LINDY CAMERON Redback. Reviewed by Linda Funnell

A girls’-own-adventure with the lot. A beautiful-yet-deadly commander of a crack retrieval team; terrorists of US, European, Arabic and Asian strains; high-tech comms systems implanted into earlobes; assault helicopters; conspiracies; multiple explosions … Add a frank...

MARGO LANAGAN Sea Hearts. Reviewed by Linda Funnell

A vibrant and imaginative fable of magic and tragedy. Sea hearts are a type of shellfish that children gather for their mothers along the blustery shores of Rollrock Island: Some folk ate the best hearts raw, particularly mams; they drank up the liquor inside, and if...

ROBERT DREWE Our Sunshine. Reviewed by Linda Funnell

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...