gott has delivered another masterful crime novel steeped in Australia’s past. It’s...
by NRB | 19 Feb 2013 | Crime Scene, Fiction |
This dystopian Finnish crime novel is well above the ordinary. The Healer is set in Finland in the near future of drastic climate change. Floods, earthquakes and disease have ravaged most of the world, causing widespread cultural upheaval, the disintegration of...
by NRB | 7 Feb 2013 | Crime Scene, Fiction |
The lives of paramedics entwine with a police investigation to remind us just how good Australian crime writing can be. Web of Deceit, the sixth book by ex-paramedic Katherine Howell featuring Detective Ella Marconi, continues to build a solid, clever...
by NRB | 4 Feb 2013 | Fiction |
Greaves channels Cormac McCarthy in this compelling Depression-era novel of a couple on the run. If, like me, you’ve been waiting impatiently for Cormac McCarthy’s novel The Passenger, which is said to be ‘forthcoming’, Hard Twisted will do until it gets here. The...
by Jean Bedford | 31 Jan 2013 | Crime Scene, Fiction |
The anatomy student, the coma victim – and a satisfying new direction from Belinda Bauer. I have to admit I was disappointed to find that the new Belinda Bauer wasn’t a continuation of the Jonas Holly series, but I was soon immersed in the very different world created...
by NRB | 22 Jan 2013 | Fiction, SFF |
Inventive and page-turning, this dystopian tale turns on a society’s clash of values. This is the kind of science fiction that is very close to realism. Hugh Howey deals with a very believable dystopia, where humanity lives in a vast silo set in an environment...
by NRB | 15 Jan 2013 | Fiction |
From colonialism to the internet, Michelle de Kretser explores big themes in this tale of two travellers. Australian literary fiction is sometimes accused of lacking ambition. Michelle de Kretser’s fourth novel attempts to defy this criticism with a palimpsest of...
by NRB | 8 Jan 2013 | Fiction |
Alex Miller makes Sunday Reed a lesser woman for the sake of art. In an enthusiastic review of Alex Miller’s novel Autumn Laing in the Australian Book Review, Morag Fraser worried that, as the novel draws ‘freely on the lives of [Sidney] Nolan and the Heide circle’,...
by NRB | 17 Dec 2012 | Fiction |
Desolation and isolation haunt two families living decades apart on the bleakest of California’s Channel Islands On New Year’s Day, 1888, Marantha Waters arrives on San Miguel island, off the Californian coast, with her husband, Will, daughter, Edith, and maid, Ida....
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 [ … ]