LOUISA DEASEY A Letter from Paris. Reviewed by Jeannette Delamoir
In this search for her father, Louisa Deasey affirms the value of love, generosity, and – crucially – encourages thinking about what a successful life really is. Louisa Deasey’s father, Denison Deasey, died when she was a child. With only one photograph of them...
LIANE MORIARTY Nine Perfect Strangers. Reviewed by Sally Nimon
In her latest novel the bestselling author of Big Little Lies takes a group of disparate strangers into a health retreat that may not be quite what it seems. Nine Perfect Strangers is the latest release from Australian author Liane Moriarty, known to many through...
CLARE PAYNE One: Valuing the single life. Reviewed by Shelley McInnis
One is driven by a keen sense of social justice, and an intolerance of all the ways in which society devalues those who, for various reasons, live alone. If this is the age of single living, as Ita Buttrose proclaims on the cover of this book by Clare Payne, it...
HEATHER MORRIS The Tattooist of Auschwitz. Reviewed by Clare O’Brien
The Tattooist of Auschwitz gives a harrowing insight into how a person might survive and how love persists in the darkest of places. Beyond the yard, disappearing into the darkness, is a further compound. The tops of the fences are lined with razor wire. Up in...KIRSTY MANNING The Jade Lily. Reviewed by Kim Kelly
Through the lens of friendship and romance The Jade Lily traces the way war smashes and transforms identity and truth. Sometimes the secrets we keep are gifts of love, and it’s this kind of refreshingly unvarnished love that sits at the heart of Kirsty Manning’s...
KIM KELLY Lady Bird and the Fox. Reviewed by Jessica Stewart
An Australian Pride and Prejudice? This love story spans race and class in colonial Australia. In Kim Kelly’s new novel, her seventh, a simple scaffold of romantic historical fiction allows for a more sophisticated commentary on race, privilege and the place...
LAUREN CHATER The Lace Weaver. Reviewed by Sally Nimon
In The Lace Weaver the narrative twists and turns like the weave of the lace at its core. ‘Estonia has five seasons’, we are told in the opening lines of The Lace Weaver, the debut novel from Sydney writer Lauren Chater. There are the usual four that most...
WENDY SCARFE The Day They Shot Edward. Reviewed by Kim Kelly
A slim volume but vast in scope, The Day They Shot Edward is a novel that asks who the grownups really are. Beautifully original historical fiction, The Day They Shot Edward is an intricately layered story of life and death and love set in Australia during the First...
ADA LANGTON The Art of Preserving Love. Reviewed by Kim Kelly
Ada Langton’s The Art of Preserving Love is a carefully controlled, rambling rose bush of a tale. From the opening chapter title of this delightful debut, it’s clear this is historical fiction told with warmth and a hint of mischief: Early in the...
ANNA GEORGE The Lone Child. Reviewed by Karen Chisholm
The Lone Child focusses on character development, imbued with sadness, longing, regret and loss. Following on from her stunning debut novel, What Came Before, Anna George has created another claustrophobic and compelling character study of somebody struggling with the...
EMMA VISKIC And Fire Came Down. Reviewed by Karen Chisholm
Emma Viskic explores difference, and its consequences, in this sequel to Resurrection Bay. Even before Viskic’s debut novel Resurrection Bay won the 2016 Ned Kelly Award for Best First Fiction and an unprecedented three Davitt Awards, readers were impatiently...
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