by NRB | 5 Nov 2024 | Crime Scene, Fiction |
The author of Everyone In My Family Has Killed Someone returns with another witty homage to the Golden Age of crime fiction. There’s a whiff of unseriousness around some whodunnits. Many readers still think of the form as stuck in detective fiction’s Golden Age with...
by NRB | 16 Nov 2023 | Crime Scene, Fiction |
Actor and Australian icon Bryan Brown brings his laconic style to his first full-length crime novel. The Drowning is set on the northern beaches of New South Wales in a small town that is mostly occupied by surfers, retirees, outsiders and backpackers. But with the...
by NRB | 26 Sep 2023 | Non-fiction |
From the ancient megalodon to Jaws, Big Meg feeds our fascination with huge and dangerous marine creatures. I was fascinated by the prospect of Big Meg: The story of the largest and most mysterious predator that ever lived, but I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. I...
by NRB | 7 Feb 2023 | Fiction |
This insider’s satire of university life is no advertisement for an academic career. The premise of John Dale’s new novel is simple, age-old even: ambitious young thing gets dream job – but discovers that, in reality, it’s closer to a nightmare. The book opens with a...
by NRB | 24 Nov 2022 | Fiction, SFF |
Australian Shelley Parker-Chan’s historical fantasy has won a Hugo Award for Best New Writer and two British Fantasy Awards. Shelley Parker Chan’s debut novel reimagines the rise to power of the first emperor of the Ming Dynasty in fourteenth-century China. During the...
by NRB | 22 Nov 2022 | Fiction |
Sean Prescott’s second novel recounts an escape to the country – or does it? ‘No Australian under 50 has seen a time like this in their adult lives,’ declared a recent op-ed on Black Swan events. That’s one possible way into this intense, Jungian novel. Bon and...
by NRB | 21 Sep 2021 | Fiction |
Ben Ford Smith talks to the author of The Glass Harpoon about being longlisted for this year’s ARA Historical Novel Prize and South Australia’s history. After its inaugural year in 2020, the ARA Historical Novel Prize is already Australasia’s richest genre...
by NRB | 16 Sep 2021 | Fiction |
Charlotte McConaghy follows up her international bestseller The Last Migration with a story of wolves and the Scottish Highlands. When I was eight, Dad cut me open from throat to stomach. Such a dramatic first line promises a dramatic story and Once There Were Wolves...
by NRB | 2 Sep 2021 | Crime Scene, Fiction |
The fourth book in Robert Gott’s ‘Murders’ series frees its cast from the constraints of the newly formed Homicide Squad and plunges them straight into a baffling case that threatens many of their number. Readers who are new to this series might be fine starting...
by NRB | 15 Jun 2021 | Fiction |
Michael Mohammed Ahmad completes an enthralling trilogy of autofiction with The Other Half of You, his third novel. These three books portray the young life of Bani Adam, Ahmad’s alter ego, who is also a Muslim Arab-Australian writer from Western Sydney. Bani is in...
by NRB | 20 Aug 2020 | Fiction, SFF |
Truel1f3 delivers a satisfying conclusion to Jay Kristoff’s dystopian Lifel1k3 series, a tale of love, sacrifice and betrayal. ‘You built a world on metal backs. Held together by metal hands. And one day soon, those hands will close. And they’ll become fists.’...
by NRB | 4 Dec 2014 | Fiction |
A man’s past and his complex emotional relationships unravel against a background of Indian history and the Tampa affair. The Last Candles of the Night is the story of Phillip, an expatriate Australian who in 1950 had been headmaster (and the...
CHER The Memoir Part 1. Reviewed by Naomi Manuell16 January 2025Cher is a genuine superstar who has had an extraordinary career across music, [ … ]
PETER GODWIN Exit Wounds. Reviewed by Ann Skea15 January 2025Peter Godwin’s memoir charts a life of exile, ranging from the horror of civil [ … ]
MARK SMITH Three Boys Gone. Reviewed by Michael Jongen14 January 2025Mark Smith’s first novel for adults is both a psychological thriller and an [ … ]
NRB readers’ favourite reviews of 202419 December 2024Welcome to our most popular reviews of the year. Is your favourite among them? [ … ]