JUAN GABRIEL VÁSQUEZ The Sound of Things Falling. Reviewed by Rosana Bouzas
This mystery is set in a Columbia emerging from the drug wars and haunted by memory and loss. The Sound of Things Falling, a noir fiction account of Colombia’s drug wars and their devastating legacy, is at once a tormented chronicle of survival and a beautifully...Crime Scene: REBECCA JAMES Sweet Damage. Reviewed by Karen Chisholm
Things that go bump in the night add to the suspense in this cautionary tale of young adult friendships. Marketed as Young Adult, Sweet Damage is the second novel from Rebecca James delving into the nature of friendship and relationships in a way that works for older...NIGEL FEATHERSTONE I’m Ready Now. Reviewed by Walter Mason
A nuanced and thoroughly original novella about the special link between mother and son. A newly widowed Tasmanian woman travels to Sydney to start a new life and begins her journey in the in-between space of her gay son’s stark one-bedroom flat in the inner...NOVIOLET BULAWAYO We Need New Names. Reviewed by Morgan Smith
From Mugabe’s Zimbabwe to the United States – a poignant novel of gaining a life and losing a country. As more and more people are forced to leave their homelands, the literature of the diaspora becomes more diverse and interesting. NoViolet Bulawayo is a...JENNIFER MILLS The Rest is Weight. Reviewed by James Tierney
These short stories from the edge reveal the things we learn not to mention. A man I once knew, when attending his grandchildren’s birthdays, liked to tell the following joke: ‘We are born into this life wailing, raw and angry. And then it gets worse.’...DUNCAN LAY Valley of Shields: Empire of Bones Two. Reviewed by Folly Gleeson
This fast-paced epic fantasy has plenty of Machiavellian twists and poses some deeper questions. Book Two of Duncan Lay’s Empire of Bones trilogy opens with an emotionally devastated Rhiannon trying to deal with a series of powerful shocks. She has found that the men...RICHARD BEASLEY Me and Rory Macbeath. Reviewed by Linda Funnell
No, it’s not OK to hit your wife: this coming of age story has a devastating heart. It’s summer, 1977, when 12-year-old Jake and his best friend Robbie meet Rory Macbeath, whose family have just moved from Glasgow to their suburban Adelaide street. Rory may not be...LAUREN BEUKES The Shining Girls. Reviewed by Jean Bedford
This intriguing and original time-travelling thriller is not for the faint-hearted. Lauren Beukes is known for her genre-bending. Her first novel, Moxyland (2008), was a futuristic cyber-punk story combined with social realism and her second, Zoo City (2010),...PATRICK NESS The Crane Wife. Reviewed by Paula Grunseit
An ancient folk tale reworked in modern London provides a meditation on memory and the creative spirit. A story never ends at the end. There is always after … No, a story is not an explanation, it is a net, a net through which the truth flows. The net catches some of...JOHN LE CARRÉ A Delicate Truth. Reviewed by Peter Corris
Le Carré’s espionage fiction remains in a class of its own. John le Carré’s The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1963) created a new kind of espionage fiction and set a standard only ever equalled by le Carré himself in some of the other books featuring the mild...RUPERT THOMSON Secrecy. Reviewed by Folly Gleeson
Seventeenth-century Florence comes alive in this intricately plotted story of a wax sculptor’s unusual commission. This elegant novel is set in Florence in the last decade of the 17th century. It’s the story of Zummo, a sculptor who uses wax as his medium...
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