LIA HILLS The Crying Place. Reviewed by Michelle McLaren
The Crying Place is a big novel that juggles even bigger ideas. For the first time in his life, Saul, a drifter, has remained in the same place for nearly a year. He has a steady job, and he’s renting a tiny Sydney apartment, its door marked with scratches left behind...
ASHLEY HAY A Hundred Small Lessons. Reviewed by Jeannette Delamoir
Ashley Hay’s new novel gives us warm, affectionate portraits of people and place in a story that shifts between past and present. Longlisted for the 2014 Miles Franklin Award, Ashley Hay’s previous novel, The Railwayman’s Wife, was a love letter to Thirroul. A...
CLAIRE CORBETT Watch Over Me. Reviewed by Sally Nimon
This is a powerful portrayal of what can happen in war and in the skilful hands of Claire Corbett the message is clear: there but for the grace of God … The world is at war. It always has been. Our sense of security is an illusion. At any moment, on any day, in...
Crime Scene: CAROLINE OVERINGTON The Lucky One. Reviewed by Robin Elizabeth
In Caroline Overington’s new thriller, the Aldens don’t just have a skeleton in their closet, they have a whole castle full. Caroline Overington’s 11th book, The Lucky One, is a dysfunctional-family crime-farce and she has spared nothing in her depictions. It...
NATASHA LESTER A Kiss from Mr Fitzgerald. Reviewed by Robin Elizabeth
This new novel from Natasha Lester is best read with gin and jazz. Natasha Lester gives us all the glitz and glamour of classic romance in her third novel, a work of romantic women’s fiction that takes us back in time to the 1920s. There is gin, there is dancing, but...
RUTH QUIBELL The Promise of Things. Reviewed by Ashley Kalagian Blunt
Ruth Quibell’s The Promise of Things offers a pathway to ‘an intelligent life with things’. We’re surrounded by things. Our own things, other people’s things, necessary things, beloved things, things we cannot wait to be rid of. Our heads are filled...
SUE WOOLFE Do You Love Me Or What? Reviewed by Carmel Bird
These short stories from Sue Woolfe offer alienation, yearning and brilliance. The final story in this collection of eight pieces is an extract from the personal papers of an unnamed fiction writer, with footnotes by Professor Amelia Broughton, who has prepared an...
JANE RAWSON From the Wreck. Reviewed by Linda Godfrey
Jane Rawson’s new novel has its feet planted in the earth as well as in the ocean and the stars. Rawson says that she began this book as an attempt to record and make sense of historical facts from her family’s past. She knew that her...
ROANNA GONSALVES The Permanent Resident. Reviewed by Suzanne Marks
Roanna Gonsalves’s 16 short stories reveal the aspirations, guilt, and perils of what it is to be an Indian immigrant in Australia in the 21st century. Gonsalves herself came to Australia in 1998 as an international student and pursued her studies while working...
JULIET MARILLIER Den of Wolves: Blackthorn & Grim #3. Reviewed by Folly Gleeson
Juliet Marillier’s fine new fairy tale weaves stories within stories in complex and riveting ways. This is the third volume to follow the adventures of the healer Blackthorn and her friend and companion Grim, set in the northern Irish part of Dalriada, a sixth...
GEORGINA ARNOTT The Unknown Judith Wright. Reviewed by Jeannette Delamoir
Arnott reveals the literary growth of an important Australian artist, bringing to life a complex, contradictory human being. Georgina Arnott was surprised to realise that existing biographies, autobiographical works and critical studies of Judith Wright merely skimmed...
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